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Sooo... here we were going on about psychological egoism, ethical egoism, reciprocal altruism, and ideal altruism in our ethics class...

psycholocial egoism - we only do good because of a reward, or to not be punished

ethical egoism - that egoism (desc. above) is not only human nature, but it is actually ethical, and is what should be done.

reciprocal altruism - I do good to you, you do good to me, and we all live in harmony

ideal altruism - regardless whether you love me, don't care, or hate me, I'm still going to do good to you

Now, with those definitions... What do you think most fits human nature? What do you think most fits your beliefs/actions?

And... the one million dollar question... Do you feel that human nature is basically evil, or basically good?

Also, for effect... Do you think human civilization is in an "downward spiral" or is humanity "getting better"?

edit: I'ma throw in my personal opinion later... but for now, I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter... o.o

edit 2: After some reading, I want to introduce two other terms...

selfish - wanting everything for oneself, and for everyone else to have nothing; will not help anyone else, regardless of the effect on yourself

self interested (self centered) - making sure that you are taken care of before you take care of others, but are willing to help others if needed

for clarification, the emotion most associated with "selfish" is envy, and with "self interested" is jealousy

So, with that in mind, keep on discussing!
I'ma making my response right now... ^_^( )

and I'd like to applaud everyone who's discussing, for both thinking, and for not breaking out into an immature flame war... this alone is already making me think better of society... o_o

It is in my opinion that human nature is wholly dependent on the human at hand.
I believe that a person's history shapes pretty much every part of them.
But then, we have flaws that don't make us bad, but harm others.
Most people are good. They have desires to help others and give to charity, live for the betterment of themselves and their family, for the most part.
Humans are for the most part afraid of what they don't understand. So a middle aged sheltered family would probably not make a huge deal or any kind of big fuss over extreme poverty, sickness, dying, and persecution, because they don't understand it and are afraid to confront it, as it is so different from what they are experiencing in their lives. To their community, they are seen as normal people. To the people in extreme poverty, sickness, dying, and persecution environments, all the people who turn the other cheek are generally seen as ignorant, selfish, terrible people. There are the corrupt and horrible, but it is my belief that they were not naturally born that way. No one is naturally born evil, or terrible. History shapes that.
So basically? I think that we are born mostly good, with a tad bit of fear and ignorance, but also that the good (and fear and ignorance, I suppose) are very fragile and easily transformed.I

I believe that most people are mostly good most of the time.

Sorry if this wasn't what you were looking for?
Edit: I don't have the terms in there...and I can't really assign them. D;
But...I don't know whether we're spiraling up or down. I think we need to wait and see. We're moving into territory we've never been in before, and change is usually a hard thing for the human race to accept, so everyone goes crazy about it spiraling downward, when really we need to wait for things to stabilize and then review and compare our surroundings.

So. you want to get philisophical, eh? XD I took philosophy in high school and I once wrote a paper on human nature. I'm also taking psychology right now.

A word of warning: this WILL be long. sweatdrop

Personally, I think human nature fits best under psychological egoism. Think about our motives in everyday life. Why do we work? While some people feel that they are contributing to society, most people work because they're getting paid. If you didn't get paid to work, would you still do it? If you look at our world, you'll probably see that everything revolves around a reward-punishment system that enforces desirable behaviors. For example, if you steal something, you'll face some sort of penalty. If you get punished, or see someone get punished for this action, you learn to avoid doing it because you know the resulting punishment will make you feel terrible.

Likewise, if you do something good and get rewarded for it, it makes you feel good and you'll want to repeat that behavior in the future for either the reward or that feeling of self-satisfaction.

I'm going to briefly mention something called Maslow's hierarchy of needs; it's a pyramid chart of what humans need to survive. At the bottom is basic physical needs such as food and shelter,and then gradually moves up to more emotional and psychological needs. It's human nature to want to fulfill these needs; sometimes people will use whatever means to fulfill them.

But there's a flaw in the two egoisms; doing 'bad' things can sometimes give a person a 'good' feeling. Let's say you shoplift from a store. No one knows you did it and you walk away with several chocolate bars (or whatever), and you may end up feeling good because you benefitted from stealing. Psychologically, this may be a reason as to why people commit crimes or bully others; they don't do 'bad' things just for the hell of it, but rather they do them because it gives them good feelings such as satisfaction, accomplishment, or...whatever that feeling is when you're having fun (I can't think of a word for it at the moment sweatdrop ). In this way, ethical egoism is kinda flawed. Yes, it's true that people do things mostly because of rewards and it IS human nature, but, depending on how you look at it, psychological egoism may not be ethical and may not be what should be done all the time.

The two altruisms are highly idealistic, but they do exist, although not as often as the two egoisms. Reciprocal altruism is basically the Golden Rule (do unto others, you know how it goes); it's a nice philosophy, but not everyone lives by it. Ideal altruism is a strange one: it's giving without expecting anything in return. Between close friends and family, it's not surprising. Between complete strangers is rare, but it does happen.

Don't believe me? A small plane crashes in the middle of the wilderness and the only two survivors are a sickly 12-year-old boy and the 40-year-old pilot who was badly injured in the crash. The pilot is unable to move, the boy can't speak English and his illness causes him a lot of pain. But for 15 days, the boy went out to gather food for the pilot even though his disease worsened. The boy eventually died, but the pilot survived and was rescued. Why did the boy do that? He certainly didn't do it because there was a reward; if he hadn't done all that for the man, he probably would've survived. He probably didn't do it because he believed the pilot would return the favor someday; chances were, they'd never see each other again if they survived. So why? Maybe he thought the pilot had a better chance of surviving than he did? Even then, why risk your life for someone else?

This is an extreme case, but it's a good example of ideal altruism. You do good because you feel it might make someone else's life better. Ideal altruism doesn't need a reason and is done without expecting a reward. Volunteer work is an everyday example of this.

On the topic of good and evil: there's no such thing; at least, there's no clear-cut definition for it. Humanity isn't intrinsically evil; everyone is just trying to do what they feel is right. But humanity isn't completely good, either. If you look back into history, you'll see that almost every civilization has committed incredible atrocities. The crusades, the two world wars, the genocide in Africa, the Holocaust; humans are capable of doing really evil things. But what decides what is good and what's evil? Humans do. Every society on Earth has laws based upon what is socially acceptable. For example, everyone can agree that it's wrong to kill with the exception of self-defense and war. Killing only becomes evil if it's done with malicious intent, or for the wrong reasons. With that said, evil is relative to what is socially accepted in the majority of the world. Humans are born good, but it is their choice through their actions whether they remin good or become evil.

As for whether humanity is a downward spiral or is getting better, it's hard to say, although I'm leaning more towards getting better. If you look at the world today, you'll see that it's still plagued by a lot of problems that were around 1000 years ago. People still fight wars for any excuse they can find, religion is still at odds with the law, there is still politcal unrest in a lot of places, and then there's the issue of econimics as well. In spite of that, some things are better than they were 1000 years ago; socially, anyway. People are no longer xenophobic, people are no longer persecuted (as much) for being different, and people (women and minorities especially) have more rights and freedoms. That's a lot of progress, don't you think? The only way human civilization will go downwards is if humanity reverts back to the Middle Age way of thinking or if humans revert back to their animal instincts.

As for me, I guess my beliefs are a combination of psychological egoism and ideal altruism. Everyone does things because they're getting something out of it; we wouldn't be human if we didn't. I'm no exception. But I also do things even if I'm not getting anything out of it. I volunteer in hospitals and in schools. Why? I have no clue. But if somone needs help, I'll gladly lend a hand even if I don't know them or never see them again; even just a little bit of kindness can mean a lot to someone.

(See? I told you it'd be long XD )

Because it brings you joy. You do it not really to help people, but to bring joy to yourself. Helping people may bring you joy, so you do it. Bringing joy to self = Selfishness.

Edit- Let me make that more clear. You do things for people so they will be happy. And them being happy makes you happy. So you do it to make them happy so you will be happy.

I dont have time for a good reply to you Phoe, or time to read your 2nd post, because im on my way back to payless. But your story of the pilot and the kid made me think of parents and kids as another example. I mean, what parent wouldnt die to save their own child? Almost none. Just a more common example ^-^

After work I'll be back to reply to the whole thing

But its very good ramblings! heart
As I said before, that's my exact view on human nature tham Meru posted.
Finally someone who thinks they same way I do! Yay!