What makes up human morality? Why is it that we help others? It seems unlikely that we help others in need
purely out of our self interest. People
may help the less fortunate because it makes them feel good about
themselves. But what about self-sacrifice?
Do people simply give up their lives to feel good, even if just for a
moment? That doesn’t seem
convincing. So are people naturally altruistic? Well, perhaps not. If that was the case, wouldn’t there be more charity
donations? Would the Red Cross still have a dire need for blood donations? I would argue that people aren’t truly altruistic
either. It’s more like we are a mixture
of both. We aren’t greedy creatures or selfishless
angels, at least not all the time. We
help others from time to time but sometimes we fail to extend a simple helping
hand to those in need.
What do you think about the idea that Mencius is correct about human nature but the media and consumer society of today impose an idea of selfishness on people?
ReplyDeleteI would say that people are innately neutral, a blank slate like Locke put it. I think people can be swayed to believe or accept another viewpoint. I would think that if Mencius was right on human nature, then we would have a lot more kinder and generous people, but we don't. I think something that both philosophers neglected to bring up (or maybe it was just the editors) was that there is a lot of gray area between good and evil.
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