What is Human Nature?

To be honest i do not know the answer to this question. There was a time though when I was sure I knew what human nature was. I would have described it to you as, overall bad, that man's goal was self serving, and that the end goal of human nature was to self serve in order to move on into the elite status we all crave.

However this summer, I took a course and know longer necessarily believe that. If we look at what we say about human nature, we would often say, that it is selfish, hedonistic, full of cutthroat ambition, and that we as individuals are not any of the traits previously stated. Who are we to say that humans on a whole are bad, but that we are different, that we are not bad, that in effect we do not share the curses of our society. And if human nature was innately evil, then why would we care that we were not that way, that we are somehow different. If human nature is evil then we wouldn't want to be made separate form it, we would not desire to be viewed as righteous.

So do we know what human nature is, or have we been taught what to believe? "Life liberty, and the pursuit of property. " John Locke said that on human nature, and our founding fathers were directly influenced by that. They were worried that the "tyranny of the majority" might overtake the dissent thus instituting a monarchy. They were not trying to limit the pursuit of property though: perhaps we can best see Locke's impact in the protection of their own property, preventing debtors governments, and social movements. However it is with this thought of human nature that we are not only governed by, but brought up into.

The question I truly ask is not what human nature is, but rather what have you been taught to believe in. Do you really believe that human nature is evil. That we would all kill each other unless governed. That human nature is bad, and that therefore you need government, not to protect you from outside evils but rather yourself. If we look at the period of time before the invention of agriculture, we generally had peace, people lived in a communal setting where egalitarianism was not a desire, but rather a fact. Perhaps human nature is not evil, but rather it is the manipulations in thought and upbringing that have led us to believe so that human nature is evil.

What is human nature? If there was a great flood of the arks proportions, would the remaining humans fight one another or come together? Would we live for one another, or for ourselves? Would we care for our petty desires, or for the group as a whole. I do not pretend to know that human nature is evil. That it is life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and nothing else. Is this what you believe or what you've been taught to believe?