Is a human naturally good, bad, or neutral?

(The date and time are dummy values to be updated when the meeting is scheduled.)

I invite you to take a minute or so to answer the following questions and explain the reasons for your answers:

• Is a human naturally good, bad, or neutral?
• Is the mind a battleground of forces that we can’t control, as the Apostle Paul and Sigmund Freud espouse?
• Is human nature inherently sinful, as in the Judaic-Christian idea of fallen human nature and as in the Christian idea of original sin?

Here is my view of this topic.

The hypothetical sinful nature to which our mind is subject is nothing more than the automatic unit of the mind doing what it has learned well to do over the prior years of our life.

(I explain the automatic unit in Human Life in chapter 3 on the mind. The automatic unit of your mind operates with parallel processing of sensory inputs and motor outputs, as it is doing right now as you sit or stand while reading this webpage. The automatic unit operates unconsciously since it operates with parallel processing. The automatic unit does all of the work of thinking while being managed by the volitional unit, which operates consciously and, hence, serially in directing our attention. All of our skills — perceptual, cognitive, motor — are learned by the automatic unit, thereby enabling our mind to execute the skills unconsciously and quickly on an ongoing basis. In the absence of this capability, our mind would be unable to manage our body and keep us from getting harmed by the numerous threats that we face.)

We necessarily begin life completely egoistic so that we will have a chance of surviving. As we mature, we gain knowledge and skills, and we learn from our parents to be cooperative and altruistic. As we proceed through life as adults, this is what interpersonal relations are essentially about: realizing the tradeoff of balancing egoism and altruism in the context of human mortality.

More generally, our biological nature is, of necessity, inherently oriented toward self-preservation, and this, in turn, engenders egoism. Given this, as we mature, we must learn to cooperate with other people in order to achieve our personal goals. Cooperation, in turn, shades into altruism as we learn to balance egoism and altruism.

Attitudes and behavior that have long been learned by the automatic unit cannot be erased because memories cannot be erased, so automated attitudes and behaviors are not easily modified. If we wish to change such attitudes and behaviors, we must earnestly concentrate on training our automatic unit by applying the principle practice makes perfect. Overall, we must seek to develop our character.

I now invite you to apply the foregoing insights in answering the following questions:

• Are lions, tigers, and hyenas naturally vicious?
• More generally, is a carnivorous animal naturally vicious?

In the meeting, I will present these ideas for discussion.

Reference: Philip Bitar, Why Human Life Makes Sense, Edition 5 (2023), chapter 3, p. 126, 150

Meeting times and locations

Time is PST or PDT, depending on time of year, X = TBD:

X:00 pm in-person — Marysville Library, 2nd meeting-room door on LHS of entrance hallway

X:15 pm online — link to be posted here before meeting

If you plan to attend in person, when you register, please add a comment "Plan to attend in person" to help me in preparing room accommodations.