Are Humans Fundamentally Good?

good evening ladies and gentlemen i haven't posted anything for a little bit but uh know that i haven't been just entirely slacking off been thinking and about all kinds of things with the new material will be coming very soon and i'll be announcing that shortly so hopefully some material that you people will enjoy um before i get into that though i did want to mention that a good friend of mine saw el moncep has a new novel up that you can hear on youtube it's got beautiful illustration beautifully read with music it's called benghazi and i think i'll put a link below and if you want to check it out i can just click over and listen to it it's uh first part of it is that but it's just i think i think you might really enjoy it i know i did so just wanted to pass that along um tonight i want to ask a question and explore a question reflect on it that i think is at the heart of a lot of what is going on um in our culture at the moment i mean again i've mentioned this before that the stressors come along we have several of them going on our community or our culture at the moment and it exposes certain fault lines and deep patterns of thinking that are often laid down we think of them as being contemporary issues but they've often been laid down very very far in the past and and one that keeps returning to me now is a simple question is you know are people fundamentally uh good or fundamentally worthwhile just because they exist or do people have to do certain things or be certain ways to actually be considered potentially valuable worthwhile or good this seems like a odd question because i think our knee-jerk reaction is to say well of course people are worthwhile and it's like ah you know be careful one of the great parts of confucianism uh in the chinese tradition is that it one of his core theories is that basically human beings want to be good and that um that to do good they just need help right that's they consider it sort of like growing a crop or taking care of a plant if you nurture people and put them in an environment which helps them to cultivate their native goodness and they will be good but if they're in an environment that stuns them or damages them in some ways then people who would otherwise be good will do things that are are viewed by culture individuals as bad and so but their their core belief is that fundamentally human beings on average most people are are basically decent and hence basically valuable right that the decent human beings have value um greeks argued something similar both aristotle and uh plato's you know basically in different ways actually in some similar ways as well but they both argue that look no one knowingly does wrong because wrong harms you and so it's only ignorance that leads people to do evil or unhelpful or unfortunate actions and so they viewed people as being ignorant but ignorance is simply something that can be redressed right it can be with education or again a good environment or a helpful upbringing well that will then allow them to understand the world better and then they wouldn't make the kinds of errors of judgment that leave them to do evil things or at least the people who matter now sometimes there's an argument about that so this seems like a crazy sort of background but right now i believe we're leaning culture and of course this always comes in mixes but we're leaning culturally more towards this notion that people are flawed and wrong and that they need help or fixing for them to be good and or valuable or even potentially good now that tradition comes to us in the west most strongly from christianity which argues um in in one of its very influential forms or in several it's very influential forms that people are fundamentally flawed original sin fall from grace and only through the intervention of divine power jesus or god depending on where you are and what your different version of this is can you hope to even potentially be the redeemable right hence hence jesus is often referred to as the redeemer you can't redeem yourself you're so fallen you're so broke and you're so awful there's really nothing you can do for yourself you can only hope by the often this is through grace or through prayer or you know again many debates and different christian groups about how this goes takes place but basically you need outside intervention to make yourself good and valuable and what this means though is that people are basically not good in and of themselves that just a person on their own in their normal natural native state is bad then you had someone like rousseau you know people always talk you know it's easy to make fun of rousseau with his you know noble savage but what he meant was that no human beings in their native element in their natural environment are noble which is to say good and valuable and that is elements of civilization that have corrupted us this is a really central attack on the notion of original sin and the notion that everybody is fallen and damaged and corrupt and so you know rousseau is rolling this argument out to try and redress what he sees as the demeaning of the native nobility of mankind so anyway this this argument has been going on for centuries and centuries across many different civilizations but it comes back to this basic question is are people fundamentally good or valuable you know depending how you want to think about it or are they fundamentally flawed and damaged and worthless and they need to do something or achieve something or have a special status to make them worthwhile aristotle for instance famously argued that certain people are just slaves are just inferior they're born in fear that's the way they are and that that notion meant that for the elevated classes certain people are good but certain other people are just necessarily bad and those people are slaves or barbarians which just means the other people that's another popular one some groups of people are born good but most everybody else is fallen again in christianity this notion that there's different groups the good people and the bad people um this was the elect right many different christian groups particularly in protestantism have this notion of an elect there are some people who have been chosen by god the chosen people of course goes back to judaism like we are the elect of god everybody else that sort of also rans their third rate they've got the wrong gods but we are the true chosen people we are the elect and hence we are necessarily valuable and special in ourselves whereas everybody else is either second rate or they have to do something to achieve greatness or even worthiness um and that sort of central question that keeps being argued about now this is not going to be resolved by the way this is not one of those things that is going to one day we're going to wake up and go oh well here's the answer people are innately valuable or no no people are nearly invaluable it's just that it ebbs and flows in society that at times and i think times like this a time of stress what i feel like is that there's been this very strong rise in the sense that no people are somehow fundamentally wrong and that they need serious intervention if they're going to have any hope of being right and that kind of uh i i think of this basically anti-human is that when you think that humans are in their native state uh damaged or flawed then what you're really arguing is against the human right that you have to do something superhuman you have to rise above your humanity to achieve a state where you have value or worth and so i think it is a very strongly anti-humanist feeling and what i find interesting about this is the spans this this notion spans uh political parties that you know we think of everything as being divided along political lines these days but in this case it's very clear that this deep rooted sense of humans as being worthless or or damaged or or un irredeemable it cuts right across political parties it's both parties extremes middle you know it's just it doesn't track that way because it's so deep into our cultural roots and so you know it's easy easy to pull some examples but a couple that that have been jumping out at me lately one is the notion of of work and how uh the value of people is of tied to work now this is not a new observation certainly in america where we think that everybody's worth is tied to their job but um you know it's sort of taken on this next step so there's been a lot of talk about universal basic income or guaranteed jobs for people and usually this comes from the left or the scene as a progressive or a leftist ideal but the notion that someone's value is derived from them working and being productive i mean this is there's a long multi-century millennial long notion of can you be saved by your works will god redeem you from your flawed state if you do the right works some christian theologians have said yes some christian theologians have said no and then there's been a whole range of mixed complex positions in between but this has been a hugely wrong running debate which is why i find it fascinating that the lefts and progressives somehow suddenly latched on to this and decided that oh yes if we provide a world in which everybody can work that is the best possible world and in theory yeah if you want to create a world where everybody who wants to work can have the opportunity to work but what about the people who don't want to work have no interest in being productive um just don't care right they're disinterested they would like to do other things besides work or do productive activities and you see this i think most clearly in the defensiveness of our culture around being a parent particularly being mothers when they have to stay home or choose to stay home and take care of their kids they keep saying no working being a mother is a job see i'm doing something productive i'm a valuable member of society the the the idea that like mind-blowing idea that mothers and parents in general stay-at-home fathers people who are actually raising caring for other humans and fostering their growth and hopefully helping them grow to be healthy future humans need to justify that activity because it's not perceived as being real work is i just i'm getting it just boggles just like i don't really even know how to respond to it like oh my god are you kidding me i mean this is that's crazy right but that should be the root definition everybody else is wasting time no matter what you're doing you're doing something less valuable than nurturing children that's i mean i think that's almost by definition or maybe a few other things we could think of some other examples but basically that's really real i mean as a society there's your core this is the future these are the future people of your world of your country of your society of your neighborhood you want them to be well and healthy they need nurturing and love parents can provide that there you go core of your whole program and we're like well you know it's as important as a job like no it's more important than jobs jobs are stupid and third rate relative to that activity in any sort of sane value system right and and so the notion that that this need is like oh you know you can look it up in the internet they say well if this were a paid job here's all the positions it would be and here's how many hours it is and this is the kind of work that's really being done is a signal that what we've decided is that people who aren't productively doing work that is recognized by society are somehow wrong right you are not just in and of yourself redeeming yourself as as your existence even when in what you're doing with your existence this is incredibly important and you know natural human beautiful undertaking of trying to raise healthy children so you know that's sort of how far we've gone down that road now if you back up one more step and go well you know what if i don't have kids what if i just want to stay home and not do anything i want to garden or take care of my plants or stare out the window well you know should this person be eligible for government support should this person get free education free health care care for housing food do we say well no no society has no obligation to individuals who are unwilling to provide for themselves in which case again basically we say look if if you don't participate in the system then no now traditionally progressives said well we don't want people to starve and go hungry and you know we want to care for people but they've tied that to work right like you to be worthy of support you need to participate and so this becomes this interesting case of saying well uh if you're not working of course when anybody who wants to is guaranteed a job noticing this really would make you an outcast i think would be an interesting experiment really really sort of make you this kind of outlier um that would be sort of separating themselves off from from society and so that sort of desire to sort of universalize work as some sort of utopic moves uh is sort of i think really anti-human because i'm i'm pretty sure lots of people not everybody i think most people are happy to work they like to do productive work they find it invigorating it enriches their lives they feel good about themselves when they do this so i think for lots of people i think it is a good idea but i think for a lot of other people it's like they just didn't they're fine they have no interest in being productive in any way and should they have to be this is really one of those fundamental cultural questions that we rarely stop to ask and of course you know on the right this is a very the rhetoric is much stronger where they say well you if you can't go out in the free market and your own job will screw you right so this is the sort of uh you know will work and survive and it's a dog-eat-dog kind of world and you know the strongest will rise to the top and you know this all this rhetoric that we're used to associating with sort of the libertarian right or whatever the government shouldn't be intervening and you know if you don't if you can't afford health care then you should just suffer and die that's fine right that that sort of uh wing we associate with right wing but you know when you build a structure around people having to work it's really a very similar fundamental take on what makes a human worthwhile and valuable but it's expressed in a very different way and that's what's fascinating to me is that in both cases it's the working that makes you eligible to be considered a good and valuable member and the not working that makes you suspicious right and that's that that sort of uh that nexus line there um you also see it in other places and of course uh the rhetoric and arguments and debates about uh racism in our culture which i think is good to have also raised this because it raises this vexing or raises many vexing questions not the least of which is can a racist be a basically decent person right that is can you be a racist and be an otherwise decent okay you know upstanding member of your society or does being a racist make you an irredeemably bad person until in some ways you've addressed this fatal flaw in your character and this this is a and depending on how you feel about that depends on how you feel you need to respond to the issue of racism one way to look at racism i think a very uh basically a very helpful and insightful way is to see racism as kind of mental illness right so if someone has a mental illness we don't tend to we try not to or we probably shouldn't think of them as just being horribly flawed um and there's nothing you can do for them and you know just let's just get rid of them right that sort of just push them aside you know sort of uh we're trying to get more respect for and more sympathy for people with with mental illnesses um but that notion of oh but if if you're if you view it as a flaw that is integral to the individual ah well now your response is very different if you say well because you're a racist everything about yourself and your life becomes tainted and hopeless and worthless until you somehow i don't know recant or or prove your worth or renounce your past and you know this you know this goes to the history of this is you know perfectly clear and not very pleasant where you have show trials or you have you know the conversion of the jews and then the whole suspicion that there's all these crypto jews out there who didn't really convert but only said so because they were afraid of the inquisition you know um it just goes all the way back because like oh is it integral to them therefore they can never actually really not address it and therefore they're always flawed or is this simply one aspect of a larger more complicated person that would allow them to be okay so you know yeah they've got racist tendencies or they say stupid stupid ill-informed ideas but otherwise you know they contribute to their community they are a wonderful neighbors they're you know loving parents they you know do all this other good stuff but now it's all scratched right where'd when when do you where do you make that line and this is this is that tricky notion are people completely irredeemable because of a single flaw and can only be saved by whatever the intervention is right is it the grace of god or is it a re-education course at work or is it a public denunciation or you know how does one elevate oneself right what what societal process do we go through um and then when you take it from the individual level to the cultural level you go okay what is the difference between a culture being racist having a tradition of racism having laws that are are biased and unfair or that are applied in biased and unfair manners which is certainly clear clearly the history of the united states how does that track then on through the individual right is is if you're participating in a system which is flawed does this make you necessarily flawed right and again we go back to the nazi war crimes hey i was just doing my job right it turns out not to be a good excuse for a lot of things um and so god opens up all these vexed nexuses uh nexuses nexi what's the plural of nexus all these interconnections and intersections that make you realize that this question of are people fundamentally pretty good and pretty decent and we like them generally but hey they have their flaws they're crazy everybody we all have our problems and our misperceptions and our misunderstandings and we do stupid things that we wish we hadn't done or are are people basically uh flawed and hopeless and um there's nothing good about them unless they really start making some efforts to fix themselves which they're probably not going to be that helpful but at least they're trying and so we'll give them some points uh yeah it's a it's really uh it's really troubling um and one way to think about this also most self-help books which is why i struggle with the genre start from the position that there's something wrong with you and i think people reach out for self-help books because they feel that there's something wrong with them um and it's not that we shouldn't take opportunities to grow and reflect and i mean you know kind of what i think of philosophy as being the process of in part uh is is this you know self-reflection and self-understanding and growth and awareness but one of the questions i think is far too rarely asked is is there a flaw with the individual is there something wrong with me or is there a misfit between something about me that is just fine not a problem but doesn't line up with my culture with my society you know then the problem is not you the problem is the nexus between you and your society and if you start trying to if you see yourself as wrong and your society is right then what you end up doing is just trying to fix yourself all the time when there may be nothing inherently a problem there i mean there could be but there may not be and so the importance of asking that question i think of this is sort of the difference between the pursuit of health which is i want to feel good and i want to be able to do what i want to do and i want to be able to express my physical joy and you know i want to live well and be pain free and that's great physical health this seems like a native drive for most people is to be to be have that sort of health and vigor um as opposed to um standards of beauty so you know that that this is a whole different thing being healthy and well and vibrant and vital is different from meeting whatever your cultural standards of beauties are beauty is at the moment which of course are hugely variable and we're seeing this now in this sort of body positive movement which says hey be positive about your body right be positive about who you are even if it doesn't meet certain societal norms um and then the question then is you know then you come back and go well when does that lapse over into uh you know encouraging unhealth right do we want to encourage health how do you measure health health on the individual level so is it that if you don't match a norm there's something wrong with you or is it that hey as long as you're healthy and vibrant you're good to go um you know again this is that sort of you know it are people fundamentally healthy and therefore they just need health help potentially in expressing that or people fundamentally ill and until they really get some specific program and are meeting all these external guidelines then they're you know they're kind of hopeless and you know you can see examples of both in our culture so this this goes you know right through just about every aspect of our of our society where um the debates that on the surface seem very different or from you know very different sides or discussing wildly different issues can be understand it can be understood in some ways much more clearly if we asking ourselves do you view people as fundamentally flawed and damaged potentially irredeemably and therefore they need this intervention of some kind to save them or are people fundamentally good and you know pretty decent and that what they if they need anything they just need you know maybe a little help a little understanding a little compassion and you know that you know maybe the lights will come on maybe they won't who knows but that doesn't matter they can still be a decent person despite the flaws that you know this is a tough one um i would say right now because of the tensions in our society we're moving very much more towards the notion that oh the people who feel or do or say certain things are irredeemable they basically become non-people they become oh if you uh if well you know it's the notion of not saying oh well that person is hopelessly liberal and they're progressive and they love everybody and they're tree huggers it's the notion that oh they're uh socialist demons who are destroying the american way of life or their libtards or you know it's this very aggressive notion that they are just worthless people um on you know and then on the left is like oh well is there a problem with race in the country obviously yes you know can people be racist certainly they can but then does that make a person fundamentally wrong and uh irredeemable and can that person then be demonized and assaulted and attacked like whoo right it's very clearly get to that sort of medieval place where ah we find somebody we hate uh we like we line up around them and then we stone them to death that's a tradition of that is great we love that right but what it says is that person for whatever reason has been singled out as uh irredeemable and that we can assault them and abuse them and we can be feel good about it it's not that we go oh we're sorry we have to do that no it's our duty to do this this is why burning people at the stake was called an auto defeat an act of faith right this was a a way of helping them right like burning them to death we're really helping them same thing with witches right ooh these witches there's they're a threat to our society there's nothing that can be done to them and basically we're helping them because you know they're possessed they're so wrong that the best thing we can do is to kill them and that's you know when you when you take this logic to its extreme this is where you get to get to in history is this notion of oh selecting out groups pushing them aside making them uh redefined as hopeless or hopelessly damaged and unsalvageable or again the flip side of that is to just get that they're flawed they're messed up they make mistakes they're human just like me right that their human their humanity is not fundamentally different from mine and my humanity's okay i feel pretty good about it so i feel pretty good about them even if we disagree about every possible thing right that's the you know that that that that sort of uh sense of like okay even though i think that person is wrong about everything in their life i still think like well that's okay they have the they it's okay for them to be that way i wish they wouldn't be that way i wish i could convince them to be some other way but basically hey it's all fine you know free love everybody you know let a thousand flowers bloom out there in the world um and so you know this this these kinds of questions is you know is it possible to be accepting like that or when and when does that become a problem itself and they say the one thing that tolerance cannot tolerate is intolerance right at some point intolerance itself becomes a threat to tolerance like what what do you do when you're trying to tolerate incredibly intolerant groups or positions right when when does that actually have to become recognized as a danger and again yeah tough to think about uh but yeah so as you're hearing all this rhetoric as we live in these contentious times i think it is good to pause and ask ourselves you know do we think people are sort of reasonably good and decent at their core or do we think they're sort of hopelessly flawed at their core because how you answer that question and how you think about it dramatically impacts uh just about everything you how you respond to cultural inputs how you understand uh other people how empathetic or compassionate you are towards them it really it's really one of those core deep uh values and and basically i think we we vary i don't think we tend to be purist on this our culture certainly isn't purist on this uh it you know it vacillates one is in dominance and then the other and you know it goes back and forth but you know it is a fundamental uh and deeply informing question that we can ask ourselves and also ask of other uh sort of rhetorics or arguments or positions that we see if you if you see a position like the like i said i was mentioning the one with the works that the people are interested in modern monetary theory often promote this notion of oh universal jobs for everybody it's like hmm okay but what if we don't want jobs right but the the core there is like the death this would establish some sort of utopia and i'm like yeah maybe but um do people need to work to be worthwhile to be worthy to be valuable and i'm like meh i don't think so i mean i would argue i don't think they do but that's certainly arguable i mean you can make an ethical argument that you know that they don't provide a value to society so why should society have anything to do with them i mean it's not an unreasonable position i imagine but it suggests that people have to earn their value and i just don't know i think people maybe are inherently valuable but again arguable position and that argument has been going on for many thousands of years so just something else to ponder another level of complexity but i think if you uh look down very deep at its core you'll find that this notion is is very central are people generally valuable is everybody flawed are only certain groups worthy of being saved or redeemed or are they already the chosen and the elect and everybody else is sort of third rate also rans or or all of us sort of worth our are our key that we're valuable just in the notion of being a human and being alive and having all the incredible human potential which we all possess so there you go thank you very much

Channel: Wes Cecil

Views: 4,263

Rating: 4.9550562 out of 5

Keywords: Wes Cecil, Humanearts, Philosophy, Human Worth

Id: NtVhNCqPnP0

Length: 30min 44sec (1844 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020