Nothing Is Good or Bad but Our Thinking Makes It so

The book Incognito The Secret Lives of the Brain, discusses what really goes on in your mind. To begin with, one of David Eagleman’s main points throughout the book is our subconscious is what mainly controls us. It affects our behavior, interests, and reasons for doing things. For instance, many of our daily activities do not use our conscious control such as riding your bike or understanding language. These activities are called procedural memory; because they are tasks you do all the time.

Good and Evil were currently planning on going to war, fighting with all their might. This happened frequently, located at the center of a person’s character- the heart and soul. The armies fought countless battles and this one was no exception. The war would be named later, with all the human’s friends repeating the gruesome details of the battle. The human would be known and categorized by this and whether Good or Evil prevailed in his heart.

Since the beginning of time there has been confusion about every aspect of life and with confusion comes a number of questions we cannot completely answer or forget. How did we transform from one creature to another? Why are people so violent? Are we inherently good or evil? These are questions that have been asked for centuries, and have taken ever longer to possibly answer. It might be numerous decades from now before they finally answer these questions but, nevertheless many people are trying by using evidence, theories, faith, and science to answer these questions as accurately as possible. Mainly the question about whether we are innately innocent or not. Most people, say humans are inherently evil, that there is evil in all of us. That could be the reason why kids enjoy watching ants succumb when they burn them with reflected rays of sunlight. However, many believe that we are born good with a clean slate and that it is society of whom changes that. I believe that we are born sinful/evil and that society influence us to be good. The facts have proven humans to be innately evil through genetics, control, and mistreatment.

Furthermore, another character that proves that Victor Hugo is trying to say that human nature is basically good is Javert. On page 336 it states, “Javert felt that something horrible was penetrating his soul, admiration for a convict. Repose first for a galley slave can that be possible? He shuddered at it yet could not shake it off… Javert bent his head and looked. All was black. He could distinguish nothing. He heard a frothing sound; but he did not see the river…”. This quote by Victor Hugo emphasizes on this unusual emotion of goodness arousing within Javert. It’s revealing a transformation of Javert’s character from a hardened law worshipper directly to someone feeling for a convict. Javert is seen gaining his conscious and eventually

Are we inherently good or evil? William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies suggests that we as humans have the potential to become good or evil. William Golding’s novel suggest that society shapes the way us as humans act, and when the children were taken away from humanity, the actions of the boys reflect how us as humans would act if we were taken away from society. Throughout the novel there are many times where the boys become savage and allow the beast that is inside of them to take over, for example in chapter nine the boys are having a gathering on the beach and then they get taken away by the excitement and mistake Simon as being the beast, this leads the boys to clawing him into pieces and eventually killing him. At this point the

Meta ethics looks at ethical language and helps us to identify whether the word good is meaningful. Analytical statements are sentences that are true because of the relationship between the subject and the predicate. Analytical statements are usually self-explanatory, e.g. all carnivores eat meat; we know what a carnivore eats which is meat, the subject is the carnivore and the predicate here is the meat. Analytical statements are logic based, they tell us about language but little meaningful information about the world. Also no additional meaning or knowledge is contained in the predicate that is not already given in the subject. Synthetic sentences may or

This theory assumed that our behaviours and feelings are mainly based on our unconscious thoughts; this also suggests that these behaviours occur because of experiences from our childhood.

John Lubbock may have convinced many people with his statement, and he may have changed the way people look at life, but he made me realize that life is all about moments. Moments that we will never forget and some that we wish we could, but if there is one thing I have learned it would be we need to go through all of those moments to figure out who we are. Everything we go through serves a purpose that we are probably unaware of at the time, but in the end it will all be worth it. Life is truly fascinating in its own way, and it's something the human mind will never fully understand. Just remember that everything happens for a reason and it will ground you as an

Ignoring my questions, she talked about the healing quality of wood, and I begin to feel calmer. She made me believe that I could put the past behind me. I began to take comfort in the smell of winter and the odor of the wood. I asked myself was it really a wrong to feel that it was alright to live. I wondered did surviving make me chosen by God. Did his picking me to live make me superior to other? Did feeling superior act as a defense against my guilt over surviving the

Prejudice and Discrimination are an all to common part of our cognitive social being, but many social psychologists believe that it can be stopped, but only with the help of social conditioning.

… I mean nothing but the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind.

there, in the experience we are associating ourselves with it. By repeating this our thoughts around

In Steven Johnson’s novel, Everything Bad is Good for You, Johnson makes the bold statement that today’s popular culture has increased our brain functions, and made our society more intelligent as a whole. He concludes that everything that has negative connotations in our society is actually beneficial to the expansion of our minds; mainly television, videogames, movies and the internet. His two main claims are “all the standards we use to measure reading’s cognitive benefits – attention, memory, following threads, and so on – the nonliterary popular culture has been steadily growing more challenging over the past thirty years.” and “the nonliterary popular culture is honing different mental skills that are just as important as the ones exercised

The subject of the conscious mind has long been a debate in the world of psychology; what exactly is it and where does it occur in the brain. Unfortunately, the debate still continues as there is no concrete answer currently available. Nevertheless, it is understood what it means to be conscious. One is aware of when they are awake, sleeping, or thinking. The topic of the conscious mind was historically left to scholars in the field of philosophy and religion with little input from the scientific side (Brainbank, 2013). But the more information that becomes readily available about the human brain, the more scientists are ready to tack the controversial subject.

"Truth, beauty, and goodness are not eternal, objective realities which man discovers, but are the creative products of the human mind as it exercises its 'will-to-power'.  In other words, man is a creator of values." (Nietzsche) So what is good and evil, but that defined by man and therefore a purely subjective concept.  Could we, society, have one without the other?  By determining what is good, we in turn determine what is evil.  How do we know what they are; that is if they really exist?  One must first try to define what good and evil are before attempting to question their existence.