What Is Human Nature?

In Genesis the word of God leads humanity in the direction of self preservation, urging them to procreate, to ”Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 9:1), and to minimize hostility and violence among people. As Freud asserted, “Besides the instinct to preserve living substance and join it into ever larger units, there must exist another, contrary instinct seeking to dissolve those units and bring them back to their primeval, inorganic state” (Freud 77). Genesis exemplifies the struggle between the two opposing human instincts, with God acting as a moderator between them. Forms of justice are put into place in an attempt to control these drives, one example being the proclamation that “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6). The ethics and laws that develop throughout Genesis seek to “prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence” but are unable to control “the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness” (Freud 70). Since they cannot be completely eradicated, the scriptures instead play into the more negative aspects of human nature, especially narcissism, and manipulate them into a force for conservation rather than annihilation.

Human beings are part of the animal kingdom, and therefore part of nature. If that is true, then everything they create or destroy is by default "natural". I agree with the statement.

Human nature by essence has been the cause of many entrepreneurial paths, all follow to known the essence itself behind of what we conceive as life. Moreover it’s righteous description and abstract content, that many great man has humbly studied and that for centuries have made a path closely enough to the understanding of it, yet far from the light, it seems to be and unsolvable question that gives us a “Raison d'être” to our existence in this world.

Throughout today’s society there are several different cultural perspectives which form theoretical and practical understandings of natural environments, creating various human-nature relationship types. In this essay, I will describe and evaluate different ways of knowing nature and the impact of these views on human-nature relationships. From this, I will then explore my own human-nature relationship and reflect on how my personal experiences, beliefs and values has led me to this view, whilst highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each and reflecting upon Martin’s (1996) continuum.

John D. Speth authored the article, News Flash: Negative Evidence Convicts Neanderthals of Gross Mental Incompetence, a piece where Speth argues that Neanderthals have not been properly proven of inferior cognitive abilities. Speth says,

Many researchers have tested the theory that humans are naturally war-loving. A fair viewpoint, from the article “Evolutionary Life”, is that “human nature is not one thing, neither 'good' nor 'bad' overall. People in general have been genetically endowed by evolution with a wide variety of tendencies and capacities that respond to -- but are not necessarily controlled or determined by -- their environment" (Atlee). With this, it’s fair to draw a line between how humans were “made” to act and how they act today. In the earliest stages of human life through the present, humans have fought, hunted, and killed their way through life. Today’s difference to the past is not much different besides the means we use to go about the deeds. Businessmen, politicians, and numerous other professions utilize harmful tactics in order to get what they desire. For example, a politician exposes the underlying “evils” of another candidate in order to gain votes, much like how the infamous Salem Witch Trials were pursued in the late seventeenth century when others cried witch in order to avoid being tortured and killed themselves. While one may argue that cavemen were, in some aspects, biologically different than we are today and that they were not exposed to as much as we are, one cannot argue that we are not still instinctively caveman-like. We hunt and gather food; we create new and improved ways of killing enemies or food source; and when we don’t like how or what someone else is

What defines human nature and the hierarchy of human relations? In this paper, I will argue that Beauvoir 's view that society constructs man, maleness, and the masculine as the human standard (rendering woman, femaleness, and the feminine deviant and defective) is flawed. Although Beauvoir 's evidence was compelling I had several issues with some of the finer details such as what term designates a human being, that a woman 's body is considered disadvantaged, and that female nature is defective. I also disagree with her statement that woman can 't think of herself without man, woman is only a symbol of sex to man, and that man and woman are the Self and the Other.

When considering the theory of anthropology and how it developed, a person would think about anthropologists during the early 20th-century such as Franz Boas and Margret Mead, who during their times contributed to the development into what we know as modern anthropology. However, the foundation of anthropological theory—natural human curiosity— was laid prior to the contributions. These foundations can be traced back to the times of ancient Greek philosophy with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Even though these philosophers were not anthropologists, they had laid the foundation of what would become the field of anthropology by recording their natural curiosity of what it means to be human and how does our world operate. This natural curiosity

I agree and disagree. Biblically speaking, human nature has been what it is since the beginning of time and will be what it is until the end of time. And yes technology, something meant to be good, has turned out bad in many cases. An example of bad would be when it is used to replace employees; automatic tellers, self-checkouts etc. Everything mentioned in your comment can be directly linked back to human nature. The ‘US Senate’ is a group of individuals voted and given power by a group of individuals. The same is true about the ‘Supreme Court,’ ‘Republican’ and ‘Democratic’ party. The list goes on.

American anthropologists are more related to how and why that culture changed with a specific end goal to reproduce the history. The entire problem of cultural history comes out of us as a historical problem. According to the Boas '' In order to understand history, it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they have come to be'' (Boas: 120). As far as the field of ethnology in the majority parts of the world, historical data were not available, but there were only the archaeological proofs. I may draw a conclusion from this article;. We fairly notice that every society has its own particular one of a kind history; thusly, no society remains completely the same for hundreds and many years. In the creation of ethnology, all ways of a culture should be thought in order to have an absolute consciousness of the past and the

Human nature, the essence of what makes a human person what they are, is something that everybody has. Every person is innately a person, but how they put their personhood into action is the biggest indicator of their character, or the projection of a person’s human nature. At their core there is human nature, but their actions are what direct this source of humanity. The quality of someone’s actions is shaped by their environment and sometimes their biological makeup as well. Human nature does not have good or evil characteristics. It is how a person thinks and acts that is the true factor in the shaping of their character.

Since the beginning of time, humans have evolved with the purpose of possessing more favorable attributes. Humans acquired certain instincts and physical characteristics to ensure the long-term survival of both individuals and communities. Thousands of years ago, mothers learned to unconditionally love their children, young couples began to join themselves through marriage as a symbol of commitment, and people of all kinds were impelled to depend on a religious affiliation. People from various locations and backgrounds somehow established similar traditions and ideas. All over the world, humans have undergone parallel changes and in the process they have collectively accumulated a communal compilation of information. Each person is born with this set of unlearned behaviors and desires that will live on in spite of prenatal disturbances, drug abuse, trauma, and external or internal biological influences. Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, fashions a society run by domineering oppressors who attempt to exterminate human nature from the general population. This elite group of leaders exploits its citizens’ psychological dispositions through classical conditioning, censorship, propaganda, and hypnopaedia, the act of repeating lessons to a sleeping individual. Throughout the text, Huxley is able to illustrate that the universal human traits originating from the beginning of time were not taken from these people despite the

Humanity has undergone evil and chaos since the beginning of mankind. This is not a cause by some outside force, but by the hands of each person. There is not a single man who has not sinned, men have an overwhelming tendency to sin even if it is done unwillingly or subconsciously. Since this is so, people are naturally inclined towards greed, pride, and corruption. Due to this unfortunate tendency that man has it causes a desire to dominate the rest of humanity.

Human Nature, the basics of character in every human being, morals which are not all good and not all bad, but somewhat in the middle. This arises from English author James P. Pinkerton in, “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely” when he describes the malevolent morality of humans. David Brooks, author of “Conservatism and Evolution” opens the idea of good nature. All of which is followed by British author William Golding in “Lord of the Flies” showing a happy medium of all.

Humanitarian behavior and attitude towards the appearance and the perspective through which they understand things differs from one individual to another. These impacts can be characterized by psychological nature of an individual, current situation in nature, the physical appearance of a person, incapability amongst others. Such factors act majorly and determine a lot on how people behave and think towards each other. This scenario makes it hard for an individual to examine his/her own life but rather criticize those of others. They tend to see another individual as being incomplete therefore need to be reformed. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”, he argues that in his article, if there were ways and mechanism to create a perfect human then that would be done without delay.