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Are you ready for the rapture??
Message
From
21/07/2006 18:19:02
Dragan Nedeljkovich (Online)
Now officially retired
Zrenjanin, Serbia
 
 
To
21/07/2006 18:02:27
General information
Forum:
Politics
Category:
Other
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01136603
Message ID:
01138751
Views:
15
>>The particular definition of good, though, would exclude any violence and coercion - and then, that's a social thing. If you mean "naturally" as "regardless of society" then your question is meaningless. With a single human, without others, the homo sapiens can't express its substance as zoon politikon, a social being, and there's no context in which the very idea of good can exist.
>
>In this case I was thinking socially is man naturally "good". Does he get along well with others naturally. Is he naturally generous and kind to others? Or is his natural tendancy to steal, cheap and murder?

If there was any "natural" tendency to anything, it wouldn't have a chance to surface, because this social being always takes on characteristics of the society - by imitation, by opposition, by adoption or by just not thinking at all. IOW, I think the question of any "natural behavior" can't go further than hunger, sleep and avoid bumping one's head. And even that's influenced by social mores - you don't eat in the opera, don't sleep on the job and bump your head only when extremely frustrated.

The whole idea of "natural behavior" I think comes from XVII century humanists, probably Rousseau (the idea of "noble savage") and some Christian churches which try to persuade their flock that humans are naturally evil and need to be guarded from each other, and in the next step offer themselves as guardians.

I'd rather look into crime rates, prison population, role models, poverty rate, educational levels, proclaimed ideals and a few other parameters to decide whether a citizen of a particular culture has more good than bad traits.

back to same old

the first online autobiography, unfinished by design
What, me reckless? I'm full of recks!
Balkans, eh? Count them.
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