There is an age old debate about the nature of humanity. Are we born good and learn evil? Or are we born with tendencies for both? Leaving our experiences to shape us and push us either to good or evil. It is a debate because arguments can and have been made for both sides. So perhaps this post is redundant, but recent events I’ve witnessed have led me to address this again and add a new factor to the argument, and that factor is the human need to justify our actions.

People, for whatever reason, religious or moral, have a crippling need to justify our actions, to convince ourselves that we’re not the ‘bad guy’ in whatever situation we’re in. Yahoo boys tell themselves they’re Robin Hood, bank robbers tell themselves they’re just stealing back what the bank/government stole from the people, or that society left them no choice, murderers tell themselves “it was him or me”, corrupt officials tell themselves “if I don’t take it, someone else will, I’m just paying myself for my work”, when we fight we tell ourselves the other person provoked us, when we cut in line we convince ourselves we’re out of time and more in a hurry than others. I find this course of action especially fascinating because we do this even when there are no consequences or rewards for this justification, no one really cares why you did that one thing that one time, but you’re still telling yourself it was just, explaining your actions to anyone that’ll listen so they can agree with you. We do this to feel better about ourselves, because we want to be good and so when we do something bad, we try to convince others and particularly ourselves, that it was still the right thing to do, that we had no choice or that it was for the greater good.

This is why people shalaye, for those not in the know, shalaye means to explain unnecessary things. It’s something most, if not all of us have done at some point. This justification factor leads me to wonder, if humans consistently try to convince ourselves that we are good and all our actions justified even when it doesn’t matter, does this therefore mean that we are inherently good? Born with a goodness in our hearts that stays with us? A goodness we long to maintain or return to when we do something we think is bad and so we simply tell ourselves it is good.

Or are we simply born with good and evil? Or neither? Do we desire to be good only because society and religion tell us to be? But then again, every human being is naturally capable of great good and great kindness without training, conversely, only a few are capable of great evil and even then, it usually requires a great deal of conditioning to attain such levels. Even security forces who kill others for ‘good’ reason still have trouble with such acts, despite it being generally accepted as just by most people.

What are your thoughts on the subject? Does the justification factor decide the argument? Do you think people are born good? Bad? Or indifferent? Do you remember a time when you “shalayed” to justify your actions? Please like, share and Leave me a comment below. I’ll respond to every one. Thanks for reading.