Are Humans Good or Bad?

     To answer very simply: No.  

  I definitely hate that there's no "middle ground" when we write or discuss something in school. Seriously, conflict resolution does NOT work like that, stop teaching us how to bicker and fail at working things out like every past generation did and congressmen do now. Anyway though, that's a topic for another time.

     So, humans, are we good or evil? Everyone has a different take on this, because no one can objectively say what good and evil are. Let me answer this question with some more questions: Is a dog panting to cool down good or evil? Is a panther eating some cute fluffy thing evil? Is the common cold evil?

     Whether you take God out of the equation or not, every cell, virus, and organism adapted to live in its specific environment, and takes the actions best suited to ensuring its survival in that environment. Every individual human instinctively does what they (through genetic experience) feel is the best way to survive: such actions can neither be classified as good or bad.

     One of the most common(ly criticized) statements that "proves" humans are bad is that unlike every other animal, we have nuclear bombs and flamethrowers and napalm and other things that explode or make fire and that we use them on each other, but animals don't. To counter this, anyone who has seen a video about nature knows that animals almost always compete with each other for resources. Even if we don't need the resources of another human we are currently fighting, humans don't like taking risks. Anything added to the dragon horde ensures another winter or two, and that is the unbeatable subconscious justification every human who seeks war has.

Now, typically, the biggest argument for humans being good is that we often have charities and try to fix our mistakes. After all, the fact that we develop concepts of "good" and "evil" in our own perspectives means that we at least try to be good right?

Maps of human populations counter this easily. Humans are "herd" animals; we stick together to keep faster and stronger animals from kiling us. To have a herd; however, at least some number of people need to stay alive. So, we care for each other with the expectation (at least subconsciously) that it will benefit us.

Humans. We're mammals. We compete for resources, try to survive through the winter, and try to keep the herd alive so that we all survive. There's nothing good or bad about it, it's just the way life is.