PD 4 ENGLISH 10 HONORS
In a paragraph of 5-6 sentences total, answer at least two questions. Make sure you use specific examples from your own experiences, things you have read, or the activity from class. You must respond to at least two of your classmates.
Are people naturally good or naturally evil, and why? What influences our behavior more, nature (genetics) or nurture (environment)? How does society impact individual behavior and the perception of good and evil? Considering the activity from today, the news, or situations you have witnessed, what actually separates the behavior of humans from the behavior of animals?
35 Comments
Tye Snyder
11/4/2016 02:35:28 pm
I don't believe people are naturally good or evil, but more naturally selfish. No matter what you do, you are doing it with some sort of reward or recognition in mind. You clean the house I'm hope of allowance. You donate to charity to gain recognition, or to gain a content state with yourself. Selfishness is not necessarily a bad thing, because it can incline us to do good things. Society impacts us because it sets standards for us to follow. We want to be accepted, and rise to the top of the social levels. We begin to act more like animals when our survival is at stake.
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Emily Burkhart
11/6/2016 06:35:16 pm
I like how you stated that selfishness isn't always a bad thing. People always say it like it's bad but it also can lead to some good as well.
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Faith Anderson
11/4/2016 02:44:00 pm
I think the environments we are put in affect our behavior. In class, everyone automatically started to fend for themselves and took from other groups. This made other people realize they had to act that way too or they wouldn't be able to complete their task. Instead of everyone just asking for stuff from other groups, they just took what they could and kind of attacked each other. Society plays a big role in how we behave. When we see other people doing something that seems to work for them, we want to see if it'll work for us too. This activity made it seem like we were all selfish, but I think that's just because we weren't allowed to work together. If all of the groups could've helped each other, we would have and it would've been a lot less violent.
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Daniel
11/6/2016 07:28:43 pm
I agreee that society or environment can alter behavior. Very good example by referring to the activity.
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Tyler Seidel
11/4/2016 04:42:55 pm
I believe that people are not born distinctly good or evil, rather I believe that people are born with an incline to do more good or bad based on their environment. Furthermore, I believe as a person grows up and is exposed to other peoples' opinions they learn and create their own. For example, a child with terrible, evil, abusive parents would grow up and mimic the same behavior. On the opposite end a child raised by loving parents would mirror that same behavior to their children. However a good or evil behavior is not only determined by environment, certain people a born with an incline to do more good or evil, it is just that environment has a larger impact on one's willingness to be good or evil.
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Tye Snyder
11/6/2016 11:25:47 am
I like how you said environment, because more than just people affect us.
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Emily Burkhart
11/4/2016 05:40:18 pm
I believe we are not born with our evil and selfish behaviors. You are exposed to things throughout life that make you more selfish. For example, if you are in a a bad group of friends you are exposed to bad things and become that way. In class today people were going after the other groups violently instead of negotiating in order to win. People are selfish because they want to be the best and know they will get a reward from it.
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Scarlett Liberto
11/6/2016 03:21:24 pm
i agree with what you say about our environment making us behave the way we do, but the last part about people being selfish don't you think that is more what we are born with rather then our environment.
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Tyler Seidel
11/6/2016 07:59:09 pm
I agree with a majority of your argument, but I think that people have the ability to be selfless as they do to be selfish.
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Daniel Burton
11/4/2016 07:31:20 pm
People start to adapt to their surroundings from the day they are born. As a baby you start to recognize if you are in a eviroment and if the condition are bad you will become instinctively selfish or evil. The society can change your perspective of good and evil and make it seem like you are on the good side when you are not. You could have been fighting for the wrong cause the whole time without realizing it. What seperates humans from animals is our souls. Animals don't have a soul and they are not as intelligent.
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Tye Snyder
11/6/2016 12:00:40 pm
I like how you used the word adapt. It shows a fuller change.
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Scarlett Liberto
11/4/2016 07:33:46 pm
I believe people are naturally selfish and we do good for the greater good of ourselves. We might even do good to make others think that we are better, which is also to get what we want. Our environment influences our behavior, when we are by more people we want them to think better of us so we'll do good things. When we're alone and going to do something we know is wrong we first look around to see if anyone is watching so they don't get the wrong impression of us. In a way we are selfish when we are selfless because we want something out of doing good things.
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Emily Burkhart
11/6/2016 06:37:33 pm
Everyone wants to be the best and rise to the top which can cause us to be selfish. I like how you said "we do good take make others think we are better." We want people to think we are perfect, but everyone makes mistakes.
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Tyler Bubb
11/4/2016 07:48:32 pm
I believe that we aren't born good or evil, however the environment around us impacts us more. Today we learned that in unsafe conditions we will protect our allies and ourselves. You can say what you want, but the activity brought actions we would never do in other circumstances. In those conditions we become more likely to do something out of our character. So I personally believe that's why our environment impacts our behavior the most. This activity taught us why we should be thankful for what we have, and to be thankful we aren't in that situation everyday. ( PS I would personally like to apologize if I made your group upset today, it was out of character. Please accept this apology as well, although I still firmly believe our group did an excellent job today as well as the rest of the class.)
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Lynn
11/5/2016 08:40:15 am
Heck yeah we did well. We were the group that had the most resources, but I mean hey.. survival of the fittest right?
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Scarlett Liberto
11/6/2016 03:14:40 pm
SAVAGES
Taylor Swiger
11/4/2016 08:59:45 pm
People are born naturally selfish, but can be taught good and evil. This all depends on what environment they are put in and what kind of people they encounter in their human experience. Examples of this include our activity today. We were to act as individual groups with a certain set of materials to survive. But, you either encountered the people who took what they wanted and needed, or those who were willing to negotiate a deal. What separates us from animals is our ability to learn complex solutions. Now when we first tried this activity, we went with our selfish instinct of competition. If we tried this again, I'm willing to bet that we would learn from our mistakes and be more open to negotiate. Our behavior is based more on nurture.
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Rachel Rodriguez
11/6/2016 05:48:05 pm
It does honestly come down to our environment and how we were raised. I totally agree with that, and activity really shows that. Each person had their own way of reacting to the situation.
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Brent Moore I
11/7/2016 03:12:08 am
I agree but I also think it depends on society's view of the situation. This goes hand and hand with the environment but it's a different view of it.
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Jordan Jones
11/4/2016 09:32:28 pm
I believe that people can be naturally evil but taught to be good by the people we surround ourselves with because the human race, to survive, had to be naturally selfish. But when given the option of becoming friends and allies with others, humans can and will become selfless in order to keep their friendships alive. For example, in class, several students tried to negotiate and trade with others, but little to no group would really give up any of their items, thus people resorted to stealing from others. This shows that even while we're in the groups, we're naturally greedy and selfish even when it comes to the life or death situation another friend is presented with. Society can be very impactful on what can be considered good and evil; for example, if a child grew up thinking a certain type of person was 'evil' and the child was 'good' and no one contradicted them when it was brought up, would the child not grow up and keep the same ideas? Different generations consider different things evil, too; our great-grandparents would be mortified if one was gay and would say that person would be going to hell, but our children could grow up thinking that gay people are very much normal and would think nothing of someone being gay. It all, really, depends on the timeline.
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Rachel Rodriguez
11/6/2016 05:33:44 pm
I agree with you, in that we are born evil and we need to be taught. I never really thought about the how our generation really does effect our perspective on good and evil. Our generation has a huge impact on our biggest life questions.
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Ej heath
11/4/2016 09:47:00 pm
I believe that humans are born naturally selfish. We as humans tend to always want what is best for ourselves. Today, in the activity, people were not willing to trade or help other teams. Instead, we turned to stealing the items we needed to complete the task first. Humans aren't really born good or bad. We just act upon instinct. We want to do what's best for ourselves and that's natural.
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Ej heath
11/4/2016 09:51:45 pm
Also, the environment we are in influences the decisions we make greatly. Just by where we are at, what we are doing, and what the situation is. These factors will help decide whether or not we make good or bad decisions or even selfish decisions.
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Maddie Nyce
11/5/2016 07:20:15 am
People are naturally people in my opinion. While that isn't answering the question using either options, or explaining it, people are complex beings that can't be generally explained all in one group. You can’t generalize a species by a few specific traits that some of the creatures in the species seem to display.
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Lynn
11/5/2016 08:38:39 am
I really like this, there is a lot of solid information here. You is smart
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Rachel Rodriguez
11/5/2016 07:54:50 am
After, the activity's, reading, and my own personally outlook on the world, I believe we are all born bad. In the beginning we were born with sin, because of this we are naturally born bad. There is nothing we can do to change that except go to Christ. That is my religious view on that question. We can even see this through the activity we did yesterday. In the words of my class mates we are all savages. My question for you is of we are all born with sin and people know they can fix it why doesn't everyone fix it. Most people just ignore the fact they can change and keep doing what their doing. Is there anything more we can do as a human race to help them? I know their is, but me personally need to start doing more.
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Faith Anderson
11/6/2016 12:49:43 pm
I agree with that. We have the bad already in us, but it's up to us to do something about it. If we don't, we can be more like "savages". Like you said, we should be doing more about it.
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Lynn Bittorf
11/5/2016 08:36:21 am
Naturally good or evil? Evil is a pretty strong word. I would say we are naturally inclined to put ourselves above others in the sense that we need to take care of ourselves before we help others. That directly links to the scenario we were put in in class today. It is the groups challenge to get together the necessary objects to survive. Even though we weren't actually fighting for survival, our competitive nature takes over. We had to compete for limited resources. When people are in need of something, it is your natural instinct to get it, but when others also need the same resources, we need to look out for ourselves. We seem to become much more inclined to do bad, when it will benefit ourselves. In these cases, it seems to be that we are driven by nature; what is implanted in our brains from birth as our instincts. However, these can be overruled by what is nurtured. If the activity in class had happened in real life, I would bet that we would have all worked together. The reason for this, is because we were taught to know that with more people, work is light.
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Faith Anderson
11/6/2016 12:52:33 pm
I agree with you. If it was actually a life or death situation, we would've acted differently. If we acted the way we did in class in the actual situation, we probably wouldn't make it. And we understand that. We know that working together is better than working against each other.
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Scarlett Liberto
11/6/2016 03:17:08 pm
I really like what you said about evil and how it's a strong word. i think many times we use the word evil not for what it actually means but what we think it means
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David Otto
11/6/2016 07:26:20 pm
It think youre right about how we would all work together if it was real survival. I think it's ultimately because we know that others will die if we do not work together, whereas in the fake scenerio their was no real consequences only a reward which was just bragging rights so we resorted to selfishness because nothing bad could happen to others, but something good could happen to us.
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David Otto
11/6/2016 07:19:49 pm
I think that nature is nurtured by the environment. Everyone is born with a unique genetic makeup that Can define their life and actions. However, its ultimately one's environment that decides wether of not to bring out that gene and nurture it and feed it and make it grow to one extreme or the other. People are not born good or evil, they are born compassionate and selfish and their genes determine which of those two attributes thrives in the host, but compassion and selfishness are not good and evil. The environment causes one of the genes to evolve into good or evil.
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Tyler Seidel
11/6/2016 08:01:09 pm
I agree with what you say and like how you worded your statement, but do you believe certain people have an incline to do more good or evil in life?
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Brent Moore I
11/7/2016 03:07:12 am
I agree but I also think it depends on society's view of what you're doing. That also dictates if you are good or evil.
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Brent Moore I
11/7/2016 03:05:17 am
I think people are naturally good because we always have the want to help other people. It also depends on the situation we are put in and what our needs are. Society typically decides how we decide if we should be good or evil. Society dictates if we should be nice to a certain group of people or mean to them. We always have a want to be good but the influences of society decides if we are naturally good or evil.
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