Humans are born evil.

If Jean Jacques Rousseau’s thinking about the fact that Humans are born good is correct, why is there laws in the first place? Humans are born evil; laws keep this evil back, and without said laws and societie’s rules, humans would go savage. The following sources are great examples of humans being evil: The Lord of the Flies (William Golding), Stanford prison experiment, Milgram experiment, and The Purge (James DeMonaco). In the Stanford prison experiment, people were chosen with perfect mental health, and put in the place of prisoner and guard, the guards abused the prisoners, and they had to end the experiment early due to the fact they thought the prisoners would have lasting mental issues after getting constantly abused by guards without any prior aggression. In the Milgram experiment; volunteers were asked to ask a person they could not see questions, and if they were wrong they would shock them and keep turning up the volts, and most people did as the man in the white coat told them and almost killed the person on the other side, but they were not hurting anyone.

Without laws and societies rules/expectations, humans would become savage. The Lord of the Flies (Golding) is a great book that really shows the perception of society in Golding’s thinking. It shows that the true nature of humans is evil restricted by society. Also, when R.R. Martin was questioned about the rape and violence in Game of Thrones, he replied “The true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and dark lords, but from ourselves.” In the book, Roger throws rocks to miss, because society’s laws are still with him in the back of his mind, but later in the novel, he goes savage and loses all feel of restriction set upon him by society; therefore, he becomes just as savage as Jack. The reason he was not like Ralph, Piggy and Simon, is because like all the others, he was born evil. The reason the three boys that are presumably not evil, is because the laws they picked up throughout their lives stuck with them stronger. But if they stayed on the island longer, they would have become like the others. There were laws set, by Ralph, but just like the Stanford prison experiment, they were not strict enough and not enforced at all, “The rules!’ ‘shouted Ralph,’ ‘you’re breaking the rules!’ ‘Who cares?’” (Golding pg.114), which is why that inner evil broke through and led to toxic human interaction. In the experiment, the guards were told not to hurt the prisoners, but they slowly started testing their limits, and eventually started hurting the prisoners. Since the rule that they could not hurt the prisoners was not enforced by anyone since they had the power in the experiment, they let their evil out and abused them for fun.

This brings up the question; if humans were born good, why would we need laws in the first place? In the movie; The Purge, it shows how just half a day without laws results in pure chaos in the whole country. People go on murder streaks trying to kill and destroy anything they want to. They destroy things people worked hard to get, end peoples lives, for fun. In the Milgram’s experiment, people shocked people they did not know and voluntarily thought they were hurting people, some stopped before the lethal voltage, but some went going, that shows how our inner evil is easily persuaded by a man in a white coat telling you what to do. One who believes in Rousseau’s thinking might mention the fact that when they used people that the volunteers knew to shock, the volunteers were found to not go high voltage and not cause them pain. But the fact that we are born with something in our brain telling us to be nice to certain people but not everyone is shown in with the large difference when they used random people compared to people they knew, and it is believed that the reason we are nicer to certain people, is because we get something from them, since we a greedy and evil beings. It could be that they buy us things, they help us survive, they give us happiness, they respect you, many other things that help the human gain pleasure out of life, so they do not want to hurt them, so they can keep receiving said things.

Golding is a respected source for this topic, he taught boys school, he lived through the wars, he knows the pain and suffering people go through very well due to the fact we are an evil race. The Purge, the Milgram’s experiment, and the Stanford Prison experiment all prove his thinking and prove the fact that humans need strict laws to be good, and when enabled to be; are horrible creatures.

Bibliography:

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. Faber and Faber, 1954.

Demonaco, James, et al. The Purge, Election Year. Universal Pictures, 2016.

Stanford Prison Experiment.

Milgram’s Experiment.

“Game of Thrones.” Warner Home Video Germany.

 

I am proud of my explination and facts on this essay. I would like to improve my corralation between sources and points to prove. I would also like to improve my sentence structure and use higher level english.