It’s a matter of kind, not degree: There are intrinsically good people and there are intrinsically evil people. An individual is either one or the other, the bad seed viewpoint in familiar terms.  

  

“The traditional view (among those that come from cultures that emphasize individualism) is to look within for answers – pathology or heroism… Most of our institutions are founded on such a perspective, including law, medicine and religion.  Culpability, illness, and sin, they assume, are to be found within the guilty party, the sick person, and the sinner.”  [ The Lucifer Effect – Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo ]  

   

  

It’s a matter of degree, not kind: Each of us is capable of good behavior and of evil behavior in different circumstances.  The individual is the product of their environment, the poverty stricken or deprived viewpoint of development.  

  

“… consider how people’s character may be transformed by their being immersed in situations that unleash powerful situational forces.  People and situations are usually in a state of dynamic interaction.  Although you probably think of yourself as having a consistent personality across time and space, that is likely not to be true.” [The Lucifer Effect – Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo ]  

  

  

Ahh yes: the old Nature versus Nurture conundrum.     

  

The puzzle of good and evil within me, you and all of our fellow human beings has haunted me for pretty much a lifetime.  Oh, I didn’t understand that, or couch it in those terms for most of that time, but I was aware of it.  

  

I have some long held, although not set in concrete, ideas about us that dovetail with the book, referenced above, that I am currently studying.  Among those ideas is that:

    

  • our personality is not fixed, but is reshaped and resurface constantly as we rub up against other individuals and groups in different situations;    

 

  • neither the advocates of nature nor nurture have all answers, but the “algebraic sum” of those perspectives holds most if not all of the answers that haunt me;   

    

  • an individual will fall predominantly, but almost never exclusively, in one of three categories: the organizer/leader; the joiner/follower; the autonomous voluntary outsider.     

 

I would like to expand on this overall topic over time, exploring these ideas and territories of human character to begin with, and see where that takes us.