Are People Naturally Congenial Or Evil

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Are people naturally congenial or evil? Do people learn to behave properly or are people born with their behavior? These age old questions caused Humanists, common during the Age of Reason of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, to argue the humans are altruistic; in contrast, Puritans, who established the settlement of Plymouth, consider humans as egotistical and only charitable due to fearing God’s wrath (Kizer; Paine). Humans today primarily share prosperity because people evolved to become psychological altruists; however, some altruistic behavior is hidden egoism to avoid the judgement of fellow mankind. Psychologists study past human behavior to explain the present human condition as either egoism, “one ultimate aim: [one’s] own welfare,” or altruism, “benefits other organisms, at a …show more content…
Through the evolution of humans, people who genuinely cared about others were more apt to pass on their genes. For instance, parents who care for a child’s welfare create a higher lifetime fitness for survival. These more fit children become better parents to their children and a cycle of altruistic behavior and psychological genes makes human behavior today more altruistic. Since people generally live close to relatives, a psychological altruistic gene causes “an organism to behave in a way which reduces its own fitness but boosts the fitness of its relatives—who have a greater than average chance of carrying the gene themselves” (Okasha). Because the relatives also hold the gene, their benefit from the altruistic people increases the number of altruistic gene holding offspring. This increase of genetically altruistic people creates the incidence of altruistic behavior. Humanistic, or altruistic, philosophy lead Thomas Jefferson and the founding
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