Are we good or bad?

Please watch the Ted Talk by Jonathan Zimbardo. 

At least three times and make notes. Skip the photo section if you need to. 

So what is he saying. We were made to believe, at least in Christian countries that we were born in sin. Essentially bad people. 

And although one might not be a Christian, do not underestimate how these types of perceived realities of the image of self, when engrained into society for ages, are present in almost anything, even if non-religious. It is in the way society deals with so called criminal behaviour. It is in the school system and what we teach our children about human morality. It is the level of trust we have in general when doing business with each other. 

My son was quite young when het stole paying cards in a toy store. Not once, he did so multiple times. We gave him money and the shop was around the corner. He would buy a pack and the return home. In addition to the pack that he bought, he put one or more packs in his pocket and took them home. I think he was about eight years old. The store caught him on camera and called the police. The doorbell rang and there was my son, being brought back home by two officers. 

It scared the sh.t out of him. The police were quite nice and we promised it would not happen again. We talked with our son and together went to the shop to ask how much money the required for us to compensate for the theft and say sorry. 

For me it was clear. This boy, with the instinct of wanting to have more, gather, hunt, he used his instincts and thought he could get away with…… 

Of course he had no notion that he might have a store later, when being an adult, and that it would not be nice if people would steal things from his shop. There was no sense of reciprocity. He followed his instinct and took a risk. He got caught and that scared him so much, he definitely learned his lesson. For which I am very thankful. 

This is what Zimbardo is also stating. 

There is no way to define a person, or put some in category good or bad. And then, when being labeled, that’s it. For life. That’s just who you are. 

Multiple experiments have shown this. We are all capable of doing ‘bad’ things, hurt other people, lie and cheat. We are all capable of doing that. And yes, we are also all capable of learning, growing, changing, redeeming and on the other side forgiving people. 

Can people fall, fall deep. Yes af course. Some people become sound to a materialistic lifestyle fro a long period of time. Some even their whole lives. This does not mean, that there are people that do not have the potential to grow above a purely material and egocentric way of living with a lack of empathy for the people around them. 

Society corrupts?

The problem is the society in most places on this earth has not been very helpful to the younger versions or ourselves. 

Osho states it like this: 

‘Every society, up to now, has been a corruptive influence on every child All cultures have depended on exploiting the innocence of the child, on exploiting the child, on making him a slave, on conditioning him for their own purposes, for their own ends – political, social, ideological. …

He becomes more hung up in the head, he forgets all about the heart – and the heart is the bridge that leads to being. 

Osho – Maturity – p1

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