The Dawn Of Everything: A New History Of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow Are human beings good or evil?

The Dawn Of Everything: A New History Of Humanity is being shortened for the tag of TDOE

Topic one

Are human beings good or bad?

Essentially the question is: are humans innately good or innately evil? But if you think about it, the question, framed in these terms, makes very little sense. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are purely human concepts. It would never occur to anyone to argue about whether a fish, or a tree, were good or evil, because ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are concepts humans made up in order to compare ourselves with one another. It follows that arguing about whether humans are fundamentally good or evil makes about as much sense as arguing about whether humans are fundamentally fat or thin.

Graeber, David. The Dawn of Everything (pp. 1-2). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition. 

Christianity teaches that human beings are basically bad having been born with original sin. It is only through the death of Jesus that human beings have been redeemed and protected from a judgmental God who consigns people to heaven or hell depending on their beliefs and sins.

Further, it is through the exonerating powers of the Church activated through its sacraments such as baptism, holy communion, and confirmation that human beings are “saved”. Some Protestants even teach that all one must do is “accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior” and you will be “born again” and saved from the fiery pit of hell.

Other religions have similar myths of human unworthiness and human well being is only achieved by some sort of sacrifice to the gods or adherence to ethnocentric religious creeds and practices..

These are primitive beliefs held by people at lower stages of spiritual development which are sometimes called the “egocentric,” “ethnocentric,” and even “world centric” worldviews. At maturer stages of spiritual development the question of human good and evil get answered on metaphysical and integral levels of consciousness and understanding and the question of “good and evil” as Graeber and Wengrow describe it is seen as silly.

It is the belief of people at higher levels of spiritual maturity that all humans have inherent worth and dignity. It is their beliefs, thinking, values, and behavior which can be described as “good or evil” but not the person themself.

What do you think of yourself? Are you good or evil? What about other people? Who do you judge as the “good guys” and the “bad guys”? What are the factors which you take into account when you make these judgments?