The Art Of Misanthropy ( Part One )

" If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." ~Herman Hesse.

" For that the true art of hate is to know who you're hating just like how you know yourself." ~Anonymous.

Okay, It starts like this ;Regarding the human nature, on some sort of aspect, I got to see three opinions / theories which are :-

• - Human nature is inherently good and humans are basically good.
• - Human nature is inherently bad and humans are basically evil and need to be controlled and disciplined to keep them from killing each others.
• - Human nature is not good OR bad, its good AND bad, both working at the same time to create some sort of balance, and to ask if its good OR evil, is like asking if electronics are powered by the positive or negative side of the battery.

Personally, I'd go with the 2nd theory, Though I'm pretty sure who go with the other two got their own reasons to do so, on the other hand, i got mine as well.

Logically speaking, from the religious point of view, if humans were born all good by nature, God wouldn't have imposed laws that repress human nature and sent us prophets and books for us to follow and change from ourselves, being good in nature means if we're left unchanged, we'd still turn up good by time, which is not the case, most religious concepts are based on " Man is destined to hell, unless he does something to alter that course " meaning that without following the religion he's to go to hell,in other form, if we said X is a man in a plain form, and Y is religion, X + Y = Heaven, and with no religion , X = Hell, So X, A Man in the plain form " Nature form " is to go to hell if left unchanged, so if we were all good by nature, meaning that we'd still turn good if we didn't change " follow " , such concept wouldn't have been there, and there would have been no need for us to be sent prophets and books to ask us to change, and angels wouldn't have asked God why would he send those who kill and shed the blood, and also the definite mistrust from the religious views toward the human nature if left unchecked / changed is definitely for a logical reason.

Psychologically Speaking " Which you can skip if you're not that fond of scientific stuff " , from the psychoanalytical approach, the two main principles to affect one's acts, are the Pleasure principle and the Reality principle, the pleasure one is the tendency of the person to seek pleasure " with its causes " and avoid pain, it only seeks fulfilling of the person's own needs, and seeks their immediate gratification. on the other hand, the reality principle is about enduring pain and postponing pleasure due to the obstacles found in life.

It also states that the personality is composed of three interacting systems which are the Id, Ego and Super Ego, revising the basic definitions in brief ;

• - Id is the inner desire, the part of our personality responsible for our basic drives and instincts " sex, food, ect . ", It is amoral, egocentric and selfish, ruled by the pleasure principle, it is without a sense of time, completely illogical, primarily sexual, and takes " no " for an answer
• .- Super Ego, which stands in the opposite direction of the Id, acts as the conscience, maintaining our sense of morality.
• - Ego, its task is to find a balance between primitive drives, morals, and reality while satisfying the id and superego.

According to the psychoanalytical approach, The mind of a newborn child is regarded to be completely controlled by the Id, meaning it would be following the pleasure principle and having the characteristics of the Id, after that, through discipline " parents, society and religion for example ", the super ego part starts to rise versus the Id, and the Ego starts to maintain a responsible person with moralities and respect " the reality principle ", which means, if no discipline occurred " means to be left as his nature ", one would grow up to be Id-ridden, meaning ; amoral, egocentric and selfish.

Biologically speaking, " Which you can also skip " , one's brain is composed of the brain stem, the mid brain, and the two brain hemispheres which are divided into lobes, in the development of the neutral system, the first to develop in the brain is the brain stem and the mid brain, which are responsible for the same things as the Id " survivability, sex, food, basic instincts, etc .. " , then follow them the brain hemispheres which are " mainly the frontal lobe " responsible for thinking, logic and reason and controlling one's behavior when one grows mature and disciplined.

" …a man may make an error in many ways (for evil, belongs to the infinite, while goodness belongs to the finite), but he may succeed in one way only; and in view of this, one of them is easy but the other hard. It is easy to miss the mark but hard to hit it. So it is because of these, too, that excess and deficiency belong to vice, but moderation to virtue. For men are good in one way, bad in many. " ~The Nicomachean Ethics

To summarize what i wanna say ; I'd consider the human nature as a fertile land, if left alone " uncultivated ", it would tend to grow thorns, but when taken good care of, you cut the thorn to unveil the fertile land and it'd be a perfect place to plant the good seeds, meaning the human nature tends to be bad, 'cause a part of being natural is keeping something alone and unchanged, yet its still perfect to grow good one when changed. Aristotle summarize that in : "virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; but by our nature we can receive them and perfect them by habituation ". And for that reason, God replied the angels with that he knows what they don't, and yet he said " فالهما فجورها و تقواها ", and mentioned the bad part first and followed it with the good, which pretty much applies to the psychological and biological parts that i've mentioned " The Id existed before the super ego, and the mid brain's maturity before the frontal lobe's ".