Good VS Evil

During the first half of this year I have at times, encountered myself in a battle with my good and my bad side. I have never done anything bad out of selfishness, til I put myself in situations where my morals were put to the test. And failed. The worse part is that I knew exactly what I was doing, although I felt an enormous guilt and bad karma building up.


The interesing thing is that I realized how complex human behaviour is. And although we are of the same species, some traits do differ. Some people live by their morals and never act out of selfishness, when others act in a complete opposite way. I stood in between. I realized that even good people can act out on shady behaviour. I am not in any way implying that that is an excuse! It is obviously wrong to hurt other people's feelings in order to get our own satisfaction.

On the other hand, I have a hard time believing people are either good or bad. Human nature depicts the complete opposite. Our primarily drive is to be selfish.
I myself know that I am a social animal with different levels of weaknesses and strengths.

Is acting upon our own selfishness in certain situations a lack of character, or is it possible that the very behaviour can be explained by psychology or even biology? How much does environment and genetics play a part in our behaviour?
Somehow, "lack of character" doesn't satisfy me as an answer..

I think that what differs us from eachother is that some of us are more prone than others to control ourselves in doing things we know are wrong. But why is that? I honestly don't understand where all of that impulse of mine came from. I know I am usually very rational, but honestly, some people simply bring that side of us out.
Although we do have morals, we are still animals. Intelligent, but nonetheless animals. We tend to forget that sometimes.

On another note, Freud argued that Man is not responsible for his actions. He is a victim of other people in society. He battles the past and hurtful experiences in childhood.

Skinner believed that Man is just an animal. He is conditioned to act the way he does. He is a product of his environment and not responsible for his behavior.

And lastly, Carl Rogers believed that Man is not a sinner, he is essentially good, he has all the resources he needs within himself to solve his own problems.

It beats me...!

Ps I think I have been missunderstood by my post. The theories above have merely been mentioned to describe the different approaches there are to defining the good and the bad within people. I personally do not defend any of these theories. Moreover, harmful behaviour is yet to get away with murder.

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