[therookieca]

A common question between people that I like to bring up is right and wrong. Do people have a brain that is born with right or wrong or do they have to learn this and does that then mean that their home life and where they grow up (how they are raised)?

What do you think or add your own opinion of how this happens!

[jason700]

I think we are simply born with intent to survive. There are some things that are inate like walking, eating, etc.

[therookieca]

So your saying nothing is right or wrong and we just want to live?

[Brenda]

As a baby, being fed is the most important, and how you get it is to scream... If you keep that up later in life, you will be seen as not a nice person. So imo we are taught right from wrong by society as we grow up.
Right or wrong varies per society, even per person.

I have to agree with Jason!

[Gunnair]

Brenda wrote:

As a baby, being fed is the most important, and how you get it is to scream... If you keep that up later in life, you will be seen as not a nice person. So imo we are taught right from wrong by society as we grow up.
Right or wrong varies per society, even per person.

I have to agree with Jason!

Concur, though that being said, I don't think one can rule out hard wiring in the brain that steers social and emotional development towards one way or another.

[Brenda]

Gunnair wrote:

Brenda wrote:

As a baby, being fed is the most important, and how you get it is to scream... If you keep that up later in life, you will be seen as not a nice person. So imo we are taught right from wrong by society as we grow up.
Right or wrong varies per society, even per person.

I have to agree with Jason!

Concur, though that being said, I don't think one can rule out hard wiring in the brain that steers social and emotional development towards one way or another.

I wonder what happens though if one grows up away from any society, with just himself to count on and live with. Will he know our right from wrong, or will he have complete other values?

[westmanguy]

I disagree. I think every human being is born with 'basic' morals, universal morals to which each human being regardless of religion, creed, race, etc. has.

As in I think a universal moral would be murder (without just cause) is wrong.

[jason700]

But our social intincts are natural as well. So we kinda naturally look for the approval of others in our behavior.

[mixedfarmer]

we are born with a slight conception of right or wrong. it grows after that with nurturing from our parents

[mixedfarmer]

but not all people can be nurtured by our parents. some parents do not have proper knowledge of right or wrong. So the child ends up in prison or goes on to politics.

[jason700]

therookieca wrote:

So your saying nothing is right or wrong and we just want to live?

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "right and wrong" is something we gain through experience together with our inate need to be accepted.

[Pseudonym]

westmanguy wrote:

I disagree. I think every human being is born with 'basic' morals, universal morals to which each human being regardless of religion, creed, race, etc. has.

As in I think a universal moral would be murder (without just cause) is wrong.

Moral Intuition!

[BartSimpson]

westmanguy wrote:

I disagree. I think every human being is born with 'basic' morals, universal morals to which each human being regardless of religion, creed, race, etc. has.

As in I think a universal moral would be murder (without just cause) is wrong.

You do not frequent schoolyards, I take it. If left to their own devices too many children would not hesitate to commit any number of heinous acts upon other children. What we right now call bullying would easily become murder were adults not around to hold some of these little sh*ts accountable for their actions and to correct the err of their ways.

On the other side of it, those who are bullied would also be more likely to kill their tormentors. As a kid who went through hell as a child I assure you that the only reason I didn't kill some of the b'tards who gave me hell was only because the thought hadn't occured to me. Had someone told me that punching someone in the windpipe would cause their larynx to break and then cause their throat to swell so they couldn't breathe, oh man, I'd have been cleaning house.

The reason this kind of thing never occured to me was because I didn't want to get in trouble (as if detention and suspension would be the end of the world).

I say this to make the point that some kids are evil and it's the job of adults to teach them to be nice people. Granted, no one ever really finished the job with me...

[Dayseed]

Innate sense of morality? I'm a keen believer in Thomas Hobbes. "The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." You're damn right Hobbes! Without laws, imposed morality on an amoral society, man would tear each other limb from limb.

That said, there are absolutes to morality. Sometimes, it doesn't matter about one's own sense of good or evil, some things are universally right and universally wrong. If morality is allowed to be relative, eventually, even the Holocaust becomes rationalized and negotiable. And that is universally wrong.

[Freakinoldguy]

Despite all the social engineering in the world you can't change who you are. Most of us were born with a moral compass that for what ever reason inhibits our capacity for evil.

Sociopaths were born with no moral compass and despite the assurances of the Canadian Parole Board, we all know that some of the most depraved people these idiots let out, are at some point going to commit crimes again. In this case you can't fix what's broken.

Granted environment plays a very large part of our moral compass but it doesn't weed out the bad seed, who was born that way. Now lobotomies on the other hand.