TITLE:
Why Is Human Nature Good?
AUTHORS:
Hong Sheng
KEYWORDS:
Human Nature, Morality, Anthropology, Evolution
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Anthropology,
Vol.13 No.2,
April
10,
2023
ABSTRACT: Mencius’s judgment that “human nature is good” is
not only a metaphysical statement but also an anthropological one. The purpose
of this article is to support such a judgment by applying anthropology. In the
first part, I with some research results of anthropologists show that humans
have “good sprouts” that are different from apes. In the second part, I discuss
that the good sprouts came from the random adventure for cooperative behavior
of common ancestors of humans and apes, and an accidental “just” distribution
of the tribal leader. This led to tribal and individual gains, such as
large-scale hunting, grandma effect. In the third part, I discuss first-order
morality and second-order morality. In the fourth part, I argue that the gains
of cooperative behavior in turn strengthened cooperative behavior, making it a
custom within the tribe that leads them to outcompete other tribes. In the
fifth part, I consider more complicated situations. In the sixth part, I
discuss that a series of small changes in good behavior gradually accumulate to
form a more obvious goodness. After a long period of evolution, the changes in
behavior cause changes in body structure and are finally internalized into
genes, which distinguished the species from the common ancestor of humans and
apes, making them humans. Therefore, human nature is good. In the seventh part,
I discuss the moral competition and elimination. Finally, in the eighth part, I
argue that because goodness not only brings about the development of wealth but
also depends on cooperation between people, it brings room for greed and easily
crossed gaps to evil, so evil and goodness are always inseparable. Ultimately,
evil is secondary, and goodness always prevails in human nature.