Evil is defined as deliberately causing great harm, or desiring to hurt or harm. Man is not actually evil, but appears to be evil because people mistake being evil with being lazy and not trying to become good. Ben Goodman says it best, "People are too lazy to strive to be "good", and they make themselves feel better with the excuse "Man is inherently evil." Ben Goodman also says that, "Man is inherently good but corrupted by society." Every man is good by nature, but is corrupted by society and may turn evil. Therefore man is good to begin with. Evil can be learned by man if he is corrupted from the start, but then he may learn to be good in the long run. An example of this is a boy who is corrupted as a youth and becomes evil when he grows up. In the long run this boy turns out to be good or bad, depending on his thoughts. Another example of this is Jack from the novel Lord of The Flies by William Golding. Jack is a tall, thin, and bony boy of twelve years with red hair. At the very beginning of the novel, Jack cooperates with the other boys and does not have any hatred towards them. As the book progresses, Jack begins to have evil thoughts of killing and being ruler. Therefore Jack was not inherently evil, but learned evil while he was stranded on the island and became corrupted by the lack of supervision. Ultimately it cannot be determined whether man is inherently evil, because one cannot be sure whether man has the evil within him, or he learns it over time. An example of this can be show in such a person as Adolph Hitler. If Hitler was kept in one building all his life from birth, never being exposed to society, would he still be the evil person he became? This question cannot be answered because such an act was never done, and it would be impossible to know whether Hitler was going to be evil right from birth. There is not much factual evidence supporting the belief that Man is Inherently Evil for no one can tell if a person is evil inside.
