Human Are Born Evil?

Hereafter is the question by my friend and my opinion.

“Human are born evil?"

It depends how do you define “good” and “evil.”
Selfishness is not necessarily good or evil.

What I mean is that we have no objective and valuable ways to define “good” or “evil.” Some definitions may be accepted by some groups of people, but it does not mean they are correct. If we carefully exam each definition, we will easily notice that all of them, no matter from philosophy, ethics, or religions, are nothing but only preferences among the people, especially in different peoples.

On the other hand, the concept of ethics is only a costless way for us to make some convenient decisions, especially when a person want to live in a specific society. However, it doesn’t guarantee the rules we apply.

Take selfishness as an example. People who provide high-quality goods or services to us are not based on their love for us but their love for money. We all know it. Selfishness performs in a good way, if we define that everyone get benefits from a trade is good. Selfishness can also be evil. If we define that someone kills thousands or million people for keeping his presidency or power is evil, then Mao and Kim Jong-il are apparently evil.

However, some standards are not that prevailed. In most societies, a son cannot marry his mother-in-law; but the same behavior is allowed in some societies, like the Mongolian in the Yuan Dynasty. Some economists believe that it is due to the limited resources in Mongolia. It is apparently difficult to tell whether this behavior is good or evil. Chinese in that time took this as a barbarian behavior.

Conclusively, as we are unable to have an exactly correct standard to make a judgement of being good or evil, we just cannot tell whether the infant is born in good or not.

PS: I wrote here.