Humans are a pretty good story of success through cooperation and intelligence rather than through brute force and physical power. However, I don't believe much of any being is "inherently good". Especially at this point, we are having to choose between feeding everyone or not deforesting the planet for farmland. There's no good choice there. We're in uncharted territory as far as any species on Earth is concerned.

**I want us to be inherently good. Inheriting evil would be devastating, and inheriting a "blank slate" seems far too normal and simple to be anything human.** - Although humanity has it’s flaws, and plenty of them, we are also good. Nobody is born evil. Or at least, I hope nobody is born evil. - Supposedly around [83%](https://www.inc.com/wanda-thibodeaux/5-statistics-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity-and-office.html) of the world’s population consider themselves good. It is more likely that this 'goodness' has been born into us, then drilled into us while growing up. You can have evil parents and still be good. - I think I mainly argue this point because I want us to be inherently good, the idea of us being inherently bad is very unnerving.

**If we understand 'inherent goodness' not to necessarily be a present-upon-birth thing, but rather ["the way we tend to act based on our intuitive and automatic impulses"] (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/), then humans are generally more likely to act in a way that is socially 'good'/cooperative than its opposite.** - When we say 'inherently', this usually refers to our 'pre-socialisation' nature. Augustine's idea of original sin was that all people were born ["broken and selfish, saved only through the power of divine intervention."] (https://gacayaneduc.wordpress.com/2020/02/03/student-think-piece-14-16-different-takes-on-why-human-nature-is-innately-bad/) Hobbes argued that ["humans were savagely self-centred, and could be salvaged through the social contract of civil law"] (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/). - However - through the social world is the only way we can really see 'goodness' or 'badness' in people. And the way goodness-badness exists in our social world can be likened to the scale of cooperation-selfishness. [These studies] (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11467.epdf?sharing_token=1bY8KUM_Z9jUOPkddiC4GtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OuWnzgZWIYIT6G8DCrDRW76b7kYf3RDJyFw_M1lGJ_CWxJEPz0SXdPQuFmlyicmGZzPGQebvZaSo5zWnlA-cvDmzphOhsTQJLZ0DlpE8Q_cVbIzwV53pWP1Ns6Q17prBLqJ4nzq3_of087DifQ8H4CDkmXlTMK0gJKVT7XOWrq8Scc3W5FcY_tPhMaWAFFdgaojefcZqEEXrpSq3A-H0BeX1VBLiDwvZCM6gfvZ4_lyeZnwfzuHBCoJ396WFlUyY8f0On3Ifcx3Nm_G3GHgN9d&tracking_referrer=www.scientificamerican.com) look at measuring human instincts in terms of 2 mechanisms - intuition and reflection. It is theorised that we can reduce the complexities of basic human nature to a single question: which behaviour - selfishness or cooperation - is intuitive, and which is the product of reflection? - [These studies] (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/) suggest that selfishness is not the immediate intuitive instinct of humans. But it's hard to tell if this is an 'inherent' thing that we are born with, or whether it [becomes our first instinct upon its being rewarded over time] (https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/moral-intuitions/202104/are-humans-intuitively-cooperative-or-intuitively-selfish). It's [suggested] (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/) that people who regularly engage in positive social interactions are more likely to be cooperative rather than selfish because it will provide rewards. So - you could say that [how people's social worlds form] (https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/frank-flynn-are-we-intuitively-cooperative-or-selfish) determine, to an extent, where they will fall on the scale of cooperation-selfishness, or of goodness-badness. - Overall - the way we define what 'human nature' is matters. We do not have to be born a ['blank slate'] (https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/empirical-science-for-the-spotless-mind#:~:text=The%20blank%20slate%2C%20the%20dominant,said%20Steven%20Pinker%2C%20Harvard%20University%2C) for us to be neutral, upon birth, to ideas of goodness and badness. They might be thought of as social constructs, based on varying degrees of cooperation-selfishness. On the grounds of 'human nature' as our intuitive and observable tendencies - ["it seems that we are an overwhelmingly cooperative species, willing to give for the good of the group"] (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/), even when it comes at our own expense.