Vinh Dam

Campi
PACS 1
September 4
th
, 2014
Best Writing
The most basic of human instincts is survival. We do what we can in order to ensure that
our genes can pass onto the next generation. In the beginning of our race, survival was crudely
simple: food and shelter. We may kill for shelter or steal for food, but that does not make us bad,
we are simply trying to survive. However, as civilizations formed and humans became developed
to the point where survival merely occurred instead of being striven for. There was no need to
hunt or forage for food as farms mass produced everything we could possibly need. As a result,
we begin to become selfish and desire more luxury than we already have. We have created a
world where we are given the opportunity to be bad, despite our drive for survival making us
fairly neutral, which can be seen socially and politically through Maslows hierarchy of needs.
At the bottom of Maslows hierarchy is physiological needs. The majority of the civilized
world easily meets this need. The next is safety. Of course, no civilization and be made without
faults, so there is bound to be poverty. In areas with poverty, crime rates tend to be high, as
people commit petty blue-collar crimes in order to satisfy their need for safety of resources or
property. Blue-collar crimes are described as being committed from a lower social class. These
crimes are usually the theft of either money or property, which may be accompanied by either
assault or murder. On the other hand, there are white-collar crimes, which are committed by a
higher social class, usually businessmen or government officials. These are people that have met
their need for safety and are allowed even more luxury than those living in poverty. They have
had a taste of what money can offer and begin to desire more. This leads to crimes such an
embezzlement or insider trading to maximize their profits. If humans were still struggling to
merely survive physiologically, the circumstances would not allow us to commit crimes. We live
in a world where crime can be carried out by different social classes and for different reasons.
The next step in the hierarchy is a sense of belonging. People will seek to fulfill this need
by being in a social group, whether large or small, and the largest social group one can join is a
religion. Religion isnt necessarily bad on its own, but zealots and extremists will go to great
lengths to feel that they are doing right by their church. However, religion is powerful, enough
to often have an influence over politics. This has led to mass wars such as the Crusades and
prosecution of those that speak against the church. A religious conflict that is occurring in the
Middle East with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) declaring religious authority over
all Muslims in the world. They are a Sunni jihadist group and are seen as terrorists by the Untied
States and other. While most Muslims would rather not be affiliated with this group, ISIS itself
still believes that it is carrying out the will of its religion in order to feel that they belong. This is
only one extreme path to find belonging though. We can simply find ourselves within a group of
friends or family that love one another.
Humans are not bad by nature. We only seek to achieve our needs and sometimes stray
on the wrong path to do so. Most humans are neither good nor bad, they quietly carry out their
role in society and are content with it. The rest can be either good or bad, but they usually will
average themselves out and we again have a fairly neutral society. However, there could tend to
be a belief that humans are bad, due to the media constantly reporting atrocities that occur, but
overlook the pleasant details. In a world where there is little evidence of kindness, an act of ill
will appear worse than it actually is.