Conscience: Nature or nurture? (The issues of 'good' and 'bad'.)

[lamedvavnik]

Is conscience an inherent animal instinct or a cultivated quality, unique to sentient beings?

Conscience is a tag given to the basic nature of Human being. Those which ever was cultivated to humans are just called Education, which alters the basic nature of Human beings.

Like breathing, Love is the basic nature of Human. It is very normal to love everything on this earth. Only the cultivated knowledge disrupts the love and creates so many problems. If there is pure love and nothing else in the human - this world is heaven. Can you cultivate love in human? Impossible. All that is cultivated in a human, is those which will assist that person in his / her survival. That is the duty of education. During stone age - Education was, How to kill an animal. Later, It was how to make a pot. Now its how to operate computers. Anything given from external sources are just an assistance to survive in that period. But, Love is when you dissolve yourself in existence. That's conscience. Its always there. That's why we are Humans.

An exemplary definition for 'good', for example, is:
'that which benefits the most number of persons for the longest period of time'.

A definition for 'bad', is:
'that which causes undue harm to a person or people.'

A hypothetical situation, Say a person kills about hundred people in a village and robs a huge wealth and runs away to his far off country. But the people in his own village living in that country are very poor, and are starving and were about to Die. Now he spends all the money in the welfare of those people. Now after 300 years, many thousands of people would have lived in that village. 3 - 4 generations have gone by. But in the place where the killings were done and robbery happened - it has become a deserted land. Now would you call it Bad - coz about hundreds were killed 300 years ago. Or Is it Good coz few thousands were able to survive(i.e. benefits most no. of persons for longest period of time)?

Now, this concept of Good and Bad, is cultivated. When you act with your conscience, you can never hurt even any small life in this existence. Even you will not pluck a leaf. Because you don't find a difference between you and a leaf.