Intrinsically Evil?

After spending some time reflecting on the weekend with my nephews I realized that I had some interesting thoughts and insights, and maybe a conclusion or two.

What is up with kids!? Or really, Human nature? As I was watching these two boys run around the house (and on me occasionally) I noticed some behavioral patterns. Some of these were easy to define and identify their source, but others were more elusive. The times when they would go to bed or take a nap you could easily see where they had gained their attitudes; their parents. You could just see all the work that Beth and Jeff had put into them really paying off. The same was true of the "please" and "thank you’s" that where said. But it was some of the other things that they did that got me thinking.

TV has a huge impact on people, anyone who disagrees we can argue that later, and I could see it in the way that my nephews would behave at certain times. They watch a lot of Disney cartoons (mostly older shorts like Donald Duck, or Mickey Mouse) and in 99% of these cartoons there is a gun, sword or cannon. In all of them there is a winner and a looser (no compromise or win-win scenarios). And the win-lose situation is almost always derived from one person not liking someone else which leads to words like "you're despicable, I hate you" -Daisy Duck. Now I know that I never thought about these cartoons in a bad way before, and never really considered them to influential, but when I heard my 3 year old nephew saying those same words I have to think about it.

My point for this whole post, if its not completely lost at this point, is that there was a 3^rd area that I saw this last weekend. The times when their behavior was not derived from what their parents have taught them or from what the TV has shown them. This was most evident when one of them wanted something that the other had. What do you think most kids do when they want something? They grab for it! Well at least until they are taught not to. But their very first instinct without being taught is to grab, "MINE!". The only conclusion that I can come to is that there must be something behind this behavior otherwise not all kids would do it. And as I said in my last post, my nephews are two of the most well behaved kids I've seen, but even they do this occasionally. When the younger of the two does it, you can tell that most of the time its because he wants to be like his older brother, but that’s not always the case. And when the older pulls the same stunt it almost purely out of jealousy. This makes me think and believe more then ever that Humans are sinful by nature (I've been having this discussion with a few people as of late). I personally can't see any other way around it. Maybe I'm wrong, you tell me.