Are You Evil — Or Just Well-Behaved?
Thoughts on the age-old question: are we inherently good or evil?
I’ve been chewing on this question for years. It wasn’t until a late-night conversation with a friend last week that I found an answer that truly settled something in me.
But the answer surprised me.
Are we good — or just well-trained to act like it?
To explore the question, I started thinking about context.
How much of our goodness is about who we are — and how much about where (or when) we are?
What Vikings Can Teach Us About Moral Luck
Given the right (or wrong) environment, anyone could be shaped into someone capable of doing what we now consider unthinkable.
If I were a broad-shouldered blonde brute born in Viking times, I’d probably be pillaging coastal villages instead of writing reflections in an Amsterdam café, surrounded by oat milk orders and pocket-sized dogs.
Sure, maybe you’d be the rare person who stood up against senseless violence.
But let’s be honest — it’s a bit self-righteous to think you’d be the lone saint in a bloodier time.
That’s when I realized the question wasn’t just about behavior — it was about identity.
Wearing Confidence Like a Costume
When someone flashes their status through watches, cars, curated beauty, or bragging rights — do we see confidence?
I used to.
Now, I see signals of something else.
Insecurity.
The quick temper. The snap judgment.
The Karen demanding to see the manager.
The Martijn puffing his chest and asking, “Do you know who I am?”
These are signs of someone who hasn’t done the inner work.
They haven’t peeled back the layers life has caked on — ego, fear, performance, pain.
And that got me wondering:
How do you actually start peeling off those layers of ego and performance?
That’s when we landed on meditation.
Can Stillness Make Us Kinder?
At some point, we veered into the topic of meditation.
“If everyone were required to meditate an hour a day, would the world be a better or worse place?”
What if meditation was as routine as brushing your teeth — or mandated by some benevolent, all-seeing government?
An hour a day. No exceptions.
We both answered instantly: of course, the world would be better.
That answer came so quickly — it stuck with me.
Why is that?
Is it because we’d understand ourselves better?
But why does understanding yourself — getting to the core of “you” — make you a better person?
Why would meditation change anything?
To answer that, we have to look at what makes us who we are.
Nature, Nurture, and the You That’s Left Behind
We’re shaped by two forces: nature and nurture.
Nature is everything you were born with — your genetic code, your biological wiring.
It includes things like your natural temperament, your baseline energy levels, your instinctual reactions, and even your weird love for pistachios or your tendency to get anxious in crowds.
Nurture is everything the world layered on top of that.
It’s your upbringing, your environment, the culture you grew up in, the beliefs and habits you absorbed from your parents, teachers, friends, and even social media.
It’s how you learned to behave, what to fear, what to chase, and what to suppress.
Meditation, in a way, gives you a backstage pass to both.
You begin to notice which reactions are hardwired, and which ones you’ve rehearsed so many times they feel automatic.
You see the script — and the character you’ve been playing.
If the mind is a mirror,
meditation helps us wipe away the fingerprints.
The deeper you go, the more you reconnect with what’s underneath all that.
A quiet, unfiltered version of yourself.
A mind unburdened by emotional residue and performative patterns.
Discovering the “true self”
It brings us home to our true self.
To me, the true self is the part of you untouched by circumstance —
not clinging to the past,
not fearing the future.
Just… here.
Conclusion
So maybe we’re not inherently evil.
Maybe we’re just buried — beneath noise, defense, and performance.
But when the layers fall away, what’s underneath isn’t hollow.
It’s presence.
It’s peace.
It’s something that feels a lot like the opposite of evil.
That’s why I fell in love with a word I recently stumbled across:
Quiddity — “the inherent nature or essence of someone or something.”
The you-ness of you.
Be more of a quiddity.
Not a mask.