Every human being born neutral. Neither good or bad, with no thoughts nor morals. Throughout the growing and developing process, they start to gain knowledge, observe others around them and come up with their own thoughts and perspectives to things. Therefore they become good or bad. Although, being “good” or being “bad” is subjective it starts and ends in the person’s mind. Which is the only mind that matters for a person’s morals.
The environment a person is in can shape their personality. People tend to do what they see from other people. Like how almost every child take a little from their parents. Then, when they go to school, they take after teachers, friends. Start seeing different people on internet; therefore witness more opinions, perspectives. We all change and evolve through these all. Decide which thought we agree with more, which angle we see things through.
Even though our environment changes us, at the end of the day it’s all us. We decide what we think and our actions coming with our thoughts. Humans, the only kind of living that has the ability to think and decide, do things with their consent after all. We see things, decide whether we agree with it or not. So yes, people choose to be good or bad. Because they choose to think or follow other people’s lead.
However, while people can think for themselves, we are also emotional creatures. We sometimes let the emotions get the best of us. Not that it is something that is logical to do but human is human. We can’t always control it and that’s okay. For example, kids who have abusive parents might turn out like their parents, that’s what society accepts to be normal. As much as that is the outcome we’d expect, sometimes, children with abusive parents turno ut like the opposite of their parents just in spite of hating them. Cause of this is emotions we don’t get to control, but to get along with.
To come into a conclusion, I do think that people get to choose whether to be good or bad. Nevertheless, people’s brains think different from birth thanks to emotions. While it’s luck, we can still choose to move along with it or not. At the end of the day, it’s dependent on us. We get to choose and act through conclusions. We make mistakes but mistakes don’t always make us bad people. Like how correct actions doesn’t automatically make us good. We grow and learn, be good and bad. We do it ourselves.