The term "tabula rasa" is associated with John Locke, who lived in the seventeenth century. In this way, he described the mind of a newborn human, a little tiny baby, who is leaving the cosy place, and enter to the world full of wolves. The baby's mind starts to learn how to survive in the new environment.
However, I have a different idea than this "tabula rasa" thing. In my opinion, nobody is born as a saint, because we are born as self-centred creatures (saints are not selfish), and with the years as we are getting life experience, we learn how to be more sociable, we adapt to live in the herd.
We stay selfish until end of life. The difference between the little ones and adults is that the adults know which behaviour is socially acceptable, which one is not. And yes, if we look from this point of view every one of us was born "tabula rasa".
I can imagine the person who is screaming: "but there is a lot of people who are good, helpful, kind. They are not selfish!" Yes, its a lot of them around, I agree. But, are they always doing good for others? Maybe they are doing good for themselves?
Probably you think about yourself as a non-selfish person. But... Do you remember the last time you did something really nice for someone? How did you feel after that? Did you heard the voice in your head repeating "you are a very good person"? Did you feel better? Did you feel satisfied with what you have done? I'm sure 10 of 10 people will say "yes". That is the reason why I say we are selfish creatures. And it's marvellous. And I don't want to change it.
Behind every behaviour stands good intention, we are not able to hurt ourselves, everything we do we doing to make us feel good. And it is excellent that someone else feels great because of us. However, subconsciously we don't care about others, we care for ourselves. We learned it from early childhood.
People are not able to hurt themselves physically and mentally. In the time of the facing some problems, we will pick the solution which will "hurt us less". Unfortunately we don't know all answers. Sometimes, the way we untie problem is not good for us at all. About 90% of our behaviour is driven by subconscious, which we are not able to control (in theory...).
The best example of choosing bad behaviour are addictions. Nobody starts smoking or drinking because they want to destroy their own life, health. I believe addictions are how we are trying to cope with emotional problems. Of course, some may say that addictions are not the solution and somebody could seek help somewhere else. Easy to say. Blessed are the ones who know where to looking for help. A lot of people don't even know the possibilities.
Connection
between addiction and emotional pain clearly (better than me)
described Gabor Mate. He ''is a Hungarian-born Canadian physician. He
has a background in family practice and a special interest in
childhood development and trauma, and in their potential lifelong
impacts on physical and mental health, including on autoimmune
disease, cancer, ADHD, addictions, and a wide range of other
conditions.'' (wikipedia.org)
I found two short clips which are worth to listen to on
YouTube:
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