There are many ways to conceptualize the human being, but if we talk about his nature in consonance with the environment and to what extent he is free / responsible for his destiny, there are essentially two visions in this regard, treated by Thomas Sowell in his book Conflict of visions .
Those visions are the Restricted and the Unrestricted, which we are going to see next.
Factory defects or system failures
In the restricted vision it is proposed that human beings have immutable, serial, factory defects, and that these defects include the intellect and moral character. Accepting that premise, we must place our trust in proven and reliable systems (science, market, institutions, etc.). This vision, with all its variants, is held by thinkers such as Hobbes, Smith, Burke, Malthus or Hamilton.
In the unrestricted vision, it is established that human beings are born good by nature, and that the defects that we observe are the result of the failures of the system or social institutions. This vision, with all its variants, is held by thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine or Veblen.
To delve into these two views (probably neither of the two positions is true, or it is not true at all times or circumstances, but we must toggle between one extreme and the other), I recommend Sowell’s book , Conflict of visions . According to Sowell, these views are at the origin of the political struggles that have developed, first, in Europe and, later, throughout the world since the end of the 18th century: the vision that he calls "constrained" ("restricted", "conditioned", also meaning "tragic", "pessimistic") and the vision "unconstrained" ("unrestricted", "utopian", "optimistic").
You can also expand on these visions in the following video, where I speak about my beliefs, and where I lean much more towards restricted vision :