Do you believe people are generally good?

[Brownie80]

I was reading a theatrical play version of The Diary of Anne Frank and it ended with Otto Frank reading the Diary with this line: "I still believe people are generally good." He then closes the book and says "She puts me to shame." However it left me with that question.

I believe that yes, people are generally good. Everyone still loves heroes and they know right from wrong and most people practice some sort of acceptable decency. However, that's just me.

[small]P.S. You should totally read The Diary of Anne Frank if you have not already.[/small]

 

[JoJo]

I think most people are generally good but are also capable of great evil by ignorance or attempts to do right gone astray. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the famous saying goes. Everyone's the hero of their own story, we should always be careful to check we are really doing good and not risking harming others by making quick assumptions and moral judgements.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Yes. The world has come a long way since 200,000 BC. Parts anyway. I don't believe we could've pulled it off if most people weren't partial to the orderly and collaborative spirit that largely defines "good".

 

[Queen Michael]

First of all, I agree that people should read it. Anne Frank is one of the most underrated writers ever. People assume that you need to read her diary because of its enormous historical importance and all that -- the real reason you need to read it is that it's an insanely well-written book.

Secondly, I believe that the vast majority of people[footnote]though not everybody[/footnote] would rather do good than bad, given the choice, and don't take advantage of the opportunities to benefit by doing bad that present themselves.

 

[Barbas]

I think that if people weren't generally good or didn't generally have an idea of good that they strove toward, the world as we know it would be very different today. Humans have been kicking about for ages, they've probably surpassed a lot of expectations already.

 

[Asita]

I think we're products of our culture. Plop an average Joe from 200 years ago into the modern world and he would likely be seen as an ignorant bigot even if he was progressive for his era. Someone holding fast to the idea that the laws of Leviticus (not just a few, all of them) are good and just wouldn't be at all out of place in ancient Israel, but would be seen as positively barbaric in pretty much any nation within the last century or so. Human sacrifice? Well and good for the Aztecs making offerings to Huitzilopochtli, not so much for their Spaniard contemporaries.

I mean don't get me wrong, I think that at our core everyone wants to be good, but what good means to a given person is very much dependent on what they grew up with.

 

[Coppernerves]

Since the industrial revolutions, the world population increased exponentially, though we're curving to a plateau now that people have more to do than raise kids, and decent contraception.

So people in general are good for survival and reproduction.

As for happiness, I'm not sure, but it seems like people appreciate each other more in less sparsely populated areas, as if they're some commodity with value increased by rarity.

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

On balance yes. Generally, most people will be good so long as they don't have to leave their comfort zone. Most of them wont cause harm they can see the consequences of, even if it wouldn't cost them anything to do so and they would gain from it.

But lots of good, but complacent people are still capable of doing a lot of harm. Which is why people are often hostile to attempts to bring attention to this harm, because no-one wants to lose a benefit/comfort they are accustomed to, but they don't want to be causing harm either and to reconcile that they merely pretend that the harm doesn't exist.

But I think most people will pull together if push comes to shove.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Well, how do you define good? The degree of leniency you give to what defines "good" will have a huge impact on the answer. Even then, the specifics what we define as "right" and define as "wrong" are bound to be different, so what one person defines as "good" will likely be different than that of another person, even if the level of leniency they give is the same.

 

[generals3]

Well, what is good and what is bad?

All i know is that we're selfish. And this selfishness can push us to be either "good" or "bad" according to our standards. People are against crimes not because they're saints but because they realize it benefits society and thus themselves as well. People who give money to the poor tend to get a warm fuzzy feeling from it and that's why they do it. I've yet to hear about people who hate helping the poor but still do because "Justice" or whatever. At the end of the day we all continuously act in a way we feel will make us happier.

And at the end of the day most people are "good" because they expect that people will be good to them in return.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Hmmm, yeah.

I don't get attacked, mugged, or pointed and laughed at whenever I step outside, so I take that as pretty definitive proof that most people aren't assholes. I don't know if that automatically makes them good, but generally they're fine.

 

[kommando367]

Depends on where you are.

Generally speaking, better living conditions and nicer weather tend to make nicer people.

 

[DementedSheep]

Yes...well sort of. It depends on how you define good. I think many issues are more down to just not thinking, ignorance, feeling too small to think you can make a difference anyway and assuming everyone else is an ass-hole (which is why one person can sometimes start a landslide of aid. Once people realise other will actually help as well and it can make a difference people jump on board) than actual malice. People seem to need see someone, to know a little bit about a person and what they are going through before they can connect with them hence why one persons death when focused on tends to get more outrage and people rallying around it than a few hundred. We are very good at compartmentalising and ignoring things we don't want to have to deal with especially when there is no clear solution and stopping point to fix a problem and we trick ourselves into thinking someone else will deal with it or it can't be helped so us doing nothing is ok.
We like to think than when someone slighted or took advantage of us they planned it because we are the protagonists in our own lives but more likely that just didn't even realise they had, had other stresses on them affecting their behaviour or there was miscommunication somewhere.
Many seem to like to say that the instant we taking out of comfort zone and put in a bad situation people turn into ruthless uncaring animals but that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact in most disaster situations the opposite happens. Shared pain brings people together. Some attribute the belief that everyone is out for themselves and only themselves to Darwinism?s survival of the fittest. It makes sense that you would be out for yourself from an evolutionary standpoint right? but humans are group animals and that is were lot of strength as a species comes from. You need to get along with others to survive and empathy and altruism is actually beneficial to us. I don't think the biological basis or the fact that doing good feels good (or just stops you from feeling bad) and can benefit us in a roundabout way invalidates those actions and makes them not good. Everything is give and receive and your going to care more about people you know than people you don't when push comes to shove. That's not inherently bad.


The real nasty shit happens when you start getting tribalism and dehumanisation of other groups (us and them) or when you have the opportunity to do bad without actually seeing the consequences (knowing a few thousand people died is one thing, actually seeing this is another) or having the consequences not fully apparent until much later so it?s easier to ignore which is the problem when decisions are being handled by people who aren't actually there.

Obliviously there are exceptions. Some people just don't care for others and I think you can end up conditioning yourself to ignore empathy.
Anyway that's enough pseudo-science from me for today.

 

[savandicus]

One of my favourite quotes because I find it rings so true:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

 

[Lilikins]

Well, this is quite the interesting topic I will admit.

A while back I saw an expirement that was tested upon children. It looked at the behaviour of children in comparison to animals, henceforth dogs/cats etc.. 'playing' with eachother roughly, as they do. But at the end of the whole experiment it showed that humans were by far a bit 'worse' henceforth, the most prominent of what I saw popping to mind was 2 children in kindergarden, 1 of them wanted a toy because..well...the other one had it. He was stronger, so he went over there and kicked his duplo castle and took it. Of course on one side one can say 'hey..that was a dick move.', but nevertheless on the other, we are speaking of a young child. Yet nevertheless, I dont think people are generally 'evil' or 'good', every person is a product of their environment and upbringings in my opinion. If someone lives in a wartorn area where the person was accustomed to death and despair and learned that the hard way, also via their parents, Ill say (on an estimate) 9 out of 10 will also go down that same road. Just as the fact that those people (particularly males) who grew up in an abusive household with the father figure being abusive towards the family, has a higher chance of also being abusive via statistics.

So to my belief if people are generally good or bad, Im going down the middle line saying 'neither'. Each is brought up in a different way, told right from wrong through their parentage and that is what they are 'meant' to believe. On the flipside of course, each forms their own belief as they mature, it pends on how deep that heritage has been rooted into their brains. Just as a simple comparison to relate to what I wrote, my parents are both catholic, and do believe in that stuff for instance. Myself, I believe in a god, but not as its represented by the catholic church, so I 'dont' believe in catholism, but on the other hand I also didnt go 'all too far' from the path I was taught as a child, seeing as I do believe in the rough 'sculpture', Ill say, of the catholic church and being monogomistic believing in 1 god 'partially'.


End of the rant, my belief, people arent good or bad, each is a blank slate. Actions, what was taught, the environment and the treatment that person recieved forms the mold that will form that persons personality of being either goodhearted...or a total douchebag.

 

[Evil Moo]

No, but then I'm biased by the fact that the vast majority of random people that interact with me, tend to be shouting insults at me for no reason. If I stop to think, I'm willing to accept that the people that don't interact with me are generally nice, but I've been driven to something of a paranoid state, where I imbue the traits of the hateful few on the silent masses.

I suppose if I take this entirely from my own perspective, the ones that don't interact with me would probably fall into a neutral category, I can't say if they are actively good or bad. Given that the most active party appears to be the bad group, I'm going to have to say on average, from my limited window on the world, people are generally bad.

 

[ArithianFlame]

Humans are creatures of light

and of dark. As such, a simple task it is;

assuming the form of either side.

'What a terrible fate', the light cry

and the dark laughs on.