November 22, 2007
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Do you think people are inherently good or bad?
I’ve thought about this for a long time. I’ve seen people who otherwise seemed good to me do things that seemed terrible. And I’ve seen people who have often done terrible things engage in profound acts of selfless altruism. I myself have done many things that in retrospect did not seem to meet my own standards of what I deem to be good and just and right. And I’ve done very selfless seeming things knowingly for purely selfish reasons.
So then what? Are we born evil and find the good in us? Or are we born good and drawn into evil? Or perhaps some of us are born evil and others good? Some born with consciences and others without them as they say? Or are all of us both evil and good and a constant struggle within us between them is waged? Or are all of us neither but for our choices on this earth over time make us one or the other? Or perhaps there just is no such thing as good or evil or right or wrong. It’s all just relative. It’s all just whatever society deems it here and now.
In the end I concluded that it just doesn’t matter very much. Whether or not people are born with it or learn it, there are acts that I cannot help but conceive of as good and others that I cannot help but conceive of as bad. Learning the truth of human nature would not change that, nor would it change my inclination toward condemnation and praise on the basis of those acts. If someone murders an innocent child intentionally for their own benefit, there is no way in which you could conceive of humanity, no story you could tell, no explanation you could give that would lead me to believe that that act was not deplorable and that the commiter for having made that act not worthy of my utmost scorn. Even if we are all automotons preprogrammed to live out our lives in exact accordance with a certain plan unable to deviate, I’d still deem that person vile. I’d have no sympathy. I guess that’s just a part of my own ‘programming’.
But I do believe that we aren’t automotons and I can’t imagine a universe so cruel that it would condemn certain peoples to a life of pure evil without a chance or a hope to be good. Maybe it is so and maybe it is so for everyone but I’d never accept it unless you put incontrovertible evidence before me. So I guess the presumption of good is an instinct engrained in me. When I see people I can’t help but assume that they are in their heart of hearts for the most part trying to be good. They may make mistakes and they may fail terribly but I believe that people want to be good and all their choices are what they think is right.
And I think that presumption of good has great benefits for society. If we follow it and stick with it. It means that we don’t give up on people. We give them an opportunity to do good. We harness the good that is in them. We try to reform them. We try to help them. We try to give them a chance at happiness, no matter what mistakes they’ve made. That doesn’t mean we don’t condemn the condemnable. It just means, we don’t let the fact of any act of evil be enough to cast someone aside as without worth or value. If we presume good, then we can get try to get good out of everyone since we believe that it is in there to begin with. Isn’t that just a better way to lead our society?
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