This is a pretty open ended question. If so, why? If not, why not?

29 comments

  4. I don’t think anyones born evil or bad. I just think circumstance, environment, and broken and hurt people turn good people bad or evil. It’s really sad. I think given the right environment just about every person would grow up to be at the very least a decent person. Not perfect but decent I hope.

  5. I do, the internet is often not a good representation of what people really are, and I think most people don’t actively try to be shitty irl, it’s just that shitty can mean different things to different people.

  8. Everyone is an asshole. Everyone is offensive.

    You can take the most liberal, loving, accepting person. And if you talk to them long enough, they will say something offensive. It’s just a matter of what.

    I remember there was this girl I worked with, she was bi.

    Once day she got into an argument with another worker because that person didn’t like Pete Buttigeg because hes gay. Well, she went off on her.

    But she was also racist and didn’t like people from the middle east, she called them sand (you know the rest).

    I never did bother to point out the glaring blind spot because everyone has them. Everyone is what they destest in other people.

  9. I believe people are selfish. If there’s one thing you can always count on, is that people will do what benefits them. Most people are only decent with those they care about, and treat others like irrelevant npcs.

  10. It’s a weird question. I’m gonna work off the way this question is usually asked to show why. “Do you think most people are good?”

    Do you play D&D? I like D&D. It’s a fun game. One polarizing aspect to it is the Alignment chart. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a 9 point chart that roughly dictates a person’s personality along 2 axis: Good/Evil, and Lawful/Chaotic. Each alignment has 2 points along these axis, varying from Lawful-Good to Chaotic-Evil.

    So back to “are most people Good?” Let’s look at Good.

    Good people are those who use their time and resources to help others. From being a law abiding citizen who helps in a soup kitchen every weekend (LG) to someone who gives away a sandwich at work to a homeless guy and writes it off as dropped ingredients (CG), there’s a wide berth of what can be considered Good.

    I don’t believe most people are good. I believe most people are Lawful, and we equate Lawful with Good because we have enough faith in Law to equate the two.

    A good demonstration of this is a corrupt politician or businessman who works to bend laws in his favour, or exploits laws so he can do something that’s not illegal, but immoral.

    Another great example of people being overwhelmingly Lawful over Good is Hitler’s Germany, or Stalin’s Russia. All Law abiding citizens, but the laws themselves are bad (this makes the family who hid Anne Frank a Chaotic Good family in that society).

    So no, people aren’t Good, they’re Lawful. Specifically Lawful/Neutral – just following the rules and trying to make it to tomorrow without a heavy concern for what’s good or bad, just what’s legal and illegal. Everything else comes down to whether the people making those laws are among the Good or the Evil, and the Lawful will mostly comply

  11. In general? No.

    I’ve lived in different countries, in different continents.
    You know why they say “traveling and meeting other cultures is the solution for racism”?? It is true, but not because you can see other people and empathize with them. It’s because by traveling to another country you get to experience racism first hand.

    Counterargument:
    I think that there are good persons everywhere, but that means you have to make the effort to prove to someone else that you are a good person yourself. So it takes both effort on one’s side to connect, but also effort on the other person to be willing to listen.

    So there is good people, but it will always take effort to see the good in them.

  13. No. Most people are animals who need the terms of their existence dictated to them by whatever societal institutions and beliefs they allow to manipulate them. If humans were fundamentally decent the atrocities of our history and present would have never occurred.

  16. Of course, here’s an example, 95 driver patiently wait in traffic and 5 assholes drive on the shoulder, what do you notice more?

  17. Lots of people are decent, but lots of ppl are also stupid, including a lot of the decent ones

  19. I believe that, absent trauma or similar that fucks us up, most people are trying to do what they think are the good and decent things. Whether or not they are correct about the things they do actually being good and decent is another story.

  20. I believe that most people care only for themselves and those they hold dear, and that they won’t go out of their way to screw over other people. They also won’t go out of their way to help people either. I guess that’s decent enough.

  21. Nope people in general suck, the public is an ass and then people in power (politicians, law makers, priests etc) are the biggest asses.

  22. Most? Decent? I can’t really answer to that. Some are. Most just have pretty interesting histories. I knew a guy who left home at like 16, road trains, surfed couches, and hung out with cool people. One person pressed him to get a GED, and after that, he joined the Army. Said he laughed at boots who came to the unit with jump wings, because they bragged about having 5 jumps, but he had a friend who ran a skydiving school, and he had twice as many, free-fall. I was talking to a musician friend of mine, and I asked how he got into music, and he started talking about his history…”And then I started gigging with Hubert Sumlin, and…” HOLD UP! You played with Hubert Sumlin? “Yeah, but I started using, got busted for burglary, and after I got out and cleaned up, I did part of a tour with Etta James, but when the tour went into Canada, they wouldn’t let me in because of my felonies.” HOLD UP! You played for Etta James?

    Yeah, neither of these guys come off as what you would think. The kid from the Army? Brightest guy I knew, hard working, and friendly with everyone. Blues guitarist? Humble, quiet, kind, and patient with us “amateurs”.

    So some have sordid pasts. Some have sordid presents. Those people I generally try not to get to know too well (I hate drama). Most are good people to some extent, and I don’t think anyone is irredeemably evil. But maybe that’s the Christian in me.

  23. I don’t. I just feel I have gotten enough of a sample size to see that in general people are selfish cunts who will almost always do the things that benefit them the most. Myself included. I used to hate that about myself, but I’ve found kind of a zen peace with accepting it.

  25. People are decent until they find a way to mentally cartwheel themselves into stealing your car and still being the victim.

  26. I think it’s situational.

    When in places where people are expected to be good to one another a lot of garbage people will do the right thing and act like good human beings.

    I know there are good people in the world, but we’re so flawed that I think that we’re pretty horrible.

    And to be fair, I’m not perfect.

  28. I don’t think people really are all that decent. We all leave this world worse off than when we found it.

  29. iIMO the vast majority of people are only decent when there’s a law in place or some one who they respect and or fear is watching.

    example A. Nazis

    example B. Slavery

    example C. Corporations

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