People aren't Evil

[Zen Toombs]

I had a discussion with a friend of mine recently, and I mentioned that in my opinion, people are inherently good but also inherently interested in survival.

Yes, people are jerks and people do things to help themselves, but as far as I can tell it's mostly in the interest in their own personal survival. Once a person is in a comfortable position, almost everyone does what they can to help others.

Does this make sense, or am I just mad?

 

[Hero in a half shell]

The lives and actions of virtually every dictator, politician, and rich business executive would disagree with the idea that a person in a comfortable position is altruistic.

It happens all the time: those who are downtrodden and suffering are brought out of their misery and given (or achieve) freedom, only to do the exact same thing to other people. Look at bullies in the playground for the most basic example. If a kid gets bullied and exploited a lot, then gets given authority and dominance over other people, he will exploit the hell out of them.
Personal survival doesn't excuse any of that crap either, the worst offenders are almost always people in comfortable, safe positions of power.

As the saying goes, "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

 

[Suicidejim]

Oh? Not evil, you say? Challenge accepted. Fetch the kittens and the blowtorch!

On a less sadistic note, I'm not entirely convinced that people focus on helping others once they themselves are comfortable. I mean, the fact we have things like multi-billionaires in the first place suggests that our own self-interest drives us even beyond the point where we rationally need it. Oh, true, when you have natural disasters or disease, you'd need moneybags the size of a small city just to contain all the wealth that floods in, but people rarely give as much as they could. Even when they do give, it's hard to tell whether it's selflessness that drives them, or selfishness. Do we give money because we wish to help others and see them succeed, or because we want to feel like good people? If you ask me, people are inherently people, with all the combined bastardism and altruism that entails. If you balance out all the good and evil we've done in our time here, especially to one another, I suppose we'd balance out at roughly neutral.

To summarize my opinions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcdtVD8X1-A

 

[DrRockor]

I hate the word evil, it gets used to describe things that aren't that bad but relating to what you said.
I think people have the capacity of evil just as much as they have the capacity for good but most people only reach the level of asshole. It takes a special person in a special situation to perform true evil.
Along with this I think that there has to be some sort of true belief behind actions for it to be real evil. I'll give an example that would probably piss some people off. The holocaust was true evil, I'm not disagreeing with this in anyway but I think it was a level worse than other genecides because there was a true belief behind it that this terrible act was somehow justified. Now the truely evil person is the one that would convince normal people that you can justify acts such as this.

 

[senordesol]

People are selfish with varying degrees of intelligence.

Many (I hesitate to say 'most') can figure out that there's plenty of whatever it is they want to go around and that if they work with (rather than against) people, they can actually get more of it. Ergo mutual respect for certain 'rights' regarding life or liberty or property, etc. will ensure mutual cooperation to achieve whatever ends they're after.

Start putting the squeeze on people, however, or manipulate certain priorities and you'd be shocked by how quickly 'good people' go bad.

The Joker's 'One bad day' concept was not too far off.

 

[Bluelaughter]

If you view everyone as separate distinct beings, then almost every act could be considered selfish on some level. At the same time, there are instances where the pain of the sacrifice outweighs the feelings of good will.

Aren't we really designed to live and propagate?
Good and evil seem too vague as concepts, unless you define them within a specific context.