Are People Good?

My dad once showed me a simple way to answer this question. At a sporting event he told me to watch when someone wanted a hot dog. That person would wave down the vendor (do they still do that in stadiums) and say how many dogs he wanted. He would then pass his money down the row of people, the last one of whom would give the money to the vendor. Then that same row of people would pass back the dogs and the change 'til they got to the right person.

I always liked that example.

Rocks -- excellent example. It's funny you should mention that since just last weekend I was at a baseball game and took notice of that very thing.

It's clear that most people are happy to help their neighbor when they are free to do so voluntarily. It's when we're forced to help (i.e., through taxes) that we tend to rebel.

Tony, this is a great question of life to always keep thinking about. I, personally, have come to the opposite conclusion from you in that I think that the founders of our nation were cognizant of the fact that human nature is made up equally of both good and evil and all too influenced by things around it such as friends, family and the media. They realized that people had to be given the freedom to pursue good, but it opened the door for them to also do evil. The only thing to stop most people is their personal values such as the one you mentioned of personal responsibility. So what is the one single greatest influence on personal values in all of history that tips the influence in people's lives to good or bad? Religion. They knew that it boiled down to individual values and that the major influence over that was, in the America they founded, Christianity. I'm not saying that our countries practice of Christianity is perfect, but after netting the good and bad, it is a hugely net positive influence on the country. Not through government mandates, but through individual values spread across millions of people's lives.

As a side note here, I'm not trying to prosthelytize for Christianity here. Other religions also have a positive impact on societies, just like others have a negative impact.

Thank you for your comments. You raise some good points.

I do agree with you that in order to have a free society, people must have positive values that influence them to do good, as opposed to evil. And, I don't think that one needs to be religious to have such values.

Religion may be one path for following positive values; however, one can argue that along with the positive values of each religion often comes a host of negative values -- usually directed against those who don't follow the doctrines of the religion.

I personally don't subscribe to any formal religion and don't believe in the concept of heaven and hell. Yet, I do believe in doing good. I do believe that when one does good deeds, they are returned to them. Some call it karma, but that makes it seem like some mystical force. I think it's quite simply that our interactions with the people within our lives lead us down specific paths. Those with whom we have positive interactions are more apt to help us. Those with whom we have negative interactions are more apt to not help us -- or worse yet, actively do us harm.

When we do good, we feel good and we receive affirmation from those around us. When we do evil, we shut ourselves out from society and are scorned.

Please understand, I don't mean to suggest that we're all good people all the time. But, I do believe that if our society (within the US) were mostly full of those inclined towards evil, it would be a very frightening place to live.

We need to keep in mind that evil deeds are magnified more than good deeds. A small percentage of evil-doers are able to cause a great deal of havoc and the media is much more likely to report evil deeds than good ones.

There will always be evil-doers, but being that humans are social creatures, we're inclined to voluntarily help each other. As long as we maintain such values, whether through religion or other philosophy, good will continue to triumph over evil.

Thanks again,
Tony