Despite my cynical nature and the types of things I write about, I have always thought people are generally good on balance. You sort of have to think that to keep going. I don't think I do anymore though.
I prefer to believe that (I know, I know, "blame the internet", but) - our access to the worst of news and people, and the human knack for doom-scrolling feed that impression. That the majority of quiet, unobserved humans are perfectly decent, and aren't in our faces every day to count much.
I grew up in smalltown Texas, well before the internet, and i am sorry to have to disabuse you of that notion, but most people are petty, cruel dicks who only care about themselves and the few people they genuinely love, and they will let someone else twist without thinking twice.
I thought that was just a cliche about small-town Texas. Are you blue in a red zone, by chance? Because that sure sounds to this Hoosier like small-town Indiana.
I don't know that I was blue as a kid. My parents were. I just got to observe a lot of nastiness, hypocrisy & cruelty as a matter of course. Especially having abusive parents, you find out real quick that people who know that view you as a target for their own mean streaks. Not a cliche.
I think smalltowns are just microcosms of America in general and the same no matter where they are. What little shred of faith I clung to after that experience, was finished off by working in reality tv. People are really terrible.
Counterpoint: no
Having children and watching how people treat me when i have one with me vs when i don't, or how many people act towards even children, has completely disabused me of the notion that anything over a small fraction of Americans are remotely decent people at heart
I dont spend much time online and discount 100% what i see there. I mean face to face, human interaction and speaking to/observing people. I have lost all hope for humanity at this point (though that may be unfair to non-americans admittedly)
I can trace my adulthood to several Loss Of Innocence moments in my life.
TFG presidency and the national/global reaction to COVID have taken away innocence I didn't even realize I had left. 😒
polls even given the media environment are cause for optimism for people generally - the behavior of almost everybody even tangentially involved in Professional Democratic Politics shows it to be rotten to the core
I think most people who are justifying it are closing their eyes and telling themselves it isn’t happening, which to me goes back to the “essential goodness” thesis. The people who look at a dead child and say “this is good, I like this” are the lost cause and rarer. Imo.
You must be seeing many of our elected leaders and, presumably, a not insignificant number of family and friends who still think all of this orgy of death is necessary to "bring the hostages home."
Maybe it's because I'm old, but I disagree. I think that this genocide will be followed by more and more genocides (proximate cause: global warming induced migration) and a large majority of people will cheer the genocides on or at best be indifferent: it is not a rarity now and will not be later
Yeah anecdotal but this seems like a pretty widespread feeling. It feels wrong, just given the amount of unjustifiable violence in my lifetime. I’ve been thinking maybe it’s bc I have kids now but also maybe it’s just that this outcome was so foreseeable and the justifications so transparently bad
i think the "essentially good overall" thesis is true, but the worst people have all the power and the loudest voices, so it can make the distribution appear skewed.
I’ve seen too many people defend Israel’s actions to not think a significant amount of them aren’t Hasbara or bots. How can a thinking human being deny what’s right in front of them?!
I think most Americans pay little attention to the Mideast and think of it as an ongoing slaughterhouse generally, just the locations change every couple of years.
I thought that way too. Then 2016 came along and half of the voting population of the US voted for a nazi. I don't think people are good on balance anymore. Not even close.
I think most people have inside them the capacity for great kindness and great cruelty, but spend most of their time just muddling along.
It's a choice to round that up to basically good, or down to basically bad.
A friend of mine pointed out that people are born selfish -- babies who demand everything and give nothing -- and so every human needs to learn NOT to be totally selfish. But many never do and simply become ever more dangerous babies.
Newborn babies *seem* selfish because they can't do anything for themselves, and need so, so much just to survive that stage, while having to learn how to navigate a whole new world. They aren't inherently selfish, they're just wholly dependent, and frequently overwhelmed by the task of living.
Personally I believe that in most cases people are usually doing what they believe to be the best thing.
Whether for their community, their family, or even just for themselves, the choices they make are rarely motivated solely by doing harm, even if the outcome of those decision does cause it.
I think that’s a beauty of this era though… our access to unfiltered thoughts have revealed things to be a something of a mess with everybody, to everybody, good or evil almost not right framing. With new way of looking at things, who knows what we got next. Last approach wasn’t going great.
