# Good people **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 1, 2002, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915 "2002-08-01T20:30:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![insider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@insider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/insider)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2002, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/1 "2002-08-01T20:30:57Z")
Are all people inherently good? ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2002, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/2 "2002-08-01T20:50:52Z")
Ask a cannibal. I’ll bet some of us taste terrible … ---
**Author:** ![John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ccd318/32.png) [@John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Kentzel-Griffin)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2002, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/3 "2002-08-01T20:51:19Z")
A Great Debate if I’ve ever seen one. Off to Great Debates **DrMatrix** - General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2002, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/4 "2002-08-01T21:23:54Z")
… and some of us just make gags that are in terrible taste … Actually, I would say, yes, all people are good for some undetermined value of “good”. You’re back to that old saw about very few people considering themselves “evil”. Their particular value systems may be totally whacked as far as anybody else is concerned, however. ---
**Author:** ![p\_cific\_812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@p\_cific\_812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/p_cific_812)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2002, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/5 "2002-08-01T22:05:52Z")
You give me a concrete definition of a “good” person and I will answer the question. For a small additional fee, I will use the new standard of goodness to sort the peoples of the world into groups of varying goodness where applicable. ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2002, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/6 "2002-08-01T22:12:39Z")
There are those who develop an antisocial personality disorder at a very early age. These are those we call “scumbags.” Although it is classified as a mental disorder, there is no treatment, as it just part of their personality. The essential feature of this personality is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others. Deceit and manipulation are central features. These people disregard the wishes, rights, or feelings of others. But, you ask, “inherently.” These people form their personalities at a very early age and apparently they are not born scumbags. However, it is more common among first-degree biological relatives of those with the disorder. I don’t believe that’s what you mean by “inherent,” as who can call a little child or baby “bad”? We may say “bad child” when the child does something bad, but the child is not bad. At a very early age, however, IIRC, by the age of 4, this disorder sets in. It appears to be associated with low socioeconomic status and urban settings. It is actually not diagnosed until the age of 18, but prior thereto, it is called a Conduct Disorder. People such as Hitler and Hussein may have this disorder, but they also have other mental problems, such as Grandiose Delusional Disorder. We say that these people are mentally ill. So is it their fault they are sick? If they could be treated in some way and be mentally well, they would no longer be “bad” (?) IMHO they are scumbags - or worse - and are bereft of any goodness. There is no known treatment short of death. ---
**Author:** ![Purd\_Werfect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47c2d/32.png) [@Purd\_Werfect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Purd_Werfect)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2002, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/7 "2002-08-01T23:03:29Z")
With the exception of truly sociopathic people, I think that everyone has the capacity for both good and evil, and most people choose to act more in the interest of good than evil. Please keep in mind that when I say evil, I’m not referring to an external force acting upon a person, but rather potential within a person that is usually kept in check by the desire to be decent. As for the inherent part, I don’t think we have much of a clue what is mentally inherent and what is learned behavior. An infant or a small child may hit someone without a second thought, but that qualifies more as the ignorance of innocence than as an act of evil. It’s a learned condition as we age that there may be unfavorable consequences to hitting someone. I don’t think the evil aspect of the equation can apply until the person has the realization that hitting somone else can cause them pain. As far as quantifying good and evil, good luck with that, as one man’s poison is another’s sustenance. Given that, when I say that most people choose to act good, I mean that most people choose to act with the restraints which allow them to move successfully through and in the society that they’re a part of. And this seems much more like an IMHO type of thread than a GD thread. ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/8 "2002-08-02T03:12:36Z")
How can you love your enemy, unless you think he is inherently good? ---
**Author:** ![zen101](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c68b51/32.png) [@zen101](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zen101)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/9 "2002-08-02T05:34:47Z")
Define good without using solipism or rationalizations and I’ll get back to you. Oh, and you can’t use any individauls as an example of “good”. It is presupposed that the qualities that made that person “good” existed independent of that person beforehand. ---
**Author:** ![grendel72](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/91b2a8/32.png) [@grendel72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grendel72)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/10 "2002-08-02T05:44:54Z")
People are good. _Groups_ of people not so much… ---
**Author:** ![kitarak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kitarak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitarak)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/11 "2002-08-02T10:43:19Z")
I’m wary of making judgements like that - I don’t believe in an objective good or evil. However, if we define good to mean “considerate of others’ feelings and wellbeing” (at least most people will agree that good people have that trait) then my answer would be no. People are, in general, vindictive, small-minded and insensitive. That’s not to say there aren’t ‘good’ people, merely that they are a minority. ---
**Author:** ![jacksen9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ce73a5/32.png) [@jacksen9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacksen9)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/12 "2002-08-02T11:11:14Z")
All people possess seeds of goodness and seeds of evil. Various circumstances contribute to the growth of goodness or evil. I think it is important to make a distinction between good “works” and goodness. There are plenty of examples of people that do good for the wrong reasons. I don’t think this should be classified as evil, but it is not goodness. ---
**Author:** ![robertliguori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/13 "2002-08-02T12:46:50Z")
Human flesh tastes much like pork, FYI. And people are inherently people. Draw a bell curve with 6 billion samples and you’ll end up with Gandhis and Hitlers. ---
**Author:** ![Rhapsody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9de0a6/32.png) [@Rhapsody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhapsody)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/14 "2002-08-02T13:04:09Z")
good and evil are not THINGS that you can be one or the other of. For that matter just like beauty, it all lies in the eyes of the beholder. A deed done for the good of a group of people can be considered good by people in that group and considered evil by another who is adversly affected by the deed. We all seem to want to put people in these little pigeon hole classifications and it is self-deluding to do so. Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin, and many others did very evil things but they did not set out to be “evil”. They each set out to accomplish goals for their people and their countries as THEY saw it. They each justified their worst acts as being for the “good of the people” and likely each truly believed that at the time. My own country (U.S.A) is in the midst right now of committing many evils around the globe and justifying them as being for the"good" of america. Basically I see the problem as being more one of “selfish” vs “selfless”, than of “good” and “bad”. ---
**Author:** ![MrO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/50afbb/32.png) [@MrO](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrO)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/15 "2002-08-02T13:46:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by yabob \* > \*\*Ask a cannibal. I’ll bet some of us taste terrible … \*\* > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by robertliguori \* > **Human flesh tastes much like pork, FYI.** There was this cannibal once who told his friend about a missionary that he had boiled and eaten, and he said the guy tasted really bad. “You boiled one of those missionaries from the other side of the island?” the friend asked. Yep, from the other side of the island. Boiled him up and ate him. “Well of course he tasted bad! Those guys are friars!” ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/16 "2002-08-02T18:47:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rhapsody \* > \*\* > Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin, and many others did very evil things but they did not set out to be “evil”. They each set out to accomplish goals for their people and their countries as THEY saw it. They each justified their worst acts as being for the “good of the people” and likely each truly believed that at the time. \*\* You don’t really believe that, do you? Those persons were egomaniacs and were out for only their own “good”: actually power. Stalin killed many of his countrymen. He wasn’t interested in his people. Neither was Hitler. Many Germans were Jews, and Hitler tried to eradicate them. So, obviously he wasn’t out for the good of the people, unless you mean only his special kind of Arryan race, which he deemed worthy to rule the world, under his heels, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Mandos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c68b51/32.png) [@Mandos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandos)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2002, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/17 "2002-08-03T01:08:28Z")
Let’s be very careful about how we define our terms. NO ONE is capable of consciously choosing the side of evil. Why would they? It would be like saying “I hate people that do that. I’m going to do that now for no apparent reason.” We cannot defy our own values. We have no motivation to do so. Unless acting on an uncontrollable physical impulse, we are incapable of performing an action we consider, at the time, to be evil. Everyone either justifies their actions or operates under a different ethical spectrum. So…it depends. We all perceive our conscious decisions as good, at the time, but others might not…it becomes very complicated, especially when there are different ethical spectrums to deal with. Rather than disturb that mess, I shall bring up the law that all living things tend to go by. When the life of a living creature is threatened, it is thinking of only one thing: it’s own survival. If necessary, I have little doubt that someone on the brink of death by starvation would try to eat their lover, if there were no other food. At our core, we are concerned about ourselves first, others later. Is that good…or evil? ---
**Author:** ![kase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a5b964/32.png) [@kase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kase)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2002, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/18 "2002-08-03T11:55:14Z")
> [@](#): > > At our core, we are concerned about ourselves first, others later. That wouldn’t be good, I guess. I believe people are good, when they’re born. [unless there’s some genome fault] In this time, when people \*\* are \*\* getting more and more concerned about themselves, it would be truly hard to find a ‘good’ one. - Ever seen anyone do something for another person for free and out of kindness lately? Nah. Me neither ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2002, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/19 "2002-08-03T15:54:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mandos \* > \*\*Let’s be very careful about how we define our terms. NO ONE is capable of consciously choosing the side of evil. \*\* I don’t believe that. The Hitlers, the Husseins, the Stalins are consciously doing evil and they know or knew that their acts were only for their good. No one will consciously do something that is bad for them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know their acts are evil. Plato, echoing Socrates, believed that these abstractions and characteristics, such as “good,” “evil,” etc. actually exist as entities in another world, but here on Earth, we can only see the shadows of the cave and cannot see the thing itself. But it is generally assumed that these abstractions don’t have a physical entity, and we say “good” we don’t mean a selfish act that is good for the individual, but a selfless act that is good for mankind. ---
**Author:** ![Mandos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c68b51/32.png) [@Mandos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandos)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2002, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915/20 "2002-08-03T18:58:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by barbitu8 \* > \*\* I don’t believe that. The Hitlers, the Husseins, the Stalins are consciously doing evil and they know or knew that their acts were only for their good. No one will consciously do something that is bad for them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know their acts are evil. > > \*\* They might have known that, under another person’s ethical spectrum, their actions were evil, but let’s face it, did Hitler consider himself evil? Probably not. After all, if he really felt that it was on the opposite end of his OWN ethical spectrum, the side that he disagrees with, why would he chooose it? No, I would assume that the Hitlers of the world either justified their actions using some twisted logic or were operating under a completely different ethical spectrum. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by käse_ > \*\* > I believe people are good, when they’re born. [unless there’s some genome fault] > \*\* This would suggest that people do not have individual personalities when they are born. If they did, there would be evil personalities and there would be good personalities. What this would suggest is that the environment is the only factor in what makes you a being with a unique personality type. Yet, babies do not all behave in the same exact manner, do they? From birth, do all babies react to the situation in EXACTLY the same way? Of course not. Now, let’s examine what all babies are born with: instinct. What is instinct concerned with? It would seem that instinct is concerned with the survival of oneself first and, when one’s survival is not in immediate danger, then others can be dealt with. I can’t recall the exact quote, but I believe the creator of Pre-Crime described this very well in Minority Report. Do note that I’m paraphrasing here: “All living things are the same. When you put the squeeze on it, it’s only thinking about one thing: its own survival.” It went something like that. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-people/121915.md?page=2)