I like to smile when I talk to people, it makes me feel good when others around me feel a little happier, a little more comfortable. I like to pick up garbage when I can, it makes me feel good to see where I am a bit cleaner. I like to give compliments to people when I can, it makes me feel good to see I can have a positive impact on others. There is a trend here. All of these actions are deemed generally “good”, however that is not the reason that I do them. I do these things because they make me feel good. Feeling good is the reason we do everything, all of our actions have some sort of self-serving incentive behind them. Even great sacrifices motivated by love or sympathy still come down to making us feel good, important, or fulfilled by said sacrifice.
We act this way because our survival depended on it, if one did not look out for their own interests they would die. What I would like to talk about is something people have wondered for a long time. Are people innately good, or bad? The question is quite simple, but the answer can be really complex, and vary by person.
First of all, almost everybody who is asked this question understands the question fully, however it is based on their standards of good and bad. In a way this question is actually not one, but an infinite number of questions that depend on the questionee’s morales. To further complicate things, there are many other factors such as religion that come in to play. One may think that if another individual is not part of their religion, they are bad, regardless of their moral compass.
Another problem is judging whether or not good is something that is internal (intentions of the individual) or external (actions taken) to the individual. Let’s say a person robs a bank at gunpoint to put food on the table for their family, is this person good or bad? The intentions of the person are good however the actions taken are arguably bad. Actions versus intentions has been an ethical argument since the beginning of ethics itself, and since nobody has come to the right answer, I do not believe that there is a blanket answer to this question. I do however, have an answer that is fitted to my views, and which I hope others can relate to.
When thinking of what it means to do good, I believe actions and intentions are in tandem with one another. One should always be looking to promote the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. I really don’t believe your religious views have anything to do with whether you are a good person or not, as long as you are trying to promote what you perceive as the greatest good for the greatest number. It is important to note the subjectivity of goodness here, what one may think is good another may think is terrible, that is why goodness can only be judged by the one making decisions for themself.
My conclusion draws from what I spoke of before, the survival instinct, to do what best interests the self. I’m afraid that there are many times that doing the most good for the most people comes at the cost of one’s own happiness, which goes directly against our instinct to do what will make us feel the best. Because of this caveat, based on the confines of the question I think people are born bad, but fuck the confines of the question. It is too linear in it’s choices for such a large and complex subject, causing us to bottleneck a myriad of answers into just two broad choices.
We are self-interested, but that should not have to fit into terms of good or bad, it should be a term within itself. Mary Lou Kownacki said “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story.” and I think this is true at our most fundamental levels. I believe this is true because nothing is done for no reason at all, nothing is done for the sake of good or bad, they are done for incentives. Once we fully understand someone’s story we can understand their reason for doing a good or a bad thing.
So yeah, based on the question and my beliefs I think people are born bad, but I think the questions is a failure because it isn’t productive. What we should be asking is not whether or not we are good or bad, but how can we incentivise being good. At the end of the day the best way to promote good is to incentivise it, that way we can all be self interested, but we can also trick our instincts into having us do good things. We cannot look at people as good or bad, we can only look at them as people, and try to understand what they have been through to get where they are.