It has come to my attention — due mostly to near daily confrontation on the matter — that many people disagree with my assertion that most people most of the time in most situations are good, caring, and decent. So much so that much of one’s philosophy about the world can consider the “evil” in the world to be of a negligible amount. Indeed, I admit that one of the pillars of nearly every line of thought to which I subscribe (whether it be scientific, moral, political, economic) relies upon this principle.
To help bolster my point, I’m going to try to post on a somewhat frequent basis, evidence in favor of my position. I acknowledge that the onus is on me to prove that my claim is true. And though technically there is no burden of proof on me to prove the opposite of my position is false (I do not need to prove that people are not bad), often — if but for the lulz — I will.
The Good of the People #1:
To claim that people get their foundational morals from “society” is absurd. To say that a child needs to be told “do not kill the other kids in class” from an adult is ridiculous. To say that we get our sense that cruelty is wrong from The Constitution is tantamount to claiming that we get our sense that two plus two equals four from the pages of textbook on mathematics.
This is just simply and foolishly wrong. Anyone who does not intrinsically feel that killing the other kids in class is wrong or that cruelty towards others is to be avoided is unlikely to learn these things by sitting down and reading what The Founding Fathers had to say.
Put another way, ask yourself this: is the only reason you aren’t out killing little old ladies or burning buildings down simply because you happened to be born into a society where some guys in powdered wigs a long time ago deemed such actions to be “unconstitutional”?
