Thursday, September 21, 2017
Are People Good Or Bad/
By: Donovan Baldwin
From time to time, I read articles, essays, and op eds, about whether humans are inherently "good" or "bad".
Like most people who think, or comment, about these sorts of things, I guess I would have to admit that I don't really KNOW, I just have my thoughts and opinions.
One major difficulty is that the concepts of good and bad vary from culture to culture, and from person to person.
One person's "good" might be another's "bad", or on a different point on some "sliding scale" between the two extremes.
I think we DO try to achieve survival, at a personal level, and at a genus/species level.
People not only want to do things to survive, but, want the human race to survive (most of us).
All of this has to do with the reason I am so often nonjudgmental about personal choices.
Oh, I want to survive too, and, if your choices seem to threaten my survival (person or progeny), I am apt to make another choice...which you won't like, probably. However, realizing that the "other guy" is just trying to survive, in a way that meets his or her beliefs, gives me some latitude in the realm of forgiveness, and, allows me to feel better about my decisions and choices as well...even when OUR choices and decisions seem to be at odds with each other.
I feel, thinking out loud, that it's the inability to accept the other's desire for survival, and, see theirs and ours as opinions, not fact, that causes a lot of the dissention between people in this world.
Like most people who think, or comment, about these sorts of things, I guess I would have to admit that I don't really KNOW, I just have my thoughts and opinions.
One major difficulty is that the concepts of good and bad vary from culture to culture, and from person to person.
One person's "good" might be another's "bad", or on a different point on some "sliding scale" between the two extremes.
I think we DO try to achieve survival, at a personal level, and at a genus/species level.
People not only want to do things to survive, but, want the human race to survive (most of us).
All of this has to do with the reason I am so often nonjudgmental about personal choices.
Oh, I want to survive too, and, if your choices seem to threaten my survival (person or progeny), I am apt to make another choice...which you won't like, probably. However, realizing that the "other guy" is just trying to survive, in a way that meets his or her beliefs, gives me some latitude in the realm of forgiveness, and, allows me to feel better about my decisions and choices as well...even when OUR choices and decisions seem to be at odds with each other.
I feel, thinking out loud, that it's the inability to accept the other's desire for survival, and, see theirs and ours as opinions, not fact, that causes a lot of the dissention between people in this world.
Labels: bad, donovan baldwin, good, human race, life lesson, survival
# posted by Donovan Baldwin @ 3:10 PM 
