Revisiting my theory that most people are bad

[Muse]

No.
Most people are selfish.
And thats not evil, its part of the survival instinct. It can materialize as evil, but its not always evil.

I have no problem understanding "selfish." To me that has a plain meaning. But "evil" and "bad" are words that aren't clear at all. Either can connote something absolutely opposite for different people. They are such nebulous, nonspecific, ill defined terms that they have all but lost their meanings.

Here's something worth checking out: William Blake in his most famous prophetic book, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" neologizes "evil" and "good" opposite of what many think of. It was partly a matter of context, because of the goings on at the time (which happen to have major similarities to what's happening right here, right now in the USA, BTW). Search down in this for "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell":

William Blake | Poetry Foundation

Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry, and his work has only grown in…

www.poetryfoundation.org

You will find this:

The “Proverbs of Hell” are clearly designed to shock the reader out of his commonplace notion of what is good and what is evil:

Prisons are built with stones of Law,
Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

The Proverbs of Hell are a part of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

It is the oppressive nature of church and state that has created the repulsive prisons and brothels. Sexual energy is not an inherent evil, but the repression of that energy is. The preachers of morality fail to understand that God is in all things, including the sexual nature of men and women.

See? What people consider good is actually evil and vice versa, as explained by William Blake. Those terms obviously have no clear objective meaning whatsoever.

 

[Torn Mind]

.
The reality is that all of us have a ying-yang inside of us: partly good, partly bad. Childish, and mature. Stupid, and smart. The side you choose to feed is the one that grows.

Are most people bad? No, I don't think most people are bad. I think there is a small segment of society that is bad, but most people are pretty good people just trying to get by, who occasionally do dumb things. I stick my foot in my mouth all the time. I drop the ball. I make mistakes. That's just life. In today's horrible online cancel culture, there's no room for being human, learning, or growing. Also, because most of us are fairly sensitive people, if one or two people are mean to us, or if we get sucked into the news cycle, which highlights worldwide meanness, then it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that most people are bad. There are nearly 8 billion people on earth, and over 300 million people in America, and most of us just want to get by & enjoy life a little.

In the trail mix of life, there are always a few nuts!

That's not the concept of yin yang.

Yin Yang is based on a rather prudent yet unscientific attempt to explain the natural order.

If you want the "modern" cliff notes. Yang is the feeling of being horny and Yin is when you're sick or about to die, or the depressing feeling.


The reason people aren't pure evil is because of stupidity. Believe it or not, stupidity is an evolutionary necessity because if everyone had keen intelligence, there would far more Ted Bundy running around. A lot of crimes are prosecuted because the person who committed them did not cover their tracks or lost their senses, so to speak.

 

[Muse]

Yin and yang are better thought of thus:

In Ancient Chinese philosophy, yin and yang is a concept of dualism, describing how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary...

 

[Torn Mind]

Most people over the age of 40 are gullible idiots that have no idea how to deal with the broken sewage pipe of Information that is spewing bullshit into their faces 24/7.

Low key Fox News bashing?
I'm surprised young left activists don't look up to Jane Fonda and her peers as a patron saint.

 

[Muse]

Low key Fox News bashing?
I'm surprised young left activists don't look up to Jane Fonda and her peers as a patron saint.

For a Hollywood starlet she was pretty with it. Her brother too.

If you're gonna watch Fox News you may as well throw your brain into your next smoothie.

 

[Greenman]

The vast majority of people are not evil. They're greedy, selfish, stubborn, stupid, and usually driven by emotion.

 

[Greenman]

Low key Fox News bashing?
I'm surprised young left activists don't look up to Jane Fonda and her peers as a patron saint.

Hanoi Jane had it going on back in the day.

 

[pmv]

I don't think life is fair on people. We are born into this world that long pre-existed us, into essentially randomly-chosen starting positions, given very little information and expected to hit the ground running and rapidly figure out what it's all about and what the hell we are supposed to be doing, all the while being battered this way and that by events over which we have no control whatsoever, both outside (socio-economic forces) and within (our own fallible bodies). By the time anyone gets anywhere near figuring it out it's pretty much game over and its time for the next set of saps to be thrown into the arena.

Life is Nintendo Hard.

Most people just want a quiet life and to minimise their own suffering. If anyone is evil, it's God.

 

[zinfamous]

20% of people are evil. 20% of people are good. 60% of people exist in a specturm of general apathy where very many things can push any individual one of them into being apathetic enough to let evil prevail.

 

[MtnMan]

The vast majority of people are not evil. They're greedy, selfish, stubborn, stupid, and usually driven by emotion.

Must be the crowd you align yourself with. But given your support for a turd of a human, I'm not surprised this is your perspective.

 

[shortylickens]

TAKEN IT TO P&N YOU FUCKIN DICK BAGS!

 

[Muse]

TAKEN IT TO P&N YOU FUCKIN DICK BAGS!

WTH does it have to do with politics or news?

You know, we're dealing with adjectives here: "bad," "evil." Those are very difficult to define. One person's bad is another person's good. One person's evil is another person's genius. I think the discussion needs semantic nuance, is what I'm saying... if it's to go anywhere.

 

[ultimatebob]

TAKEN IT TO P&N YOU FUCKIN DICK BAGS!

If you're looking for validation that most people are evil, the P&N forum is a good place to find that validation.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Total depravity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[darkswordsman17]

20% of people are evil. 20% of people are good. 60% of people exist in a specturm of general apathy where very many things can push any individual one of them into being apathetic enough to let evil prevail.

I'd say its more 5-10% are consummately either way and 80-90% are grey.

 

[darkswordsman17]

.
The reality is that all of us have a ying-yang inside of us: partly good, partly bad. Childish, and mature. Stupid, and smart. The side you choose to feed is the one that grows.

Are most people bad? No, I don't think most people are bad. I think there is a small segment of society that is bad, but most people are pretty good people just trying to get by, who occasionally do dumb things. I stick my foot in my mouth all the time. I drop the ball. I make mistakes. That's just life. In today's horrible online cancel culture, there's no room for being human, learning, or growing. Also, because most of us are fairly sensitive people, if one or two people are mean to us, or if we get sucked into the news cycle, which highlights worldwide meanness, then it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that most people are bad. There are nearly 8 billion people on earth, and over 300 million people in America, and most of us just want to get by & enjoy life a little.

In the trail mix of life, there are always a few nuts!

The reality is that some people's brains are incapable of working in that manner. They can learn what society considers good or bad, but they are incapable of actually understanding it themselves. And humans are capable of being programmed, wherein good people will do bad things, believing the whole time they're crusading for good. That's not all bad as we can also program positive behavior in (which is why racists, and other assholes view it as them escaping programming, they're not really wrong, the problem is they're too stupid to realize you can both accomplish that while also understanding its a good thing not to be a racist/bigot).

 

[darkswordsman17]

Nope. Most people are good.

Nah. Most people are humans, with good and bad being relative.

Even the best, brightest of humans are not above human folleys. And even some of the worst monstrous humans in all of history were capable of compassionate actions that if you knew nothing else about them would call them great people.