Are People By Nature Good Or Evil? (Part 2)

In Part 1, I started by analysing why people think a person is good or evil and explored the concept of trusting people through the analysis. In this article, I’ll talk about why I believe people are by nature good.

To summarise the previous article, good and evil are often just ways to label a person, to decide whether you can trust that person.

In that argument, it goes back to the concept of whether the person treats me well, which is mostly a self-centred (not selfish) way of looking at people. Self-centredness, in this context, is specifically about how good and evil is relative to that person’s point of view.

In an extreme form, if a person kills another person in cold blood but treats you very well, would you think he or she is a good person? It seems like an easy answer “no”, but the reality is a lot larger than the question above.

I’ve known many individuals sticking by a partner or friend who does things that they disagree with. They justify it by explaining that the person has “good intentions”, often using anecdotal personal experiences.

When a person does good to you but not others, does that imply that the person is good? Can someone do unspeakable things with good…