quote:

Originally posted by Billy Billions:
Curiosity:
Why the german terms in the title? Does "boese" sound more evil than evil?

It's that philosophy thing; part Nietsche reference, part Brecht. Who else?

quote:

Originally posted by Fashionpolice:
Boy was I nasty in your dream.

Really? I'm so used to you teasing me that you seemed entirely normal.

quote:

Originally posted by Sentinel400:
So, what do you think? Are people good or bad?

No. People are good AND bad. Every one of us has
the potential to be humanity's worst monster.
It's all too easy for us to lose sight of what's
appropriate.

quote:

Do you trust your fellow man?

With some things, yes. With others, no.

quote:

Would you stop to help someone with a flat,

That would depend on the circumstances. As a
rule, I'll slow down and ask if they're ok when
I'm on my bike. It's not always as convenient in
a car.

quote:

Do you give money to people who ask you for it with varying hard luck stories or dismiss them as scammers?

Let's be honest; they probably are scammers.
Sometimes I still give them money.

quote:

If a stranger does something nice for you, unbidden, do you wonder what's in it for them?

Not really.

Why not?

quote:

Originally posted by Sentinel400:
Why not?

Why not what?

Not why not what?

I'm going to guess that you meant my final
response, so I can try to answer it before walking
away from my keyboard for a day.

If someone did something nice for me, it doesn't
really matter if they wanted something out of
it. That thing is done and it was nice for me.
With any luck, it'll inspire me to do nice
things for others. That set of interaction will
develop the connections typically formed through
positive interactions, generating a certain
level of friendly familiarity. Whether or not
this is through some level of ulterior motives
really isn't relevant at that point. It's a
mutually beneficial relationship, but I'm not
about to do something I wouldn't otherwise do as
a result of it. If that relationship came to
push the boundaries of my ethics, then those
connections of interaction would be weakened or
altogether broken. Really, that's how
relationships work in general, imo.

So, at the onset, why should I go preemptively
poisoning what may otherwise turn out to be a
healthy relationship? One nice deed does not a
social commitment make.

quote:

Originally posted by Marshdrifter:
I'm going to guess that you meant my final response

I did.

quote:

...So, at the onset, why should I go preemptively poisoning what may otherwise turn out to be a healthy relationship? One nice deed does not a social commitment make.

Man, you're levelheaded. Saint Marshie!

I agree, though. Thank you for that!

Good discussion here. I'm too tired to do my views any justice right now, but I'll pop back in to comment after some rest.

For now, I'll just dash Trog's dreams by telling him that by the 1970s and 80s, those schools on US military bases were no longer as idyllic as they were in his day. I went to a lot of those schools, and they were gladiator academies. I was somewhat crippled up as has been discussed before, and life in those schools was pretty rough. I'm thankful we did have it good as far as not having to worry about guns in the school, or serious gang activity, as kids in inner city American schools often have to deal with. But there was a great deal of violence. A lot of incompetent, negligent adults running those places. Utterly uninterested in helping you survive, unless your father was a senior officer in the local community.

The basic version of what I think I believe is something like this: Under carefully controlled, benign circumstances, most people will want to be decent with each other. But those circumstances come and go, and when they're gone, nearly all people are nasty animals. Even once those nice, benign circumstances are restored, the nasty animal behavior may not go away again. My view's skewed, though. Thanks to a childhood with some exposure to unusual nastiness, I ended up making life choices that kept me focused on people's nastiness. So I'll admit my perspective is off.

I think Split and Trog should have a crack at Anthony Swofford's Exit A.

quote:

Originally posted by Splitcoil:
Good discussion here. I'm too tired to do my views any justice right now, but I'll pop back in to comment after some rest.

For now, I'll just dash Trog's dreams by telling him that by the 1970s and 80s, those schools on US military bases were no longer as idyllic as they were in his day. I went to a lot of those schools, and they were gladiator academies. I was somewhat crippled up as has been discussed before, and life in those schools was pretty rough. I'm thankful we did have it good as far as not having to worry about guns in the school, or serious gang activity, as kids in inner city American schools often have to deal with. But there was a great deal of violence. A lot of incompetent, negligent adults running those places. Utterly uninterested in helping you survive, unless your father was a senior officer in the local community.

The basic version of what I think I believe is something like this: Under carefully controlled, benign circumstances, most people will want to be decent with each other. But those circumstances come and go, and when they're gone, nearly all people are nasty animals. Even once those nice, benign circumstances are restored, the nasty animal behavior may not go away again. My view's skewed, though. Thanks to a childhood with some exposure to unusual nastiness, I ended up making life choices that kept me focused on people's nastiness. So I'll admit my perspective is off.

Damned shame. One thing Kennedy and LBJ did right (even Nixon, I think) was take care of military families. They accurately gauged the importance of families to having career military people, both officers and NCOs. We had the best teachers and the best schools, no matter where it was. Teachers fought over those jobs because they were higher paid and just better teaching jobs.

I imagine the present bunch has outsourced it completely.

Support our troops my ass.

My trust varies as a function of population density. In cities (ahem London), I don't trust a soul and assume that everyone is a psychopath, the whole lot of them.

Outside of cities (ahem London), I find that the people are generally sterling in terms of politeness and willingness to do a favour. Witness the number and quality of bike locks required in London compared to those in Cambridge (flimsy) and those in a country village (none at all).

I find the children feral in London, whereas non-London children I can actually have a reasonable conversation with. I basically think that humanity being packed in like rats in an area with limited resources fosters a bad mood and a sense of selfishness in everyone, including myself. I don't think it's healthy, and I want to get out.

My own school in hicksville USA was rife with politics and a bit of bullying but not of the fisticuffs sort. I think this was because it was a fairly large school with a big catchment area, and also because a good number of us were bored and non-challenged and so made trouble for ourselves and others. My brother went to a much smaller school and they were like one big happy family.

The lesson I have learned from this is: stay away from crowds and pretend to be invisible.

My gf is a preschool teacher.

That place scares the hell out of me. All those evil, evil children....

I can't go in there.

Still.

I was a gangly, buck-toothed kid with strange idears and that didn't go over too well with the Oregon public school system. I learned to fight by the time I was 6 and spent the rest of my school years proving it.

Public schools and the student body are, at least in the US, nothing more than free babysitting so the parents can continue to work more hours than anyone else.

It's not like they're learning anything.

All and out bad people and good people are minorities. The rest of us struggle trying to imitate them, trying to avoid them, trying to help or fend off them.
And often we find ourselves being one of the two in the eyes of others, whether we like it or not. Earned or not.
Big cities, busy neighborhoods filled with kids can be swayed easily by one or two 'bad' elements. Turn a group of playing children into a wild pack. Or in some cases, a good influence turn them into agents of change for good. Rarely, but it happens.

Big city dwellers then to grow an armor, too easy being prey in the anonymity of the sprawl. Wary of random social interaction, looking at the horse's teeth thrice. But there's still the weird moments when people reach out for those in need, usually in times of catastrophe.

Trust is a strong word. One is conditioned to be wary, to weigh attitudes and motives before giving it out. Sad that this makes communication and possible bonds so hard to happen. Which in turn helps the paranoid atmosphere. All it takes is for one worthless human being to shatter that trust.

I never give out to panhandlers. Too easy to keep fostering chains of corruption and exploitation, specially when kids are involved. Trying to really make a difference, to make those get off the curb for good is almost impossible but a better pursuit.

I didn't suffer any excessive bullying or harsh atmosphere at elementary or higher school; the occasional fist fight or teasing of those with some very obvious, different behavior, or pranks from the 'veterans' was the most I witnessed. Of course, I was lucky that my generation's public schooling system was in a more or less operational level back then; 10 years down the road I heard first-hand of some not-so-nice events, specially among women, and current situation sounds quite serious.

DreamFP's strategy was put in effect by several students in later stages, but I never did it consciously, just gravitated towards those with similar interests. Yes, sometimes it helped to have one or two 'marketable' skills.

My basic idea is something like, "Separated from the group, almost everyone is pretty much OK." Some people were pretty horrible to me in middle school; but time and again if it was just the two of us, even for a few minutes, they would magically transform into someone recognizably human. We might not really have anything to talk about, but we could actually see each other, outside of that social haze. Later in high school I learned to try to push through that haze as much as possible, and stop seeing every popular person, for example, as an evil ogre to be hated and feared. I was still a total nerd though, and very shy, so I didn't make a very huge amount of friends, but nobody picked on me any more.

And I still believe it now, that if you can talk to them outside of their entire social millieu, even the most horrible person would probably be OK. Maybe my criteria for goodness and badness should be how well people can remain good even *inside* the group, but I suspect it would be too depressing.

quote:

Originally posted by Trogdor:
Gotta separate "people" from "friends". Here on the WGB I think people are good, decent, I trust them and I hope they trust me.

In the world at-large, the other 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999%, no. They're all assholes, pretty much and they're really really stupid to boot.

have to agree with The Trog.
most people that i interact with on a day-to-day basis, excluding family and friends, are just unbelievable. i spend most of my time laughing at them up my sleeve or just being flabbergasted by things that they say or do or say that they do.
does this make them "bad"? or "good"?
i have no clue.
much of what goes on though is directly related to the "group dynamic", where if the "leader" says/does something so does everyone in the group.
this is not only IRL but online as well...
which is pretty frustrating a lot of the time, as i was raised to think for myself! and expect others to do the same.

I guess it seems to me that most people are taught, via a variety of methods, most of which are "hidden" or unspoken, to divide things in to "Self" and "Other" and that these division are traditionally based on difference rather than similarity and from that springs the rest of it.

People->Black Folks\White Folks->Protestant\Catholic->Liberal\Conservative.

Black Catholic Liberals are less "me" than White Protestant Conservatives.

Even if I still consider them human, and these are examples just in case, they are a much different kind of person.

I look at Mac users and think, "oh, a Mac user" which is "different" from a PC.

This would be in contrast to, using the same mechanisms of pattern recog, saying a person using a computer is similar to me because we are both using computers.

They might be Catholic and me Protestant, but we are both religious.

It's a trick of perception. By which I mean, nothing really changes, except the view.

I think that "bad" people are just using this to create more separation. If I'm a poor black crack-head I won't think much of jacking a rich white square, since that person can't understand me.

Most Jews were "Germans" too, no? I mean, grew up there, spoke the language, worked, lived there.

I think most "Good" people tend to see people more as "just people" or more like themselves.

And of course value judgements come in there, another word for the same things.

I don't like people that tail-gate on the highway. So I put them in a box of "people I don't like", but, at the same time, I know some people that drive that way, but I like them.

There are feedback loops of isolation as well I think. I don't like child molesters either, but, nobody likes them, so then I would expect they will isolate themselves from "us" and that isolation will give them a kind of freedom ('nobody understands me, I'm so alone, judged') to act immorally.

If you are not part of "the tribe" then the rules of the tribe don't apply to you. So we create a series of onion like "tribes" which we feel better or worse about.

Some folks are rude to customer service reps on the phone. They are already frustrated and they expect to be frustrated by the whole process, and the jerk they are talking to is just a cog in a blind machine, and they have to read a script, and they can't really help you, and fuck them anyway, I'll yell if I gawddamn feel like it.

I like to think phone service people are just people like me, and they probably deal with frustrated "assholes" all day, so I try to be nice to them. Because I think of them as part of my tribe.

The more inclusive a person can be of people in their tribe-structure the more humane I feel they behave.

And the reverse. Serial Killers are kinda a tribe of one. Everybody else is sub-human scum.

Gangs provide a tribe that others are clearly outside of. Being a Cop makes you part of a tribe that other people "can't understand". So does killing somebody in combat, being in the military, or reading books by a particular author (I admit I tend to be baffled by people that don't understand, know, and adore Billy G books. How can they even really be "readers" if they don't dig this shit? Baffling!).

So I think we then impose our ideas of Good\Bad on others based on our understanding of, or projected perceptions of, their actions, and how that relates to our internal tribe-structure.

quote:

Originally posted by lithos:
All I know is that you're a fool if you search for one solid platitude, one sole truth.

That may or may not be true.

Except Jesus of course.

quote:

I think most "Good" people tend to see people more as "just people" or more like themselves.

To paraphrase Terry Prachett: All evil starts when you stop treating people as people.

('Course, treating people as people, i.e. as much a person as yourself and of equal worth, is a learned skill. It's arguably quite natural to think of yourself as the only real person in the world, surrounded by meat bags.)

I like fuldog.

quote:

Originally posted by fuldog:
All and out bad people and good people are minorities. The rest of us struggle trying to imitate them, trying to avoid them, trying to help or fend off them.

Probably a better approximation of the half-formed ideas on the subject rattling around in my head than what I posted earlier.

Very nice and well thought out post above, jbx (and the rest of you too). Been talking with folks about Mr Ahmadinejad, and thinking to myself how easy it is to slip into 'Oh, he's just a madman, his motivations are not accessible to me'. Whereas it doesn't take much empathy and decentering at all to get a sense of why the things he does and says make perfect sense to him.