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People Are Basically Good—Discuss

There is more criminality today than in past centuries.

  • Agree.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Disagree.

    Votes: 4 57.1%
  • Impossible to know.

    Votes: 3 42.9%

  • Total voters
    7
A

Anonymous

Guest
A couple of things that waggle my bemusement-nerve are the assumptions that criminal behaviour today is more prevalent than in the past, and the assumption that people who profess a 'respectable belief system' (e.g. Xtianity, Islam, Buddhism, or Science) must be, at least, well-intentioned.

How many on the board share that view? I suspect a lot of you do, but I'd like to quantify it. In case I'm wrong.

(On the record, I connect the assumption of greater modern criminality with the assumption that religious people are basically good because of my kid sister's Church. Her fellow believers are -apparently- predominantly ex-cons, saved by 'The Love Of Christ™' from a life of crime. Fair enough. If that's what it takes to give them the strength to stop ringing cars or housebreaking, good luck to them. But it seems to go hand-in-hand with a (to my mind bizarre) belief that all religious people are prevented from criminal behaviour by their beliefs, and seemingly welded to that belief is the notion that today's crime levels are higher than at any time in history. This conviction is prompted, so far as I can see, by both their own experience (of being lawbreakers and mixing with other lawbreakers and subsequently breaking from that life) and the notion that a society that is largely secular in nature CANNOT AVOID being more criminal because so many people lack Christ's Love in their lives to keep them on the straight-and-narrow.)
 
I think it's the term 'Good' that I'd have real problems with. "People are basically sociable. Discuss." would make more sense.

That way one could fit in visions of Society like that portrayed in 'The Wicker Man' where what's considered the 'common good' on the island in the film, is possibly something quite different to what most people watching the film might consider to be 'good.'

Then we might get on to discussing the differences (if any) between what Rightwing and Leftwing Christians consider to be 'good.'

Why don't people rip into each other more often? ;)
 
People are basically selfish (the Human Race wouldn't have progressed very far if we weren't). This is why there will never be a Utopian crime-free society, no matter how high living standards rise, nor how much money is ploughed into welfare. People will always want more than they need (food, water and shelter), and will usually want more than they already have.

One of the blessings of religion is that it encourages people to be content with what they already have; especially as they have the promise of paradise to look forward to. In the Western world, we live in a society which encourages people to be discontent with what they already have and desire more: a faster PC, a bigger television, a trendier wardrobe, etc etc. I believe that we live in a society which, although much richer than any previous society, is fundamentally discontented, and likely to become even more so.
 
If history demonstrates anything, it is that what you believe doesn't matter in the slightest. Who you are is what that counts, with some input from your particular situation. Religion can in fact increase criminal behavior, if it shuts off the conscience mechanism, which it often does. For witness, consider all the people in America today who profess to be saved by the love of a man/god who repeatedly said: "Judge not lest ye be judged," "Don't get so busy looking for the mote in somebody else's eye that you miss the beam in your own," and "Love thy neighbor as thyself," etc.; yet whose daily life is filled with overt hatred of gays, the poor, Moslems, even people with dietary habits or taste in entertainment different from theirs. These people are far too busy condemning others to notice their own sins of pride, avarice, envy, and wrath. Consider also that the response of people who are unjustly persecuted is often to become what they are accused of being.

I dislike human beings in the aggregate intensely. However, since as a species we're so rotten, any individual who manages to overcome the taint and behave differently gets full marks from me; while their common-and-garden bad behavior strikes me as merely wearily predictable and not worth hating them for. Except for That Spoiled Brat in the White House. (Hey, I'm human - I have to hate someone!)
 
"People are basically selfish (the Human Race wouldn't have progressed very far if we weren't). "

I would say the opposite: people are basically unselfish, or the human race would not have progressed at all. Ask anyone with children!

Now, you can talk out selfish genes etc, but basically all of us owe our lives to the benevolence of other people for the first years of our lives.

We may one day have a utopian society, the problem is recognising it. One person's utopia is anothers nanny-state.

In practice, crime in these parts has plummeted in recent centuries because enforcement is so much better. Read about Mayhew's Victorian London and you will see what I mean. I did some research on medieval county records a while back, and the number of homicides for the size of the population was phenomenal - the murder rate was amazing.
 
Zygon said:
How many on the board share that view? I suspect a lot of you do, but I'd like to quantify it. In case I'm wrong.

(On the record, I connect the assumption of greater modern criminality with the assumption that religious people are basically good because of my kid sister's Church.
I think our understanding is largely limited by what we know rather than what we would wish to know, ie: it's subject largely to experience rather than research.

the way I have viewed it is that life now in terms of criminality is not vastly different to life in the 1730's when highwaymen took to the roads robbing people for the prize and the prestige. The lawlessness we currently experience is something that authorities would struggle admitting to to the same degree as in 1888 when Scotland Yard was cited as the cause for "crapulous decrepitude" (taken from the Pall Mall gazette during the Ripper murders when law enforcement was under considerable public scrutiny). The argument that method of detection and of committing crimes has vastly changed is a truism but one that offers no substantiating relevance. We may say that statistically we are safer living with a moat around our house, or that figures have fallen but it doesn't deter the over all nature of the game.

The system is always subject to scrutiny in much the same manner as it is always subject to exploitation.

People are basically good? I think people are people, and as people we do right and we do wrong. It will never change and I don't believe that it ever really gets better. society meanders along, and works its way into a safe place till eventually we lull ourselves into a false sense of security and then eventually the wolf at the door gets in and bingo, we go from a peak to a slump again. I mean how often do you call the police when you see or hear a burgular alarm or a car alarm? Or do you just get irritated when you hear it and think, when is someone gonna switch that damn thing off? We make ourselves feel safe and forget.
 
Wembley said:
I would say the opposite: people are basically unselfish, or the human race would not have progressed at all. Ask anyone with children!

I agree. Human history is one of co-operation. We wouldn't be where we are today without it. Sure, there are some situations where it seems that this is perhaps not true, but the general rule is still one of co-operation. Misanthropy has always seemed to be a completely misguided concept - a sort of 'not being able to see the wood for the trees' outlook.

I also think that in general this co-operation is slowly evolving towards refining and improving the way our societies work, and the outlook of those people within them WRT how they view the outside world and other people. That said, there are certain elements who may want to back-track from this, but IMHO the tide is pretty much againts them.
 
One of the problems inherent with many religious belief systems is the idea that some actions carried out in the name of said religion can't be criminal because it's divine.


I agree with Wembley. People are selfish because any act, whether benevolent or malicious is basically intended to improve the life or emotional well-being of whoever bestows it.
 
All mammals care for their young. It's true that human infants require nurturing for much longer than the young of other animals, and this is bound to have shaped our evolution. (One theory suggests that romantic love is evolution's way of ensuring that men remain with their partner to help raise their offspring even though they'd be materially better off remaining single) I'm not sure that caring for our young proves that we are basically unselfish. Until relatively recently, the elderly were dependant upon their surviving offspring to look after them, so the act of having children can be seen, at least in part, as an act of self preservation.

Another question worth asking is why are the vast majority of criminals male? Are men instinctively more selfish and less "moral" than women? And if so, why?
 
Some interesting responses so far.

My own reading of history convinces me that people are not so much selfish as basically lazy: by which I mean, if it comes down to a choice between doing something that benefits us (either individually, as a family or a community) but which takes a bit of effort or sacrifice, or doing something that benefits us, calls for no sacrifice but deprives others of what they need, most of us -but NOT all of us- will opt to go the easy route and deprive someone else of something. Be that 'something' food, wealth, shelter, self-actualization or simply peace of mind.

I was actually prompted to start this thread because I'm currently wading through Andrew McCall's 'Medieval Underworld' (Sutton History Classics ISBN 0-7509-3727-0) and was struck by how general lawlessness was in Western medieval society. Indeed, it would not seem to be going to far to suggest that medieval society regarded murder and kidnap as no big deal, and that the fact that they were regarded as a big deal by Regency times (my impression from Donald A Low's 'The Regency Underworld' Sutton ISBN 0-7509-2470-5) was not down to the influence of the Church (in general) or society's 'Great And Good' (in general), but rather the influence of a small, often derided, but vocal and persistant minority who stood up again and again over the centuries to express their opposition to taking 'The Easy Route'.

In other words, I'm left with a picture of humanity being dragged, kicking and screaming and without its consent towards civilization by the misfits and heretics of every age.

(One of these days I must try and finish Colin Wilson's 'Criminal History of Mankind' and see if it paints the same sort of picture...)

As to the notion that men are more inclined towards criminality than women ...bollocks. Our society simply has trouble accepting that women are just as criminally-inclined as the males. Women are the vessels of purity, innocence and the symbols of beloved motherhood. Apparently. God help anyone who dares suggest otherwise. So women just get away with it more. IMO.
 
graylien said:
...

Another question worth asking is why are the vast majority of criminals male? Are men instinctively more selfish and less "moral" than women? And if so, why?
Why are the vast majority of males not criminal?
 
AndroMan said:
Why are the vast majority of males not criminal?

What makes you so sure they're not?
Just because the majority of criminals ain't been caught? (Scary but true. Only a minority of crimes are ever solved. Usually by someone grassing.)

Just because their criminal activity is limited to smoking something you maybe don't think should be illegal anyway? Or drinking before they're old enough to do so legally?

Because they limit their criminality to driving at 45 in a 40 mph zone?

Because they limit their criminality to parking in disabled spaces despite being able-bodied?

Because they limit their criminality to lying to the insurance company about the value of that tacky bit of costume jewellry they lost while throwing up in the gutter at the weekend?

Because they limit their criminality to answering the mobile while performing illegal turns on pedestrian crossings on busy main roads? (I still can't get over that one: and the silly bitch had the gall to glare at me because she had to wait while I walked round her while she was stalled??? Who are these idiots???)

Maybe it depends on your definition of 'criminal', but in my experience, the majority of people are law-breakers at least some of the time. Male AND female alike.

Except me of course. Pure as the driven snow, I am. Honest guv'nor. ;)
 
Well, very simply, more laws mean more crimes. A century ago, there wouldn't be a question of breaking the law speeding, drinking, using mobile phones, etc, etc. Just your normal, common or garden crimes, like murder, rape, burglary, fraud, etc etc.

Maybe people did leave their front doors open and no-one would bother them, but then again, maybe they didn't have anything worth stealing either.

And maybe, while we have much higher stress levels, we have more leisure time these days. Perhaps, in previous centuries, people were far more concerned with eking an existence than whether or not they had the latest X-box and games.

Also, perhaps, the Welfare State has something to do with it; given the very very very small minority of people who do somehow think the world is there to keep them and theirs.
 
Ravenstone said:
Maybe people did leave their front doors open and no-one would bother them, but then again, maybe they didn't have anything worth stealing either.
>snip<
Also, perhaps, the Welfare State has something to do with it; given the very very very small minority of people who do somehow think the world is there to keep them and theirs.

OTOH, I personally don't believe that anyone outside of small remote villages, probably on tiny little islands in the Western Isles, ever left their front doors unlocked. I used to hear about unlocked front doors from my grandmother, and she said it was common when HER mother was a kid. Since then, I've heard people only a decade older than me talking about people leaving their front doors open when their mothers were kids. I fully expect someday soon to hear my niece and nephew tell someone that people could leave their front doors unlocked when their mother and I were kids.

The story always seems to be told about a previous generation's front doors.

And as for the 'tiny minority who think the world owes them a living' -there're far more of them than you'd probably like to think, but most of them actually have jobs rather than claim benefit.

(Mutters darkly to no one in particular: it isn't enough to turn up on time every day -you have to sweat a bit (metaphorically speaking) while you're there. Something that only a tiny minority of the people I've ever worked beside (I've worked, they've read the paper) have seemed able to understand the need for.)
 
Some Buddhist teachings say that people are inherently good - that we already have "Buddha nature" and are in a sense already enlightened - we just don't reallise it, things get in the way. Habitual Greed, ignorance and hatred hinder spiritual development - and it can take more than one lifetime to remove these hindrances.
 
I'd like to hark back to Androman's first post in which (he?) distinguished between sociability and goodness. I think the words 'good' and 'bad' describe two extremes of human nature. But people's ideas about what constitutes good/law abiding and bad/criminal behavior have fluctuated wildly through the centuries (decades for that matter) and across different geographic/cultural regions (and subcultures). I think humans are sociable creatures who tend to conform to the standards of the society their living in. But was the Spanish Inquisition 'good' because it was legal?

I think someone in this thread suggested that even acts of self-sacrifice are essentially selfish. Maybe they are, but then again maybe not. I mean, we can look at statistics and cultural values to draw broad generalizations about human behavior, but how can we know what's in anyone's heart except our own? This idea strikes me as the kind of thing people can use to back up either response to the 'are humans basically good' question. People who think humans are more good than bad can say, "Look at martyrs and heros" and those who think all of an individual's choices boil down to self-interest can say, "Social conditioning led the hero to decide she would rather risk her life than live with the guilt of doing nothing." Both positions are true, just as human beings are both good and bad.

But do we lean towards good and away from bad? I don't think so. Not even in these 'enlightened' times. We conform. All societies recognise that it's in their own best interest to treat fellow citizens justly. Not all societies feel the need to treat non-citizens with the same level of percieved fairness. Hence war. But we also dream of Utopia. We are able to care about people we will never know, who exist only theoretically in our imaginations. Hence we are sometimes able to compartmentalize our selfishness. Because we are complicated, we are contradictory.

There is an older (1980's?) book called "The Mountain People" which if I remember correctly, chronicled an anthropologist's observation of the decline of a (tribe?) of Ethopian or Eritrean natives. Apparently due to a prolonged famine, they went from an orderly, compassionate, joyful society to a group of people who stole food from their own children, laughed at and scolded their kids while their kids lay starving in the dirt and then remorselessly threw their children's wasted carcasses in the trash heap. This drastic change happened in the space of five or ten years I think. And throughout these people's ordeal I presume the anthropologist author was busily taking pictures and notes and munching protien bars. I don't remember him even once mentioning that he tried to help anbody. He interviewed plenty of them though, and went on to write an acclaimed book about their suffering. We can't be basically good. I think we just do what we think we're supposed to. At best, our species' good - bad ratio is 50/50.

(IMO)
 
Zygon said:
The story always seems to be told about a previous generation's front doors

Oh yes. I'd go along with that. In fact, my parents reckon only twerps ever left their front door unlocked ;)

And, yes, some people think the world owes them a living regardless of whether they work or claim. That's true. Serve me right for being a bit generalistic.
 
When I was a kid growing up in a northern Ontario city of roughly 50,000 population, in the 1970s, we'd commonly leave our back door unlocked at night. I wonder if the not-locking-the-doors-at-night thing is related to people living in smaller communities, or at least in neighbourhoods where you knew everyone. When I was a kid, I knew everyone within ten houses of our house, at least by sight, and I sure knew their names even if I didn't know the family. It was a working/lower-middle class area with relatively good stability; people bought houses, raised families and stayed there for years. There weren't new people coming in and out all the time, and they were all single-family dwellings, so there weren't apartment tenants coming and going either. There was very little crime although occasionally someone would break into someone's garage or car; this was fairly rare, and I regret to say it only began happening after some social-assistance housing went up a few blocks over. (yes, I know, correlation is not causation! yet notice it did bring a less stable population into the area and the increase in crime was certainly noticeable)

I suspect the types of communities we live in has a lot to do with it; it's easier to get away with crimes against property or people in a higher population density where you don't know everyone. I'm not counting things like drug use--frankly, there seemed to be a hell of a lot more of that in North Bay than in Kingston, where I am now, maybe because there was bugger-all else to do. Mind you, I live now in a city with a high criminal population (10 or so prisons) *and* a relatively high student population, which taken together is a recipe for disaster IMO. The student living areas experience a much higher rate of break-ins than most other areas of the city, for example; the university areas are targeted by those with bad things on their minds, partly perhaps due to class resentments and also because they know that students have lots of nice things and are sloppy about keeping their doors locked.

People often comment on a general rise in rudeness, which may have something to do with it. If it is easier to get away with socially questionable behaviour in public, and there are no real consequences (i.e. the neighbourhood won't shun you or talk about you if you behave rudely), then perhaps that has something to do with it. (As a teenager, there is no way I could have gotten away with noisy parties, throwing up on someone's lawn, lipping off to a neighbour or keying their car. This would have gotten back to the folks and you'd better BELIEVE there'd have been hell to pay!) Knowing I was under scrutiny, along with a sense that I was NOT the most important scrap of living matter in the universe, probably did a lot to keep me on a relatively straight path. (OK, I did do a lot of drugs in high school, but I never mugged an old lady to get them) Besides, I liked my neighbours and wouldn't have dreamed of doing such things to them. Drug use is probably higher than it was, say, 30 or 40 years ago, or at least it has moved into segments of society which was not drug-using in the past. People often commit crimes to get money for drugs, or so I'm told. ;)

Perhaps kids today are not as supervised as I was, or don't have the same sort of community ties which I had, or are affluent enough and constantly told they're wonderful and special so they don't have the same conscience about committing crimes (or even anti-social acts like mentioned above). It has struck me lately that in Canada everyone seems very confident about what their rights are, yet there is no commensurate grasp on responsibilities. I'm sure this ties in with the sense of belonging to a community in some way (but I've rambled long enough...time to post this and let y'all yell at me)

EDIT: I'm not saying that yuppie kids commit more crimes, but some of them do, and for very different reasons compared to the kids whose mothers are on social assistance, or who grew up in an atmosphere soaked with drugs, violence and general instability.
 
I think the door thing has more to do with the type of house you have. My parents tend to leave their door unlocked during the day, because they can see everyone who approaches the house, and it's easier than Mom having to answer the door every five minutes to the neighbours.

I have my door unlocked out of laziness. It gets locked at night, although it has been forgotten before. The house is sufficiently remote that no-one would approach it by accident, and no-one would check the door by accident. Also, like my parents, you can see everyone who approaches.

I'd agree that the respect thing may have something to do with it. Like when I was a child, I'd stand up for an adult on the bus, and sit on mom's lap, or just stand. These days, I see most kids treated like they're the centre of the universe, to the point that they actually believe it, and believe that everyone should make way for them. Parents who seem to think you should share their world view also irritate me. The kids can't help it, while they're kids, but then they grow up from obnoxious brats to ignorant gits, and then what are you going to do with them? :roll:

Mind you, being an obnoxious, ignorant git is not against the law. It should be. But it ain't.
 
Well, we also had a dog (see my avatar) who'd be tied up on the back porch occasionally...she was no danger to anyone unless they were covered in liverwurst, but she'd bark at strangers. (When I was living alone down here in Kingston I often longed for the company of a good barky dog to keep the drug dealers and general ne'er-do-wells in my building away)
 
Zygon said:
As to the notion that men are more inclined towards criminality than women ...bollocks. Our society simply has trouble accepting that women are just as criminally-inclined as the males.

To quote from some recent goverment statistics:
Men commit more crimes than women. In 2002 male offenders in England and Wales outnumbered female offenders by more than four to one...
Men outnumber women in all major crime categories. Between 85 and 95 per cent of offenders found guilty of burglary, robbery, drug offences, criminal damage or violence against the person are male.

(Source; http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ )

If women are truly responsible for 50% of crime, then there must be something seriously wrong with our legal system.
 
This is a thread that could go on for generations, and in a sense it already has. The definition of 'good' is highly debatable in itself, let alone whether or not people are inclined to good or evil.

To start with, whose definition of good do we use? Moses? Buhdda? Aristotle? Jesus? Good (and evil) is an abstract notion formed by humans - we don't have a 'natural' archetype of good to use as a defintion. It's true that most major religions and philosophy have the same broad, general definitions of good (i.e., mercy, charity, love, etc.) and evil (greed, murder, lies, etc.), but they also have many different contradictions and specifics in their definitions of both.

To me, before you can debate whether humans are inclined towards good or evil, first you have to come up with an accurate definition of both. Then you have to decide if humans have free will or not, whether there are gods or not, etc.

Not to mention, what if someday we finally do meet up with an alien race? They might have a completely different view of morality, philosophy, or reality that we haven't even thought of yet!

Personally, I couldn't say if people are inclined to be good or evil - it's an unanswerable question. But I think the Golden Rule is still the best moral guideline we've come up with so far.

That and The Beatles. All you need is love!
 
The thread isn't about good and evil, but whether there is more criminality than before.

This is much easier to answer because we have statistics for criminality.

Of course, you can still argue about which criminal offences you want to include. 'Hunting with dogs', anyone? :D
 
Wembley said:
The thread isn't about good and evil, but whether there is more criminality than before.

. . . . . and also if (and if so, how) religion affects criminal behavior. But the thread title is "People are basically good. Discuss." Trying to define what 'good' and 'evil' mean in the context of this thread seems on-topic to me.
 
Something that's interesting to me is how often people use an almost reductionist approach and view good & evil or criminality as exclusively a series of personal deciscions. Societies, which surely are a reflection of the individuals who make it up, can be responsible for good and evil, criminality and, umm, good deeds, benevolence (?). Some quite a bit more than others at any given time. But overall, I have to cite one of my favorite quotes, from Martin Luther King: " Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice"

Do have any evidence to support this? No, not really. I guess it's faith. Which is sort of like religion. Or hope, which can be based on things not yet seen. But I believe it. :)
 
" But the thread title is "People are basically good. Discuss." Trying to define what 'good' and 'evil' mean in the context of this thread seems on-topic to me."

You're absolutely right, my mistake.
In mitigation I plead that I was mislead by the poll, which is about criminality.

But, on the whole, I don't see how any society could function (apart from a brutally repressive one) if people were not basically 'good' in the sense of being content by and large not to act purely from self interest. We all essentially accept the 'social contract' , and accept that we don't always get our own way in exchange for peace and stability.
 
graylien said:
To quote from some recent goverment statistics:
Men commit more crimes than women. In 2002 male offenders in England and Wales outnumbered female offenders by more than four to one...
Men outnumber women in all major crime categories. Between 85 and 95 per cent of offenders found guilty of burglary, robbery, drug offences, criminal damage or violence against the person are male.

(Source; http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ )

If women are truly responsible for 50% of crime, then there must be something seriously wrong with our legal system.
I'd accept that. :)

Note that the figures quoted only reflect the people FOUND GUILTY of these offences: and I've read numerous articles over the years that assert that female offenders are less likely than males to be charged even if they are caught red-handed. Large numbers of cases never even go to court, and a disproportionate number of the cases that do go forward result in acquittal, allegedly because juries can often be reluctant to convict rather than because guilt hasn't been demonstrated.
 
I would say when it comes down to it most people essentially TRY to be good . . . but that they get distracted by many many things such as money, status, relationships . . .

I don't think people are inheritantly good though, just that people try to be.

I also used to believe that there weren't any people who were truly rotten, to the core. I have now modified that belief.

-Fitz
 
If one looks at children as adults lacking the restraining bolt of society, I'd say people are pretty awful. There's transparent covetousness, they'll lie right to your face only they lack the guile or cunning to really get away with it (although sometimes the guile and cunning, being more overt, is enough to really make one worry). Tantrums, thieving, fighting, one-up-manship. All pretty terrible.

I think in children it's human nature in the raw, obvious state - we just grow up and learn to hide it better :D
 
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