Everyone Wants to be Good

Or at least, this is the way I see people.

Hey team, I am back here. I’ve been kind of busy for the last month so I could not write as frequently as I used to, but since everything has been calm the last few days, I think I will be able to return with some exciting new posts.

Today I would like to write about goodness and why I do think goodness in people is given by design, resulting in a world where good people are more common than bad ones. Most people inherently desire to be good, and that is the truth.

What is Right and Wrong?

What is good? What is bad? Who defines what is good or bad for anyone? This is way too philosophical and almost impossible to define. Things that for me are good due to my environment may be viewed as sacrilege by other people, and that is okay.

I do not want to define the things that are right or wrong. I just believe there are some natural universal traits in humans that make them want to improve themselves, help others, and contribute to something bigger than themselves.

The Desire for Virtue

Morality and principles: nature vs nurture. As a society, we have defined rules to distinguish what we should and should not do. Or maybe not? As I told you in the previous section, there are some things that depend on the environment, but there are others that are fundamental pillars of a society, since we are simple social animals.

We are animals that have survived by cooperation and altruism. Going back to ancient times, as a species, we discovered that by helping each other we were more likely to survive. Cooperation pays even among rivals, so things like empathy and compassion were born and developed within us.

And yeah, perhaps you think in this world being selfish is better, and I missed the source for my previous affirmation. But just Google it, ask your preferred LLM, or whatever, and soon you will find that I am not the only one who thinks we evolved this way. Despite no studies being able to determine if it is true or false, results like the ones obtained with studies like The Evolution of Cooperation make us see the importance of cooperation in a society and how being “nice” in a world where our actions have consequences rewards us more than being “mean”.

The evolution of cooperation

The evolution of cooperation - Discover how trust and cooperation evolve in this interactive game theory implementation.

www.freegameplanet.com

When we are good, people will want to be with us, and most of them will collaborate with us. The world is nothing but a reflection of your own self. There will obviously be some “bad” people—there are always exceptions, you know—but good people are more common because being good rewards us with quite large achievements and the rewards it gives: a sense of belonging to a group, and the possibility of being reciprocated in the future. Today for you, tomorrow for me.

Actions ≠ Person

You may think that a person is defined by their actions, and that would be true if we did not live in a society and receive pressure from our environment. What I do think is that there are no bad people, just bad actions.

We are humans and make errors. We depend on the opinion of others, we want to survive whatever the cost, and those things that are given by nature sometimes make us do things that we do not want to do. I prefer to believe all mentally healthy individuals who have committed any evil act are capable of reflecting on and even suffering for their actions.

There are a tiny number of reasonable cases where an act that is considered wrong was not done for any reason other than necessity, social pressure, or human error.

The Bottom Line

I have faith in humanity despite everything we see wrong around us. Today we are better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today. For every bad person, there are thousands of people wanting to be good, and expecting the best from them is a nice way to motivate them to do their best.

Help me to change the world, be nice!

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