Your belief of human goodness went up? Have you been living under a peaceful rock?
It’s also a little inconsistent with at least one other belief on the graph.
it correlates with love, so that checks out.
I think I get it and kind of share a similar belief. Most people are “good,” although I’d use a less morally relative term to describe it: Pro-social. People tend to behave in a way that works well with others. This makes sense if you think about it without getting caught up in all the “humans bad” philosopher stuff. One of our defining features as a species is our ability to work together. We form communities, developed languages to communicate, cultural norms and laws to create agreed upon guides on how we behave towards each other, etc. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if we were always stabbing each other in the backs.
At the same time, there are some unfortunate behaviors and phenomenon that emerge out of these dynamics. In group/out group thinking, an unwillingness to change things if it means causing disunity with the community, etc. And while I think most people are good, there are different people with different personalities, and clearly we have at least some psychopaths who are willing to exploit peoples’ natures for their own gain. Also, circumstances can create constraints on how people behave. If you can’t afford to be altruistic, you might end up acting in a selfish way, although even then that’s not always the case.
The fact that you can look out into the world and feel bad about all the people who are getting hurt, even if you aren’t personally affected, should already tell you that there is this “ goodness” to most of humanity. Otherwise a) you wouldn’t care and b) all those bad people would deserve it anyway. So that is the hope that keeps me from full on nihilism. Unfortunately I also think that there are a lot of other factors in place which make it increasingly unlikely that we’ll be able to organize enough to survive. Wealth disparities and technological asymmetry allows those handful of psychos to wield a lot of power and it’s getting harder and harder to fight back against that.
So yeah, I don’t think “people are doomed even if most of them have good intentions” is that contradictory of a view to hold.
Most people are really pleasant. That creates a power vacuum where the worst are usually in seats of power.
I assume the opposite, OP is actually meeting people in real life and touching grass, instead of doomscrolling and talking to clankers online.
Also, where is this rock, and what’s the rent like?
Hawaii, and you don’t want to know.
the awful big caused the local good to come out here. my community is weird for a lot of ways i refuse to specify for reasons
Human goodness should plummet as well
Someone else suggested that the rise in belief in human goodness is a function of the rise in belief of human incompetence. When you start recognizing that people frequently do stupid bad things not because they are bad, but because they are stupid, your heart softens a bit with regards to their intent.
Anti-abortion is a great example. The majority of anti-abortion people genuinely believe that a zygote is an innocent human life, and terminating it is literally murder. If that’s what they believe, why wouldn’t they do everything in their power to stop it? People are murdering innocent babies!
The more you get to know people, the more you start believing in Hanlon’s razor. Most of the “bad” people aren’t bad, they’re just good people with stupid beliefs.
I love your optimism, but its rather misplaced.
The majority of anti-abortion people genuinely believe that a zygote is an innocent human life, and terminating it is literally murder. If that’s what they believe, why wouldn’t they do everything in their power to stop it?
But they’re NOT doing that.
They’re not promoting sex education, which drastically reduces teenage pregnancy and thus abortions. They’re not working to increase financial and social security for mothers to ensure having a child isn’t a massive risk. They’re not doing to reduce sexual assault of women leading to unwanted pregnancy.
They’re not doing everything in their power, not even remotely close. They’re literally just doing one single thing, and that’s the thing that hurts women the most, in the most ways and empowers terrible men the most.
So, given that they’re actually not trying very hard, and doing things that benefit themselves, one has to wonder if that’s truly a surprising of highly specific incompetence, or intentional.
One has to wonder if that’s truly a highly specific incompetence, or intentional.
I’ll apply Hanlons razor again: These people are stupid, therefore doing “everything in their power” involves using woefully ineffective means to achieve their goal. I have no problem believing that most anti-abortionists genuinely believe that they’re trying to save innocent lives. However, being relatively dumb people means they are primarily driven by feelings rather than logic, and are easily manipulated. This results in them using the means that they “feel” should be effective, rather than proven methods. It also means that the few people that actively are looking to oppress others can manipulate their feelings to make them support means that hurt the people they’re trying to help.
I started feeling a bit this way when I saw that many Trump voters were genuinely confused and angry that Trump didn’t release Epstein files lol
I’ve started spotting more examples of goodness too, not just evil. I rather think society is polarising, with some people becoming more visibly selfish (out of desperation, I think: the more you worry about your future, the less charity you’re willing to extend) and others making a point of being nicer to counteract the negativity.
Part of that will be the influence of media. Outrage apparently sells better than kindness, and particularly where corporate influences are a factor, despair and division are useful to make the populace more pliable. If people are shit anyways, why bother trying to fix anything?
Lemmy is no saint either: It’s easy to jump to conclusions and throw accusations over what might just be genuine error or civil disagreement rather than fundamental hostility.
So instead, let’s also make a point of being nicer and more charitable to each other, and to others elsewhere. Good people aren’t gone, they’re just cowed and overshadowed. Let’s fix that, you and me and everyone else who wants a nicer world. The indifference wins if we stop, so let’s keep going!
I hope you have a nice day, a pleasen start into your year, and I hope you can find that faith in humanity again.
I found myself among some Mister Rogers quotes and artifacts yesterday, of all possible things.
So just for today I’m gonna push back on this one a little bit. I think the goodness is out there, but unfortunately much of our society is kinda designed to separate us from our humanity and mental peace.
A sentence I rarely deploy, but has the ability to stop most adults in their tracks is, “You aren’t being the neighbor that Fred Rogers knew you could be.” It works on Americans. I’ve never felt the need to deploy a social nuke on any foreigners.
I almost used a Fred Roger’s quote for evil, before I caught myself. It was a thread about maga groupies abusing government power for personal agenda. Someone was lamenting how the Supreme Court made this administration above the law, so I almost said “Look for the helpers”. All those groupies and minions are NOT above the law and should face justice for their actions. As long as the charges are brought in three years, it could happen.
Perhaps mass jail terms for everyone depriving human rights or violating the constitution or enriching themselves at our expense or following personal agendas will keep this situation from happening again
Ouch, that line sure as hell would work on me!
But I’m not just an American who watched his show. I’m local to his area and I’ve been to the actual studios at WQED multiple times, on top of all the show artifacts I just saw the other day.
Someone had a very sad childhood to not believe in human goodness as a kid
Childhood is when I learned that it is rare
Complementary the believe should rise that some adults know what they do. It’s not bad luck or human nature. Some people really know how to manipulate the masses.
I disagree I’ve seen people doing horrible things to eachother for decades
That’s what I mean. Somebody made them do it, one way or the other.
Gravity is globist propaganda, wake up!
/j because Poe’s law
I feel like the deeper you get into physics, the more that statement makes sense. 😅
I’ve seen some flat Earth videos where they legit “explain” how gravity is fully explained by the flat earth constantly accelerating upwards.
That would explain all the giant rocket engines (i live on the bottom of the earth)
Funny, the thing I believe less and less in as I age is human goodness. Must be a generational thing.
Also, gravity seems to be increasing every morning.
Human goodness and society are two different things. There are many great people that do amazing things that don’t it for credit or recognition or money. Most go unnoticed.
Society on the other hand is crazy and greedy.
Society’s goodness is the average of all the individuals’ goodness that compose it. If society is bad, that means a majority of the people are bad, and some are a lot worse than the minority who are better than the average. It’s not a good outlook.
Where I agree to your fundamentals I think it gets lost in the noise. I think one loud and obnoxious asshole can make many great people look bad. Even if there are more of good stock than bad. You could argue that is a reflection of the people itself. However it’s not necessarily a lack of oversight. It’s an unprecedented event that makes the society look like a bunch of redneck assholes.
You believe in a thing called love?
Just listen to the rhythm of my heart!
There’s a chance we could make it now
Romantic love? No. It’s just people being horny.
Friendship “Love” (友爱)? Ehh… not really… most those who you call “friends” are really just acquaintances.
Sibling “Love” (兄弟姐妹爱)? No… so much abuse…
Paternal/Maternal Love (父母爱)? Sort of, I believe it probably exist somewhere out there, but I got a bad roll of dice this “incarnation” so I got sort of shitty parents…
But at the end of the day, it’s really just brain chemicals.
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Brain chemicals are a thing that exist.
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Your belief in Santa went up? I mean, as long as it helps you avoid the “naughty list”, I guess that’s alright, lol.
Likely for kids. You gotta “believe again”
I’d assume it’s belief in him physically existing as a kid then translating to Saint Nicholas or spirit of christmas, but staying low to represent that it’s shifted.
I really like the idea of telling people that I believe in ghosts more than myself
Wow your love went up so dramatically. Mine is the opposite in a way.
I like using ghosts and gravity as reference lines
Every year I believe that my faith in humanity can’t get any lower. And every year I’m proven wrong.
For me the society’s ability not to destroy itself is at an all time high, but my light blue would be 'the idea that society is sophisticated and high functioning’
What’s raised it?
Getting older and seeing that it hasn’t happened yet xD
I now see the checks and balances in place to prevent society from actually destroying itself. Everything is more managed/controlled than you’d think it is, in a typical “western country” like the USA or Britain.
You dont see the coordinated efforts of several right-wing billionaires to influence elections and public thought through corruption and social media, as well as the actions of private equity firms swallowing up any market that lets them, raising the prices on basic things like food and housing… all that, doesn’t frighten you?
I hope you’re right, but I feel like we’re barely prepared for what’s coming next.
The point is that they do see all this, but it hasn’t died yet, which means it’s stronger than initially believed.
that’s fair
CO2 ppm just keep rising, little by little. Covid response showed we could do a lot more, but we just don’t want to.
Ah, good ole gravity. No matter where you go, there it is.
Human goodness and ghosts are down for me, aliens is up.
I want to believe 🛸
