That isn't to say that people don't act in problematic ways, but when it comes to creating a better world, we have to change the way systems operate in order to see change in people at scale.
@apodoxus I've spent a lot of my life in different worlds - e.g., conservative and liberal; populated and rural; poor and middle class - and my experience has largely been that people do bad because they have experienced systems or are currently engaged in systems that pressure them to conform as such.*
I've been someone who has been the offensive other in multiple societal segments and I generally see people as desiring to be / do good.
@apodoxus I'm not suggesting everything is deterministic or that individuals don't bear responsibility for their own behaviors - but I see the crush of systems as propagating poor behaviors in humans.
Provide the average human with the fundamentals of existence (food, clothing, shelter, community, work, recreation) with some degree of certainty and I think we see significant improvements in behavior (see the efforts to house homeless individuals before requiring them to stop using substances)
@apodoxus When we see people who continue to behave poorly with such fundamentals provided I think we are usually seeing behavior driven by traumatic experiences, often invoked by systemic problems.
For example, someone who learned they had to lie about their emotional state to their parents in order to avoid regular beatings may continue to lie when it is not necessary simply because the (familial) system trained them to do so.
Divorced from their context this person may be viewed as "bad"
@davidshq I don't see how you would know that about these people you don't know (it's an empirical question), but anyway no I definitely don't think that's true. I'm talking about millions of people who are greedy narcissist entitled shits. Give them what they need and all act like the middle class anywhere else, complain about it to no end and constantly ask for more while stepping on the neck of everyone else.
as dog-lovers, a phase my family uses is "there are no bad dogs, just dogs who were let down / socialized poorly".
i tend to think the same is true of people - people aren't inherently bad but there are plenty of opportunities to be socialized to behave badly and this is true both at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic ladder
unfortunately at the top of the ladder, bad people are generally rewarded for reinforcing the systems that created them
I think dogs are a good analogy. If I'm nuancing things a bit I'd acknowledge that environmental/biological factors may in some cases play a determinative role but that the percentage this is true for results in "exceptions that prove the rule" rather than undermining the idea of socialization as primary behavioral driver of humans.
@apodoxus lol. I'm a little surprised that is what you took from my response. In my reply I thought I noted that part of my reason for posting the hypothesis was so I could get feedback from others on their experiences - for example your experience.
Your experience doesn't prove my hypothesis incorrect but it does force another question to the surface: what is the objective reality of our subjective perceptions of others?
Do I walk through glasses with rose colored glasses or do you
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