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Discussion » Statements » Rosie's Corner » T'is said that you can always find what you seek. If you look for the good in people you will find it. Is there good in everyone? Hitler?
RosieG

T'is said that you can always find what you seek. If you look for the good in people you will find it. Is there good in everyone? Hitler?

Does an infinitesimal amount of good offset a mountain of bad? Where is the offset?  50/50? If there is no authentic good then people will lie to create it. How valuable is a mountain of good if it all based on lies? SIGH. It doesn't matter. People believe those they like/prefer and disbelieve those they dislike/have contempt for. Truth doesn't matter at all. People will keep alive what they believe to be true by whatever means necessary. Human nature. No one escapes its clutches. No one. Ever.

Posted - January 15, 2018
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Responses


  • 6477
    Almost no one is all bad... no, it doesn't offset the bad
      January 15, 2018 4:01 PM MST
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  • 113301
    But it does/may/can/probably exists. A human being that is 100% evil. I wonder if politics was designed for them? Thank you for your reply Addb and Happy Tuesday to thee! :)
      January 16, 2018 1:55 AM MST
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  • 46117
    It is hard to call someone good when they have evil lurking in their hearts.  

    They are troubled, sick, dysfunctional and have a long way to go to be good.

    That doesn't mean they are not capable of some niceness, but it is usually self-serving.   
      January 15, 2018 7:40 PM MST
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  • 113301
    Of course you know of whom I am thinking Sharon. I wonder how many more like him there are? Thank you for your reply and Happy Tuesday! :)
      January 16, 2018 1:57 AM MST
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  • I think truth matters.
    It's no coincidence that every moral code of every faith extolls truth as a primary virtue, nor that atheists value it just as much.
    It is practical.
    It causes all aspects of life to thrive at their optimum.

    We humans are fallible because we are born knowing nothing,
    because we all experience desire and aversion,
    because we do not always know the best way to get our needs met,
    because empathy is a fragile and easily wounded faculty,
    and because we develop habits of unmindfulness.

    The old maxim to look for the good in people can be useful.
    If we are looking for the evidence of what is good, and if we find it, name it and encourage it, we help one another to become better people.

    Certainly there is no point in making up something good for appearances' sake.

    Ari and I recently went to an arthouse cinema to see "The Promise."
    It's a new film about the Armenian Genocide.
    I imagine that's the diaspora that brought your forebears to America.
    I'm guessing that trauma will be inside you the way the Holocaust is still inside the descendants of Auschwitz, like my Ari.

    102 years ago, the Turkish government ran a military campaign which murdered around 1.5 million Armenian Christians.
    In "The Promise,"  Michael, a young Armenian man who is studying medicine in Istanbul, is rounded up by the Turkish authorities.
    It's well worth seeing if you can - and has a wonderful ending.

    I mention this, because the film shows, in a complex way, how there can be goodness in evil people, and evil in good people.

    One small, perhaps dubious, compensation is that totally evil people are at the extreme end of the bell curve, and hence so rare that it's a fluke if we meet one. 


    This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at January 16, 2018 1:58 AM MST
      January 15, 2018 9:56 PM MST
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  • 113301
    Thank you for your very thoughtful, helpful and informative reply to my question Hartfire. I think you know my history. Every Armenian family was touched by that evil. We all have stories of what our ancestors suffered. This is one of the reasons why I am so connected to the Jewish people. We have a shared history though they lost millions more and their suffering was at the hands of the Nazis in ovens and ours was at the hands of the Turks on death marches. The goal was the same. Ethnic cleansing. I do believe 100% evil exists. Where it seems tempered by a little goodness I think that "goodness" is artificial/fake. I'm not sure where to put the "good" people who witness horrors and either pretend they are not happening or defend them. Are they 100% evil? They might as well be for all the good their "good" does others. There is something about evil existing when good men do nothing. How many good people are just standing by silently letting bad people do bad things?  Happy Tuesday m'dear.
      January 16, 2018 2:05 AM MST
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