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There's some wishful thinking in that I believe.
azstrummer — (archived)

Frank, I so agree there are amazing humans that, in times of personal peril, step up and sacrifice themselves. I thought I made that point clear. I just believe that those selfless souls are not a majority. For every heroic act there's many have that have exactly the opposite trait and become horrible individuals. I don't believe that simply being human gives us the propensity for how we act. I would certainly like to believe there's a basic goodness in all of us but I'm not sure history backs that up.

I liken this conversation to how I view "miracles". If one analyzes only the incidents where it appears that something miraculous occurs, it's compelling to believe that there's this cosmic guardian angel looking over us waiting to save us. However, people fail to add in the "anti-miracles" which outnumber those unexplained events 1000 to one. For every person who's cancer suddenly goes into remission after all hope was gone, there are countless others who die painful deaths. For us to then conclude the cancer remission was a miracle, logic tells us the "cosmic force" that created the miracle sent those others to an excruciating demise or simply sat back and allowed them to happen.

I think the desire to see the basic good of the human animal falls into that same category. We ping on the wonderful sacrifices of the few and ignore the bad traits of the many.

Believe me, all in all my glass is still half-full and I have to hold out hope that humanity is evolving toward a more ethical and compassionate creature but I know that hope also contains an internal rationalization to keep myself sane. I'm okay with that.

Art

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