The problem with the idea that people are jerks is that it encourages people to be still bigger jerks.

I had a classmate who talked about how when people say that life isn’t fair to excuse their misconduct, they are only making life less fair. In a movie, when someone corrupt was talking about how the world was corrupt to defend his decisions, someone
responded with “the world is what we make of it.”

One thing that keeps happening to humanitarianism types is that they become disappointed in humanity. They have compassion for people and seek to help them; then the people they help act in wrongful ways. So there was a situation recently in which my ex-
wife tried to help a woman who’s been through serious domestic violence, only to see her scam me.

This situation is found for example in Paul McCartney’s song “Live and let die”:

When you were young and your heart was an open book
You just said live and let live
But if this ever-changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die.

Here was someone who started out with humanitarian values but decided that people are bad and should not be treated well. Many people in his generation followed that path.

Are people good or are people bad? Anything capable of choice can be either. Most people are some of both. I have yet to meet a person who is completely good, and I have yet to meet a person who is completely bad. But there are definitely differences in
the mix among people.

Someone once told me that he wasn’t the kind of person who would say that one person is better than another. I definitely am the kind of person who would say that one person is better than another. I’ve dealt with people in the Salvation Army; I’ve
also dealt with bullies on the Internet. The first were most definitely better than the second.

Empathy and goodwill are too valuable commodities to be taken advantage of. A person who is empathic needs to also learn discernment. Similarly, many of the naturally more discerning types need to learn empathy. A Russian novelist said that there are two
kinds of people in Russia: Smart and mean, and stupid and kind. This doesn’t have to be the case. One can be both kind and smart.

One thing I’ve seen done by people who are mean and think that they’re smart is emotional violence. They think that anything with feelings is an inferior form of life, and they abuse the feeling-oriented people. The correct way to stand up to these
people is to practice intelligence while affirming feelings. That defeats the meanness without sacrificing intelligence.

Are people bad? Once again, anything capable of choice can be good or bad. Just about everyone is both. Practice both empathy and discernment. And see yourself become a force through which people are improved.

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