Q: In terms of what you consider good and bad, what are humans naturally inclined to be, if we're naturally inclined toward anything at all?
I believe all good actions are driven by selfish motives, even selfless acts.
You do good because it makes you feel good even if there are no other direct benifits for yourself and it's not even to raise your self esteem then your brain will still reward you with the appropriate endorphines.
That and it's easy to project other people's grief and pain onto yourself , which makes you uneasy so it's best to pretend it doesn't exist or do something about it.
I also don't mind that, it takes a petty person to insist that an action has to somehow be truly selfless. (yeah I broke a rule, sue me).
I think it might also explain why people don't help those who they don't interact with or feel related to.
Foreign people, far away people, anyone who is different enough that the person who would help them wouldn't get the appropriate amount of reward hormones because their brain doesn't make the connection.
We feel bad for mammals but don't mind cooking invertebrates alive or gutting fish alive because afterall they can't communicate through sound or facial expressions or any other means that we can understand, so their pain is not real to us.
Noone gives a fuck about ethiopian children or polio other than the odd few who have been there long enough to witness it themselves and relate to these people. (and even then most turn a blind eye yet still think they are good people)
If people were inherintly good then they would prioritise helping those unfortunate people rather than spend their energy on objectively less urgent causes.
My realistic definition of a 'good' person is someone with the ability to feel good about other people's happyness. (any random people, not just those around them)
A trait not that many people seem to possess, must have something to do with how our brains function.
For the same reason I think racists and otherwise petty and jealous people are 'bad' people, and that there is a difference between random discrimination aimed at groups of people and hating an
individual because of how their actions affect others. (then again that is something most racists try to hide behind...)
I find it easier to be good or considerate accepting that it's selfish, because in the end just doing good for the sake of doing good is pretty meaningless.
Nothing would be affected anywhere in the universe if we'd all die tomorrow or if we blew up the entire planet.
We are just one tiny planet and we're only around for an insignificant amount of time.
Time to break another rule: I believe religion gives comfort to people who are desperate for something to cling onto for meaning, direction and a sense of belonging and to be able to instill a bigger sense of self importance than they really should. (+those who just ape it because that's all they've known all their lives aka the wonderful human trait of tradition)
I also think the happiest people are those who don't need religion and don't worry about the meaning or validity of their existance (which plenty of atheists can worry about too) and at the same time don't need petty problems to give them a sense of direction/raison d'être -I hope the pretentious wording doesn't bother you- and just go with their base instincts.
(I don't count myself among those happy people before someone suggests it's a loaded argument)
Oh and I also believe that the idea behind religion doesn't have to be as bad as it is today, if people just use it as a mantra to better themselves without taking it so seriously or having to weave fairytales around it.
I like the idea of karma for example because it's pretty innocent and harmless in its application, and you don't have to convince yourself it's true to follow it.
But instead we just get people arguing and killing eachother over religion, I bet the guys who came up with the first herding/manipulation religion scam with good intentions would have jumped off a cliff had they known.
People take everything too far, especially religion and religious ideas, anything open for interpretation is likely to get misinterpreted and abused so I dislike religion, a lot.
