Here's my take on human beings.

Human Beings Are Mostly Pretty Weak

We do what we think other people approve of, pretty much. Under the right circumstances, as the Millgram and Stanford experiments demonstrated, people will do what those around them expect them to do, especially if told to do so by authority figures. It's not that hard to get people to torture. Most men will rape in the right sort of mob scene. Most people will steal. Almost everyone has been complicit in bullying when part of a group (the corollary to this is that the people you have to really watch are the ones who like shoving people around one-on-one with no witnesses. They're the sickos. Picking on people in a group is just dominance behaviour and the way humans show what the hierarchy is.)

Most people, bottom line, do what they're expected to do. Put them in a torture camp, and pretty soon they'll be torturing. Put them in a hospital and reward them for caring for people, and they'll do that too.

Some People Aren't Weak

What's always interesting about these sorts of studies and experiments is that no matter how hard you push them, if you've got a large enough sample - some people won't torture. Some people just won't kill. Some people won't steal. Some people won't tolerate corruption and look the other way. Some guys won't rape. They just won't do it. We tend to concentrate on the top line figures, but it's interesting to me that some people aren't all that effected by social pressure.

I would add that this goes for the bad seeds too. Some people really are scum. Most people can do scummy things, but they do them because they're weak and seek the approval of other people. And in doing them they may find them fun (yeah, evil can be a gas), but later they're generally wracked by remorse. But some people don't have that remorse. Some really get off on plucking the wings off of flies, of making people squirm, and don't have the empathy to feel anything is wrong about that. They lack the "it could be me" ability that is required for true moral feeling (or there are certain other ways you can go wrong and not feel bad about it, more on that in another article, perhaps).

More After the Jump

This leads to my rule:

90% Of People are Weak, About 5% Are Really Good and About 5% Are Really Bad

On good days I make that 80/10/10. It took me a while to realize this, honestly - not that there are bad people, and weak people, in the world. That was always dead obvious. But that there are good people who aren't weak, who have ethics, who are kind, and who can't be easily swayed by the crowd into doing the wrong thing. Quite a revelation, really.

This Is A Hopeful Thing

You might think that such a philosophy isn't a hopeful one. But, in fact, if most people can be swayed to either good or evil - well, I consider that hopeful. Build a society, or a community, where the norms are of kindness, justice, compassion, mercy - and people will respond. And, in general, while there is a sick joy in evil, I do also believe that people prefer to be good, and to think of themselves as good.

The anecdote that I like to use to illustrate this runs as follows. Some years ago a friend where I worked at the time came to me with a long list of complaints about co-workers. This one was a fastidious jerk. That one's work was sloppy. The other one didn't understand what he was doing. Etc... And none of them were willing to make time to help my friend, and if they were forced to they tended to do a bad job.

Here's the thing - that wasn't my experience of any of those people (and the list was extensive), except one. When I went to them with a problem they were helpful, they did good work, I didn't generally have to beg or threaten to get their help. I liked most of them.

And, of course, they knew I liked them. They knew I respected them, and thought well of their work, their ethics and their kindness. Because they knew I had a good opinion of them they wanted to keep that good opinion - they liked that someone thought they were hard working, kind, competent and generous and they were willing to do the things necessary to keep that reputation.

Same thing when I think back to teachers. Which ones got the best work from me? The ones I though believed in me, thought I was smart and competent and did great work. For them I'd go overboard, study, rewrite and work hard. Why? Because I wanted to keep their good opinion. Because I wanted to live up to what they thought of me.

They held out an image of who I could be that I wanted - a person worthy of their respect. And so, by and large, that's what they got from me (not always, but more often than not.)

It has been my experience, in general, that most people live up or down to my expectations of them. If I act like I think they're scum - they act like scum. If I act like I think they're good folks, they act like good folks.

And I think this can be generalized to society. What we expect from each other, in aggregate, is mostly what we get from each other.

And yet, of course, each of us individuall feels like there's little we can do to change the zeitgeist. Yet, together, we are responsible for it.

Still, I take it as hopeful that people do respond in this way and I feel that people do prefer good over evil, in aggregate.

When asked to be good, that is.

Somehow we seem not to ask anymore.