Are people fundamentally good?

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I'm curious to see where people stand on this as well as where their political ideologies rest. I heard something suggested and I'm wondering if it holds true here as well.

I believe the question has no meaning, since what is seen as "good" varies, and what "humans are fundamentally" is either impossible to know or means nothing more than "what humans are, period". The whole "state of nature" idea means nothing, because this ideal state doesn't exist outside of some dead philosophers' twisted mind. In the end, humans are generally selfish, but not malevolent, which ranks as Neutral to me anyway.

I don't see myself as conservative or liberal.

I think it's a meaningless question. Anyone talking about 'good' and 'evil' is selling something. We're regular apes.

My tendency is to see it that way as well, albeit I still generally tend to think that 'good' and 'evil' can work in a utilitarian/materialistic sense. I'm less worried about the solidity of the question than whether people have a knee-jerk reflex.

to me being bad means to do bad things or to hurt people in a deliberate and persistant manner.

being good means to be mostly good and to do things which do not hurt people except in unavoidable situations.

everyone does some bad things but not everyone who does bad things is bad - it all depends on the seriousness.

I believe people are fundamentally good, but that we have a f***ed up sense of justice and that is the cause of most of the world's ills. Also we submit to the leadership of psychos rather than putting them in hospitals where they can get help.

Conservative, and neither are necessarily true. Humans are fundamentally flawed. I believe every human has the capacity to be good as well as bad (working on my own basic understanding of the two as it's relative to one's morality)

I think people are fundamentally...people.

Okay, so that's a cop-out answer, but the thing about it is that humans are constantly trying to reconcile a whole lot of different imperatives. Obviously selfishness is a big, gigantic, important one - survival is, after all, one of the most powerful instincts any creature possesses. But survival bleeds into a sense of duty to the society that enables that survival, a society that normally also imparts strictures meant to be seen as 'moral' or 'right'. Mutually exclusive paradigms tend to view each other as threats to their own well-being, which leads to conflict, demonization and reactions not unlike reflexive survival instincts where people lash out against other people that they view as being inimical to their own group, or family, or self, or morals - or all of the above.

That's at least part of the reason people turn to leaders, elected or otherwise - because it's psychologically easier to let someone else make the decisions on where the priorities lie. Granted, these people also direct the society that supports and enhances the various parts of the whole (i.e. the subjects), but they also symbolize a set of ideals that their people can rally behind or reject, a baseline that everyone can begin at no matter what direction you're going in.

The problem tends to be, though, that for every Ghandi you've got a Hitler. Turning to strong leadership is no assurance of that leader's sanity or capacity as a moral actor, but people follow because it's scary to rebel, to try and sort out all of the conflicting paradigms for yourself. Very few people ever do, and they mostly become leaders themselves. The rest, myself included, choose what teachings to follow and what to reject and hope we've got it right in the long run. People basically want to do 'good'. It's their success ratio that's the problem.

From that utilitarian/materialistic sense, the only possible conclusion is that actions, laws or principles can be good or evil; that is, they can have positive or negative consequences, based on a given definition of all these terms. In no way can "people" be good or evil, even less so fundamentally, based on such a definition.

The most fundamental I will go is quoting Machiavelli: the people does not wish to be oppressed or governed by the powerful, and the powerful wish to govern and oppress the people. (In the text, populo and grandi.)

Agreed.

Err...right?

That's kind of what I was hoping to better map with this thread.