If People Are Evil

Now imagine a world where people are depraved from birth, where badness is an embedded desire in each of us. People would have to be trained to be honest, generous, and not to harm each other. Goodness, if it is known at all, would have to be handed down from outside of humanity. When mobs gathered, they would riot and loot, killing each other over things as trivial as soccer games. Our charities would have to work overtime to bring in donations. Heroes would be exceptional. And there would be other traits:

Big government would be bad because power would be likely to corrupt our leaders, and we would want them to have as little power over us as possible when that happened. Our leaders would have to be monitored through a system of checks and balances.

Our leaders should be chosen by their wisdom and how well they have overcome their own bad impulses, but they still may not get elected because the voters are foolish.

Wealth should not be redistributed without the consent of the donors. The recipients would have to be closely monitored to ensure they didn’t spend the money foolishly.

The military would be crucial for keeping the population safe from foreign aggression, which could come at any time, for no particular reason.

The police would be necessary. The more densely populated an area became, the more it would need police.

Whatever people want to do should be measured against standards of right and wrong, and prevented when wrong.

Government programs would need to be strictly measured by their stated goals. To fail to do so would invite abuse.

Children would need lengthy training in standards of right and wrong.

Christianity would be good because such people would need a savior.

Sounds like one of our major political parties, doesn’t it?

If all of the above were true, the full half of the population who disagree with those positions would be easily explained, because people are naturally foolish and wrong. People believing in these positions would have a difficult time persuading others because no one likes to think of humanity as basically evil.

Of course, if people are not inherently evil, then none of the above would be true, and such positions would be indefensible either logically or empirically, so their adherents would have to resort to one-line sound bites and name calling, instead of analyzing issues for hours on talk radio.