most people are capable of feeling empathy towards other humans, but some are psychopaths;
empathy can be turned on/off depending on whether the other person is perceived as “in my group” or “outside my group”, which happens for various reasons;
care for other people is balanced against care for myself;
there may be strategic reasons to appear better/worse than one would be otherwise, e.g. one can help others to signal wealth, or hurt others to signal they are not to be messed with;
even when people agree on what is good, it is often difficult to coordinate on sharing the costs;
people with good intentions may do bad things, e.g. because they have mistaken beliefs.
I probably forgot a few important things here.
My personal approach is that most people are good, but the few bad ones can do disproportionate damage—it is much easier to hurt other people than to help them, easier to lie than to find out truth, easier to break things than to fix them.
This makes a lot of sense. It also still supports social contract theory in a way.
I like that you started off by stating that it’s complicated. That is pretty much the best thing you could do when approaching something that is, well, complicated, because all too often people will try to offer a very simple answer to a very complicated question.
It’s complicated:
most people are capable of feeling empathy towards other humans, but some are psychopaths;
empathy can be turned on/off depending on whether the other person is perceived as “in my group” or “outside my group”, which happens for various reasons;
care for other people is balanced against care for myself;
there may be strategic reasons to appear better/worse than one would be otherwise, e.g. one can help others to signal wealth, or hurt others to signal they are not to be messed with;
even when people agree on what is good, it is often difficult to coordinate on sharing the costs;
people with good intentions may do bad things, e.g. because they have mistaken beliefs.
I probably forgot a few important things here.
My personal approach is that most people are good, but the few bad ones can do disproportionate damage—it is much easier to hurt other people than to help them, easier to lie than to find out truth, easier to break things than to fix them.
This makes a lot of sense. It also still supports social contract theory in a way.
I like that you started off by stating that it’s complicated. That is pretty much the best thing you could do when approaching something that is, well, complicated, because all too often people will try to offer a very simple answer to a very complicated question.