Thats easy.
A good person would be selfless because its good.
Since humans are self serving and hedonistic by nature this does not happen.
Everyone is self serving in their own way. Therefore no one is good.
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I would disagree with that.
Empathy is something all pack animals have, it is necessary for communication and cooperation. When you see someone hungry/sick, you feel a little hungry/sick inside. That leads to altruism.
So both egoism and altruism are in human nature.
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How many people would look at the starving man on the side of the road and actually help him out?
Few enough that your theory doesnt hold water.
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Thats a mistake on your understanding.
People dont give them money out of a sense of right they do it in public places so others will see how generous and kind they are.
No action that is motivated by a desire for others to think well of you can ever be truly called good since it was entirely selfish in its motivations.
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Really, acting good in a crowded subway train before the eyes of total strangers who will forget your existance in 30 seconds? That's some way of gaining popularity :D
Doing good things is bad because it didn't really came from the heart? Teenage maximalism if I ever saw one. Usually peoples' actions are determined by more than one thing, it's like in physics: several forces act upon one body and it moves in the direction of their summary vector.
But you have a point here, humans are social animals, so their actions are determined by society more than their "nature". People try to act in a way that is considered good in their society, not necessarily in front of the others. It is our super-ego that is formed by the society in early childhood and that judges our actions from the moral side.
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Actually, altruistic actions can be caused by Altruism (you want to make sure your genes live on and can spread further, so you help people you share genes with = family), Egoism (you help others because you know you'll have a benefit from it, e.g. approval by peers), Collectivism (you want to help your group and thus help yourself) or Principlism (you have your principles and you act upon them). Empathy doesn't matter here.
And anyone who helps others out of sheer empathy is a weak human being and will soon and easily be exploited by someone smarter and more pragmatic.
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Good is boring! Now if you excuse me I have heads to shit on.
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Everyone know that The Sims is changing everyone to sadistic murderer because of the evil swimming pools or fireworks in house without door evil laught Don't worry. Killing in games is not bad. Killing in real life - yes.
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Since I'm bored and got nothing else to do:
Don't trust anyone, ever. Everyone, repeat, everyone is looking out for themselves first, and others second.
Sure, there are people who help others, seemingly uncaring for the risks they take upon themselves. Now, some of these people are simply very strong-willed people who are firm in their principles and ideals and would die for others if need be. While this is admirable, it's also a waste, with a will that strong you could do so much better than protect the weak. And even they do it to be respected and admired by others, thus increasing their power over others => they too serve themselves first. The others are simply fakers who pretend to be saints, but lack the willpower to be altruistic in a truly challenging situation.
Now, how to know who's good and who's evil? It's simple: There is no good, and there is no evil. They're simply social constructs (yeah, I know, that phrase is overused these days), to make somewhat peaceful co-existence between humans even possible. Those who stick to the societal definition of good and evil are weak and either lazy- or simple-minded, and refuse or are unable to think for themselves. You're a human, so think! That's what your brain is for. Make your own rules, your own ethics, your own philosophy. Obviously, if your rules are too much in conflict with the rules of society, you're fucked. But let's just say you're smart enough to figure that out on your own (which I doubt, since you made a thread like this here).
Bottom line is: Do your own fucking thing. Don't give a shit about the others, they shouldn't matter to you, as you don't matter to them. If you find people you connect with, people who understand and accept you the way you are, great, you found a friend. Your treatment of friends should obviously be different to the above, you shouldn't completely ignore them and stuff, but since they're your friends, you obviously have a sincere interest in them and their wellbeing. But you must always remember that friendships, even great friendships, can break. And the worst enemies are former best friends, so don't be too trusting, and if you ever tell something personal to someone, make sure you know something personal about them as well.
TL;DR: Think for yourself. Don't give a fuck.
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Well, I can't help you then. You seem to be the kind of person who is too nice for his own sake. People notice that sooner or later, and they'll make sure to exploit that weakness, which apparently happened. You just have to man up and accept that you can't last in this world if you keep helping others and not looking after yourself.
If you keep giving and giving and expecting nothing in return, you'll end up with nothing but disappointment.
btw, I just checked your profile, you really are in university? I kind of expected you to be younger than that. Let me guess, you had rich parents and never had any problems in life until now? You have the naivety and blind trust sheltered kids tend to have.
Anyway, the only thing I can tell you is: Only trust those who earned it. Never put yourself at a disadvantage for someone else, unless it's a trusted friend (or your partner, but that's a different thing altogether). So, in your case, you shouldn't have given that book to your 'friend', it gave you a disadvantage and in return you got nothing, he doesn't even seem to care about you.
Just think about all the times you helped others... How often did they return the favor? How often did they even give you something like a thanks and not take it for granted? How often did they turn you down when you needed help? Maybe you'll find everything in order, but maybe it'll dawn on you that none of your kindness was ever returned.
Overall, you have to live your own life and do it the way you deem right. If you can live with being exploited and being walked over again and again for the rest of your life, so be it. On the other hand, you'll be more sympathetic to most persons and maybe you'll be a happier person than the likes of me.
This is about everything I got right now, if you want you can add me though, I wouldn't mind.
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I haven't found a single answer here that I like so here's mine. This will borrow heavily from Thomas Hobbes "Leviathan" and basically tries to explain where morality comes from if you don't have a supernatural being to create it for you.
The idea is that at some point before there was civilization, there were no common morals. If you bashed someone over the head to steal their apples, there was nothing immoral about it. The person who lost their apples might feel that your theft wasn't fair, but in the end it wasn't immoral because there was never any presumption that you would not do what is in your individual self-interest.
Now, lets say that you and another person both find an apple tree. You could fight over the apples or you might both decide to agree to share the apples. If you make an agreement to share the apples, then you both benefit. You do have less total apples for yourself, but you also do not risk injury in fighting over them. You both might also agree to defend your tree against any 3rd party who tries to take from the tree you both share. At this point, Hobbes writes, it would be an immoral act to break that agreement by breaking your word.
Lets say it gets more complicated. You and your family group are living in the area near a small, quiet river when another group comes along. Knowing there is enough space and water, you agree to share it with them rather than fight them off. They live downstream from you and included is the agreement for mutual defense of your shared land along the river. Some time later a 3rd group comes along and wants to settle and farm across the river from you. The same agreements are made for the 3 groups to share the land and lend aid for mutual defense.
A year passes in peace before the farmers across the river from you decides to divert some of the flow of the river inland for their crops. The water is diverted just downstream from your family's land, but still upstream from the group on the same side of the river from you. Cries of outrage from the downstream group are met with surprise from the group across the river. "We never agreed not to move the river!" Shout the farmers to the downstream group. "You agreed to help defend us from aggressors and that's what these farmers are now!" The downstream group cries out at you. If the two groups fight is your family indebted to defend the farmers, the downstream group, or neither? Rather than fighting, if the downstream group moved upstream and diverted the river away from both of you would that be moral?
Basically, once you have more than two entities making agreements, it may not be possible to morally hold oneself to the agreements made. Instead of individual agreements, Hobbes writes that a "covenant" is needed. The three groups would get together to made a common agreement that all members must abide by. These articles might be called laws. The simplest way to form a covenant would be to decide on one person, a 'decider' who would choose the outcome of disagreements and write new laws (Hobbes was a monarchist.)
Once a covenant is made it is immoral for you to break any of the laws of this new society's covenant. No matter how barbaric or arbitrary these laws are, you have given your word that you will follow them. By not leaving when you come of age, you have given "Implicit Consent." This is the reason why in many places today you can have dual citizenship until you turn 18. You can still leave the land owned by those who are a part of this covenant of course, but by doing so you will be outside the protection of their laws. This is where the term "outlaw" comes from.
So there's some ideas on where moral/immoral (read:good/bad) come from. If you take evil to mean 'very bad' then I guess this might give you a starting point toward answering your question.
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Now this isn't foolproof as most people would agree that legality!=morality, but I think its an interesting take on the subject.
I have a couple of specific problems with Hobbes here. One is that in present day, the whole world is covered in nation-states and there is little wilderness left to move to if you don't agree with a nation's laws. You will pretty much be in the jurisdiction of some entity no matter where you go.
Also, lets say hundreds of years ago a covenant was made that the decider of a land will be a particular man and his oldest male descendants. If generations later, the majority of people want to change the form of government can they do it morally even though there is no clause in their covenant allowing them to? Edmund Burke says no. He writes that the ancestors of the current and future peoples living in Great Britain have already decided what is to come of those who reside in this land.
Thomas Paine says yes. Paine writes that there are no two peoples further apart than those who have yet to be born and those who have already died. It would be impossible, he writes, for the former to have their destinies irrevocably controlled by the latter.
penis
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They're not set in stone. Your perception of good and evil is really subjective. Like incest, it's all relative to what you think.
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There really is no good or evil, it's all subjective. Just a matter of conforming to the current society's rules or not. This is probably the most self-centered/self-serving society of all time. If you want to survive you should be alert, aware and similar (yet different).
The a general rule (if you are a machiavellian sociopath not letting people walk all over you):
Good=advances your goals
Bad=sets your goals back
Rest=irrelevant
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Morals are not completely subjective. There is a science of morality. We can scientifically prove that going out killing random people does not produce a comfortable and happy society. There are certainly issues where we disagree, but that does not mean that science has nothing to say about morals. It should be obvious that religion definitely not a good place to look for morals, go for a scientific approach.
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