I believe that people are essentially good and that no one can do bad if they truly believe that it is wrong. I know no person that I have ever met would truly do something evil just for the sake of evil.

Really? You've never met anyone like that? Half the people I know would ''GLADLY'' shoot people and take their money if it weren't for the laws keeping them in check. This mentality has to have ''some'' proof, if the alternative is still alive.

You can easily get away with most crimes, sir. And most people do.

Same. Naive as it is, that's why I want to become a lawyer; so I can put away the really bad people and help the people who deserve it. It IS naive, I know, but I'd prefer naivite to crippling cinicism.

Although for most people, I could agree, I have met at least one person who has done something evil simply because he wanted to, and did not admit regretting it. However, for the rest of us, there is also the problem of unintentional evil, well-intentioned evil, Values Dissonance and insanity.

I believe so heartily in this mindset, that I can always view the good in people, even those who grind my gears. All of my memories of people I have met are fond, even for the meanest. For example, I had one of the meanest 5th grade teachers in Elementary School, and yet I never realized how strict she was. Sure, she put me in a desk in a corner next to a window where my back got burned, and she yelled at me on my birthday for saying 'sorry', but I could never call her 'a mean teacher' during class, not because I was afraid of earning her ire, but because I just couldn't see it. And even today, I still can't see it. I'll stop here so that my example doesn't get too long, but just know this: Everyone, even the people who are called evil or mean, are good in at least one way, and I just have a talent for seeing it.

I don't know what it is about that, but you, sir, horrify me.

Me too. Except if this is meant to be satirical.

For literally the first time in this troper's ''entire'' twenty one years of life, someone actually ''forgave'' him when he apologized and admitted he screwed up. And guess what? They weren't doing so because an adult or authority figure told them to, they weren't doing so because they were going to have privileges withheld like the only times his sibling forgave him. But then the person who did so said I was being melodramatic when I said it was the first time anyone had ''ever'' done that to me. (For the record, this troper also rarely gets any apologies - so little I didn't even ''know'' someone actually said they were sorry to me once!)

A belief of mine, and consequently people who believe that HumansAreBastards bug me. Before you state that Hitler was a human, remember that Gandhi was too. One of my core beliefs is that anyone has potential to be good - not everyone lives up to that, but they don't necessarily exemplify humanity.

Though Hitler probably felt he was doing the right thing too, there's a downside to RousseauWasRight.

That's why this troper believes that people will, in general, do things which ''they'' think is right, even if we don't agree with them.

This troper's view of humanity is halfway between HumansAreGood and HumansAreMorons. As far as she's concerned, there is no such thing as a person who was born evil.

This troper acquired this belief after she started noticing the prevalence of HumansAreBastards on this very site. It was so bad that I couldn’t even get through a random, ''completely'' unrelated page without somebody making a snide comment and potholing it to HumansAreBastards. Long story short, I took it perhaps a bit too personally, and then went through a period where I wondered if all the good people I knew--including me--were all evil deep down, and would never be able to overcome that evil, even if they always had the best of intentions. It wasn’t until later that I decided that being on the verge of misanthropy cheated me out of a lot of good, and I couldn’t live with that anymore, so I started looking for the good in everybody. While I know that we’re flawed by nature, doing this helped me to believe that the good at least outweighs the bad. There’s still evil in the world, but I know it’s not all we are and all we’ll ever be. It’s enough to help me enjoy my life a bit more, at least, because I don’t have to ''constantly'' wonder if I’m still a bad person despite my best intentions.

You know what sickens me? People who don't understand why people think that HumansAreBastards. A lot of people get bullied, screwed around with and just generally treated like trash for no reason. People get killed, raped, brutally beaten, tortured and the list goes on. There are people out there who kill themselves, because nobody treats them with even a tiny amount of decency. So everybody should at least understand why some people think like this.

(Original poster here.) Please don't think that I don't understand. I realize that some people have better reasons to think like this than simple childhood bullying or a few bad experiences, even though I wish it didn't have to be like that. I'm truly sorry if I've offended you or anyone, because I didn't mean it that way. I do think you make a good point, and I've since edited the post to reflect my current views on things, and to be more tactful. (Of course, I didn't want to mess with your comment, because I don't know if that would be considered proper etiquette. So, to future readers, if this whole thing doesn't really make sense, that's why.)

Well, you didn't really show any understanding in your first post, but your edit made it much clearer. No you didn't offend me directly, but I think your first post would have driven my best friend into an hour long rant of how she thinks that ninety-nine per cent of all people are evil and only act nice to benefit themselves. Bad experiences can make you paranoid and cynic I guess...

I feel that,if it wasn't for this trope,there ''would'' be such a thing as a real-life CardCarryingVillain-that,no matter how irredeemable they may be, if they are physically capable of empathy, they can show it. Even if it's small.

This troper doesn't fully agree with RosseauWasRight, but the predominance of HumansAreBastards and CrapsackWorld gets very tiring after a while. It is a very narrow view to assume the worst out of everyone and everything around you, and there's more happy endings than there appears to be.

I believe that the majority of humankind is good and (mostly) selfless, and that even people who seem pure evil have good inside them somewhere; even if they rarely show it, they'll have something or someone they care about or something good/bad they approve/disapprove of. I believe in this so much that I actually had a couple of debates about it with my mother, who later on admitted she once used to feel the same way and has become more cynical over time. She probably thinks the same will happen to me (she said she didn't want me to get hurt because of my idealism/"naivety") but I won't let it. I also try to do whatever I can to help others, and want to work in a charity shop over the Summer. There's no point saying humans are good if you can't do your best to prove it yourself.

Me and my older sister are really different in this respect. We were both bullied rather extensively, to the point of wanting to die, during both primary school and high school, but despite this we both managed to have friends and now we're perfectly fine. But because of this, my sister thinks that HumansAreBastards, and that you should immediately distrust everyone you meet. Literally, an extract from a facebook conversation I had with her: " You could always try being like me: Think that people are out to get you, then be pleasantly surprised." I'm actually really annoyed that she has this point of view, because I went through exactly the same things she did, and I'm perfectly fine being an idealist and an optimist - hell, it really annoys me when people like her patronise me for being so "naive" and telling me that I'll eventually learn to be cynical like them - and when she goes on a tangent about how evil people are, I'm always really tempted to tell her to shut the hell up and stop WHINING. Because that's what it is, especially since she's even better off than I am: She's at university, she has a wide network of friends, and she has a boyfriend. Compare with me, who has friend but can't hang out with them that often, no boyfriend and is worrying about whether she'd even pass college A Levels. Next time she does it, I AM calling the bitch out.

I also believe in this trope. I believe that humans are born pure and are good in nature. There are bad people, but those are simply people that allowed the bad to corrupt themselves. No human that isn't naiive lacks this corruption, but there are many, countless humans that easily overcome it on a daily basis.