March 28, 2008 · Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ’Here you go,’" Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what’s going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, ’Why are you doing this?’"

Diaz replied: "If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me ... hey, you’re more than welcome.

"You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help," Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

"The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi," Diaz says. "The kid was like, ’You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’"

"No, I just eat here a lot," Diaz says he told the teen. "He says, ’But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’"

Diaz replied, "Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?"

"Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way," the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. "He just had almost a sad face," Diaz says.

The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, "Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you."

The teen "didn’t even think about it" and returned the wallet, Diaz says. "I gave him $20 ... I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know."

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — "and he gave it to me."

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, "You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch."

"I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world."

I don't remember where this was from, sorry. But it's been on my blogger page for forever, and I'd like to know what you guys think. Do you think that this is just a random, isolated incident? Or do you think that maybe people are inherently good?

I for one believe that 99% of the world's population is composed of decent folks. Yeah, some people get into tight spots, but they're just trying to deal with bad luck.

I'd love to know what you guys think...

My feeling is there's a small amount of good people, a small amount of evil people and the rest are nether. Call them neutral if you will.

Wonderful story.

I don't think that people are born good or evil, but many of them learn to be good through education and rules/laws.

That's a really touching story, but I don't think it says anything about the inherentness of good. To me, inherent good would mean that people are born that way. I don't think we have the capacity to think of anything but our own needs when we are babies.

I think that most people are inherently evil and only act good when they can afford to or can gain from it. Maybe a few people like the guy in your story are actually nice.

People are inherently neutral. Nobody is really born being good or bad, I don't think; whether we're good or bad people depends on outside influences.

I think most people do want to be good and help where they can, but that's because we're raised to be kind to others.

I agree with Fabby - people are inherently neither bad nor good. I also, however, tend to believe that we're inherently selfish. If raised to do good and/or rewarded for it, we can be good. If raised to be evil (and/or rewarded for it), we can also be quite bad. Likewise, punishments can have an opposite effect. Social rewards and punishments come in innumerable forms, many of which aren't physical. A smile can be a reward, a frown can be a punishment. It's all a matter of operant conditioning.

Man, I'm kinda proud of myself for coming up with this topic. This group is very intellectual, I believe. Thanks for all the input!

I believe that, since a human is born with no knowledge other than how hunger feels, we're not inherently good nor bad.

... however, as animals, we keep instincts like fear of punishment [which can lead to lying = bad], selfishness [not wanting to share your small lunch = bad], being the alpha [trying to be or pretending to be better/more powerful/richer than others], and so on...

I think when we are born, we are born selfish, not in a bad way, in a survival way. I believe empathy is a learned trait so it very much depends on the environment one is raised in.
Having a compassionate parent greatly influences whether the child grows up to show compassion, but not always. Some people, even when always shown kindness just come out wrong.

I'm very much on the side of nurture. I think that yes you do inherit some of your personality at birth, but nurture goes a long way to shape it. I don't wish to believe that any being is born good or evil though, and that is shaped throughout the trials of life.

I don't think that people are inherently good. I think that people have to fight all kinds of evil, selfish, cruel, obscene, perverse, unjust impulses all the time. Just because someone comes off as a kind, compassionate, gentle person doesn't mean they don't have their times when they'd like to punch someone in the face for a petty slight. It takes concentration, self control, empathy, and conviction to keep our impulses at bay.

Not all people struggle with the same evils. Some people are more susceptible to anger issues, while some are more greedy or covetous. Some people can't help but wear their evil on their sleeves. Some people seem downright angelic, but they have a secret sin that they can hide from the rest of the world.

The idea that people are not inherently good makes sense from a number of standpoints. Many religions believe that humans were created imperfect, or became so soon after creation. And evolutionarily, it would make sense to be utterly self-serving, helping others only when it can benefit the individual. Imperfect and selfish are our base nature, and it takes a lot of work and introspection to overcome that.

I'd have to say that good people are basically ideal products of society. Society goes against nature and evolution; if people in society are "good", they are not necessarily good in nature.

People are competitive, so most people will not treat everyone else exactly equally. This goes for everyone, perhaps even the social worker in the first post; he seemed to treat everyone else better than himself. Which is good, to a point, in the sense that it's not really equality. :/

Well, I don't really like being patronized, so there... >_>

But point taken, there wouldn't be "sin" if people didn't sin in the first place.

I don't think that socialization can be a fully satisfactory explanation. After all, some societies socialize their young to persecute and kill people who don't follow their religion. Some societies value the oppression of women.

I guess it comes down to whether or not you accept that there is objective right and wrong. Then again, aren't many of the wrong things that we do a result of our rationalization that right and wrong are pliable? I personally come down on the side that there is objective right and wrong.

Back to socialization, I also believe that no matter how you were raised or are influenced, you are still responsible for your own choices. Some cultures would try and simplify it for your conscience by saying that you should merely do what your elders tell you, but I was never comfortable with that. He who knows the good that he should do and does not do it sins in my book.

Not necessarily, we are all influenced by our society and implemented with its morals that generally give the belief that everyone is equal, children should not kill others, all religions are acceptable...we have freedom.

Because what really is right? What is wrong? Can you accurately define it for everyone? It's all implemented by society.

What is good, what is sinning? If it's "good" in a society to kill people of a different religion, and you don't do it, is that a sin?

Example: Jew-Arab conflict; Arabs are settled there, but Israel is Palestine, which is guaranteed to the Jews by the Torah. Now we have religious factions that fight over land, which each side claiming to be freedom fighters. Who is right? Who is wrong? Can they both be wrong? Why are they wrong?

These are questions that cannot be answered definitely.

Although we grow up in a developed, free society and perhaps have a narrow mindset of other societies aside from the corruptness often reported by the media, we still cannot say what is right and wrong for other people.

Just because we may not know ultimately exactly what is right and what is wrong, that does not mean that absolute right and wrong do not exist.

And example of what I was talking about is the famous Milgram experiment. People are sent into a room where a "doctor" overseeing some purported education experiment instructs you to give a man (an actor accomplice) an electric shock of increasing voltage every time he gets an answer wrong. Some of the voltages are clearly marked as dangerous and lethal, but more often than not, the unwitting participant will shock the man with these voltages if the "doctor" instructs them to. They continue even when the man is screaming and writhing...even when he loses consciousness.

But a very small proportion of the people will refuse to administer the lethal shock, even when the "doctor" heavily leans on them. These are the hope for our kind. These are the ones to be emulated.

If people had not been able to remove themselves from the thinking of their culture, no innovation would ever have been made. Science would have stagnated. The slaves would never have been freed. German citizens would never have hidden Jews in their houses to protect them from the concentration camps. These people were able to recognize what was right even though they were constantly told things to the contrary by their culture and peers.

You could say that if anything could exist if you do not have proof that it does not. I say that you find the proof before using faith to rely on something.

Is it just that hard to think that you can pull around society altogether instead of having these exceptions like some little inspiring fiction book?

And our culture emphasizes uniqueness.

This is what I cannot understand.

When is uniqueness so orthodox that it becomes conformity itself? Rarely do I see someone on these forums blame themselves. It's always THE MASSES doing bad stuff with a small group of elites doing this or that, or being the salvation of mankind. No offense, but it reminds me of Nietzsche's Ubermensch. Which was a minority group that prided itself on being the salvation of mankind.

How have these unique people done anything at all? If they have, why is society the way it is today? Doesn't it make you wonder? If they were right, and right is good, why doesn't everyone do it? Why are there people that are bad? No one likes to be called bad. By no one, I'm not asking for exceptions.

Point being, you can't possibly HOPE to change society with one or two people. You have to gain at least some support before these people can save anything. And no one likes feeling inferior.

I'm pretty sure that Hitler and his little Third Reich removed itself from the German government, so your little statement about hiding Jews is rather redundant.

But how do you know these people are RIGHT? Sure, I agree with you that they did something that I would respect, but I don't think Hitler respected it when the Franks hid in their attic. Point being, you state your logic so that it implies that these people are the absolute right that you refer to in the beginning.

But how do you know they were right? Nietzsche and Darwin had one thing in common: Natural Selection. But why is Darwin considered "right" by society while Nietzsche is considered "wrong"?

I'm not too sure myself, but Nietzsche said that a certain type of people were good, so it made everyone else mad. But Darwin basically said that humans are more adapted than animals so all people accepted it.

Basically, it's the egotism that comes with power that determines what's right and what's wrong to those without power. If you've grown up knowing nothing but killing and racism/discrimination, then that's normal and right to you. If you've grown up knowing absolute acceptance, then that's right to you. How do you know that either are right/wrong?

It's all your perspective. Not everyone else in the world's. Just because people have similar altruistic beliefs doesn't mean that they are right, even if everyone in our culture thinks like that. Now I'm not saying I support killing people, so don't antagonize me. I just wanted to say that what you think as "right" and "wrong" is your own opinions and that it is definitely influenced by society, no matter how much society makes you want to feel disjoint from society.

It's kinda redundant since these are my own opinions as well. :/

The right or wrong are subject to one's opinions, which are based on experiences, teachings, parent's upbringing, blah blah. You could say that a perfect form of right or wrong doesn't exist, because there will always be someone who doesn't agree, and since good and bad is an opinion, both would be "right", but since two contradictory opinions can't be the truth at the same time, they are "wrong".

2 thousand years ago, following mindlessly what your elders told you was "right". Now, you're suposed to do as you would like other people to do. I believe if it's productive/makes someone happy and does not hurt anyone, then it's not bad. Which would make gay marriage, polygamy, and even BDSM "good". Of course, it's my opinion and there will always be someone who doesn't agree with it, making them wrong in my point of view, and making me wrong in their point of view, so we both would be wrong.


Now about this topic, I already stated that I think people are born with no human feelings, just animal instincts, so they may have some good, but are born with what most consider "bad", and these "human feelings" are teached to them through their lives.