alt Hacker News> What's a "good person" exactly?
I was taught that a "good person" tries to actually care about their fellow humans and other lifeforms on this planet enough to try to live a life that contributes toward a positive future that we'll all benefit from, while choosing not to support the hatred, greed, and ignorance of those people who would work toward the opposite of that. Problem with that sorta fantasy is that it doesn't exist except in a really rare handful of "mutant" humans who are generally killed (or "destroyed" in other ways) for their beliefs that we could have a "better world" that isn't built on suffering and greed.
Replies
Chances are, people are just expressing disagreement with you about what "positive" really means. And/or "benefit", "hatred", "ignorance" etc. Like, not what the dictionary says, but what in practice counts or doesn't count as an example.
People are good but you have an unrealistic standard for good
Most people do try to live a life that contributes toward a positive future that we'll all benefit from, while choosing not to support the opposite of that. There aren't exactly large groups of people organising around the principle that they want everyone to be worse off. It'd be pointless and they'd get crushed; militarily if needed. Only very fringe groups organise around negativity. People aren't very good at bettering themselves & others but that is clearly the direction they're trying to go.
As for "care", that is one of those unreasonable expectations. You can't tell who cares by looking at them and it doesn't do anyone much good for someone to be caring but incompetent. We get a lot more out of hyper-competent people who don't care but nonetheless do a very good job of making the world better.