People are Good

It's not an Earth shattering revelation, it is in fact what many others think; people are good. I feel that 99% of people are walking around following their own paths are not out to hurt others, and generally speaking, want good things for others even those they don't know. So why doesn't anyone trust anyone else? How come we've gone from respecting to fearing our neighbors? What happened to goodwill toward our fellow man?

Some would argue that the opposite is true. most people don't care about you. Everyone is only out for themselves. Being uninterested in strangers problems is just human nature to protect ourselves from pain, be that pain emotional or physical. That we're hard wired through millions of years of evolution to be this way, basically we can't help it. I know this is not true 'human nature' and evolution of how people view ourselves is not just an individualistic endeavor. The people of Benin proved to me that you could trust others. I did things there that I would never do in the United States. I was able to have an on-going bar tab at a few places I would eat at, I accepted rides from strangers, and I basically hitch-hiked around a 3rd world country. Don't get me wrong life wasn't without it's frustrations, but people there take your problems as their own and try as hard as they could to realize your goals, and share in your happiness when success was found.

What happened in the west? Now people don't even make eye contact with strangers, let alone talk to them. Is it really so hard to make connections with others without technology getting in the way? There's too much fear in our society. There are commercials about identity theft, doing background checks on your friends and hidden cameras which watch your baby sitters. What happened to trusting people?! Growing up, I never locked the door to our house, my babysitters were the neighbors children, and I would go swimming at the local pond with many other people.

Now people are afraid, and that type of lifestyle in the United States is dying. It makes me very sad to see the society become more and more distrustful of each other, to stop looking at those who live around them as neighbors and more as criminals. I feel that you can trust the vast majority of people on the planet, but the distrust that's been perpetuated in society doesn't help foster this reality.

A new goal that I've set for myself is to trust strangers, to reach out, to prove to the world that 'people are good' isn't just some sort of romantic sentiment, but rather a reality.