Every coin has two sides. Everybody I know is a walking paradox, capable of both the petty and the sublime. I think we're mostly all capable of swinging one way or the other, with the right stimulus. Under some sets of circumstances, we rise to the occasion. Under others, we don't.

If people are essentially, necessarily, fundamentally Good, how is it that we are so susceptible to mob mentality, which is capable of driving people to extraordinary behaviors - and I don't mean extraordinary in a good way, I'm actually thinking of the genocides in Rwanda. I'm using extra-ordinary in the sense of extreme, out of the ordinary, unnatural, not normal.

Or think of the behavior of ordinary German people under Hitler. Some helped Jewish people to escape or survive, but some put on uniforms -and dressed their children in little uniforms- and rounded them up.    Where did their Essential Goodness go?

So I have trouble seeing it in those terms. It's easier for me to understand it in terms of both good and evil existing simultaneously, with neither one defining the whole. What kind of circumstances cause or allow one or the other to dominate at any given time is another question.

This is Faith, of a sort - that good exists in just about everybody - but not the same as faith that everybody is essentially good. Seen as a bell curve, with people like Mother Teresa (who are only good) way off to one side and people like Jeffrey Dahmer (who are only bad) way off to the other, most people fall closer to the middle of the curve.