Why be good?

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't really buy into the idea of 'being good' in general.  

Then I guess it's a good thing that you don't have to buy into it for you to express that as a ubiquitous human attribute, eh?

I'm skeptical of most things that tell me I shouldn't act in my own best interest because of some vague concept.  

Who tells you that, being good certainly doesnt tell you that, and you don't have to ignore your own best interests in order to be good(as you well know).  

Seems like a trick to try and control me for someone elses' benefit.  I think Nationalism, God, and Being Good are in the same boat together. 

Skullfucking babies, pushing old ladies into traffic...whats your score this week on either? Who is trying to trick you into being good, though, I wonder? Not that it isn't possible, def not making that claim, taking advantage of our better natures is a great way to manipulate us, perhaps it wouldn't be..if our better natures weren't so well developed and compelling? If you can get a person to believe that something they're doing is good...it doesnt matter how heinous that thing is, we'll trip over ourselves to get it done, eh?

Of course, if we can work together in the leanest times to get by, by all means, go team us!  But what happens when that's not the case.  I would kill and eat you.  That's just how it is.  Maybe I'm alone in this.

You might just be mistaken, rather than being the lone potential cannibal in the room.  Groups of people starve to death together without eating each other.  That's why instances of cannibalism-in-catastrophe are so sensational...they are rare. Just to be safe though, I'm putting you on my list, with the christians, of people I won't be turning my back on if we're lost in the woods. Happy now? :wink:

   Maybe you'll all graciously let yourself and your families die so that mine may live.  And I'd appreciate that.  But I would be using a different strategery.  I'm guessing all these people stockpiling guns are thinking along the same lines. 

I doubt that I'll ever find myself in a situation where I actually have to choose one over the other.   Many hands makes light work brutha!  Course..if I see you eyeballing my kids with a fork I'll hit you over the head with a brick and then bury you....so don't make me waste the meat. OTOH....I could use your corpse for dog bait, and then my kids would have food. We'll thank you for your service, as you would thank us for ours, rest assured.

You said this is a dismal view, but I don't think it's necessarily bad.  I wouldn't judge a lion for pulling some kind of cannibalistic bullshit. 

You are not a lion..neither am I.

 It's not malicious, for example.  Just how the world works.  I think we have some better problem solving skills than a lion.  And obviously, a few thousand years of civilization has taken some of the edge off.  But I don't think it's so far gone.  I think it's percolating right under the surface waiting for shit to go down. 

You may think that, but the data just doesn't bear that out in this instance. 

As for where my opinion of people comes from...maybe doorbuster sales at Walmart after Thanksgiving?  People using social injustice as an excuse to grab a free cell phone in Baltimore.  Streaming game of thrones even though one could easily afford to pay for it.  Xenophobia.  Bombing/invading countries for oil.  Befriending terrible countries for oil.  Millionaires stealing even more millions from people who don't have much.  Plenty of murder and rape going around.  Gang violence.  Etc...  And this is in a pretty nice country in a time of Cheesecake and sex. 

Don't forget about the people running around switching the dyes in hair color bottles! 

If we go back a few hundo, or look elsewhere, we have fun things like mass slavery, genocide, absurd poverty, preventable starvation, huge wars, and on and on.  Look at good ole nazi germany.  "Hey, gas some jews or die."  - "Welp, guess I'm gassing some jews!"

Maybe you -are- alone in this after all.........is that something bubbling just beneath -your- surface? Seems to me that you might have left out the bit where a significant number of people took those dicks to task on that count. Just cautioning against this one sided appraisal of yours.

The key component to much of human history being one person trampling on another person to get something they want.  Convert want to need, and all bets are off is my guess.   Although, smart people wrote a book that says something else, I've been told. 

Oh ffs.....if you're going to say that at least be a bit more accurate, we trample -other- groups -as a group-.  Cooperative competition..lol. Maybe you should stop worrying, and learn to love the bomb?