I'd like you to think about the people you know. Not the people that you hear about on the news, or whose comments you've read in that YouTube feed; I'm talking about the people you have person-to-person relationships with: friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, people in your church. Are they morons? Or are they more or less smart and thoughtful? Are they hateful, selfish, and wicked, or do they try to do good and -- most of the time -- succeed?
Now think about that other group of people: the people you know through news and rumor, the people you know through sound bites on forums. The people you know only through other people. Are they more or less wise than the people you know personally? Are they more or less virtuous?
I'll go first: the people I know are imperfect, but they're fundamentally kind and decent. They try to consider their actions and do the right thing -- even the people I don't agree with or even get along with all that well. In contrast, many of the people I encounter online or in the news, or hear about through word of mouth, seem stupid, uncaring, and venal.
Since I can't get all of your perspectives before finishing this piece, I'll make an arrogant assumption: you're all like me. You think that the people you know are mostly good, and you think a lot of other people mostly aren't.
I bet if I sought out the people we both think are uncompassionate idiots, they would answer the same way too.
There are a couple of possible explanations for this situation. For instance, it's possible that society is partitioned into groups of people who are either almost all good or almost all bad. However, the people in the bad groups are so out of touch that they don't know it, so they report the people in their own in-groups as good.
Another possibility is that the people in each group have basically the same characters as those in all the others. If that's the case, then the real culprit in our poor impressions of one another isn't that other person; it's us. We don't do a good job of understanding one another's perspectives. Perhaps we also don't do a good job of presenting ourselves and our values to others.
Before you smirk and answer that of course it's the first one, remember: you can't tell the difference. If you're in a cadre of assholes, your standards and values are so debased that you don't even know it. Sorry.
Presumably, you'd like to give yourself the benefit of the doubt. This holiday season, consider granting the same benefit to others.
