[psadauskas]

Human beings mostly are. People mostly support their neighbors, and selflessly help each other in times of crisis.

The problem is the 5% of us are sociopaths. We let them have all the money and power because they're the only ones that want it. Then we let them use that money and power to convince us that the "REAL" problem is the people with no money or power in the neighboring political region (the border having been drawn by a sociopath).

[Legend2440]

You should read up on the banality of evil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

Regular people, not sociopaths, are responsible for most of the evil in the world. There is no tiny minority of 'evildoers' that we could root out and be pure from.

Other bad things happen because of unintended consequences or the collective behavior of many people. Climate change or deforestation are not caused by greed or scheming CEOs; it's a side effect from the actions of billions of people individually trying to better their lives.

[psadauskas]

I'm familiar with it. The "banality of evil" in that book isn't about regular people, it was about the leadership of the Nazi party willing to go along with the Holocaust for personal power, then trying to get out of responsibility for it by claiming they were "just following orders". Those aren't regular people, those are sociopaths.

Regular people don't all independently decide to "do evil". There is banality in the ones that agree to go along with it, to save themselves from being ostracized or mildly inconvenienced. Do they perpetuate evil? For sure. But are they the villains responsible for it?

The "evildoers" are the tiny minority of sociopaths doing the convincing, because it nets them more personal power, and they don't care who they hurt along the way.

There is a huge amount of injustice in the world, morally speaking I should be out there fighting against it with everything I have. But I'm also the sole breadwinner for my family and I have a mortgage, so I mostly keep my head down and try to survive. Does that make me an evildoer? I sure hope not.