Humans are inherently good.

Ok, my bad, I misinterpreted your statement. But just because a person is a good person that doesn't mean they can't do wrong things. My statement, Humans are inherently good, does in now way mean that humans can never do bad. Just because you a bad thing does not make you a bad person. There are thousands of cops and soldiers who dedicate their lives, and in many cases give them up, to protect their family and country. These people kill, hurt, break up families and ruin certain peoples lives. Are they bad people?? No of coarse not they are protecting people. If a cop and a criminal both have a gun pointed at each other, and the cop shoots the criminal. Does this make the cop a bad person?? No, he was protecting himself and the general public. Just because a person kills another person, depending on the circumstances, does not make them a bad person, it only makes them a good person who's done bad things. Now obviously killing people is not a good thing, but there certainly circumstances in which killing someone can be justified and do more good then harm. Shoplifting. Ok to use your statistic (every 1 in 11) that means that there are 10 in every eleven who don't shoplift, or in other words 270 million people who don't shoplift. Thats far greater odds. The majority of the population you are speaking of don't shoplift. Like I said earlier, the vast majority of people do not go around harming people simply because they can. The percentage of people who intentionally cause suffering on other people simply because they want to is very small. The majority of people who regularly inflict suffering on others do it because of situational pressure, i.e. they had a rough childhood, they have poor financials or their addicted to an illicit substance. Now obviously there are many more reasons why people do bad things, but just because a person does a bad thing this does not make them a bad person. Situational pressure is not an excuse to claim hurting others is not bad, however it is the reason why it happens for the majority of situations. To put it another way, when a baby is born it has done no wrong and so according to your logic is a good person. So as soon as that kid grows up and steals a quarter from their moms purse or blames a broken toy on their younger sibling they are a bad person. Your reasoning assumes that in order to be a good person you must never do any wrong, EVER. When I said "Humans are inherently good" I did not mean there are no bad people. Of coarse there are tons of people who could very easily, by both our standards, be declared as bad people. Humans are born good and can become bad people later on in life, but we are initially good. No person is born evil, and when they grow just naturally having the desire to harm others. When I say "Humans are inherently good" what I mean is when we are born and even at a young age (and in many cases to an older age as well) we are good. Whether are not we change later on in life is not the point, as you have pointed out the world is not a happy-go-lucky place, the point is that humans are initially good and many of us stay that way for the majority of our lives.