Hi,

I think that trying to look at it from the perspective of innate goodness or badness of an individual really misses the point.

In my world view, everyone basically has the same motivations[0]. You can understand this in terms of what philosophers call "negative freedoms"[1] - freedom from hunger, freedom from pain, etc (the linked wikipedia article doesn't fully convey this sense, but it's what I learned in philosophy class). People, basically, want to "eat, drink and be merry".

Individuals naturally adapt their behaviour to satisfy these freedoms - for example, you get a job so you can be free from hunger and free from danger, among other things. Of course there are positive freedoms and aspirations too, but the basic stuff, like not being hungry, or wanting your kids to do well, is pretty much universal, and deeply informs my view of the world.

Anyway -- as an individual, pursuing your desire to eat, drink and be merry seems like a pretty harmless way to go about life. But if that individual joins a group, and some people in that group tell them that the reason they can't get a job is because <insert group here> has <insert cause here> - then their behaviour will reflect that group dynamic for all the reasons we already know, and that behaviour will become self-reinforcing within the group itself. You can see how this has played out in US politics recently; it's very obvious and I don't think I need to give examples.

The problem of groups comes about, in my world view, because groups are completely different from individuals. It's far harder to change the opinion of a group, than it is to change the opinion of an individual. It's really a scaling issue; once you get a group of similar people who reinforce their own beliefs - for example, that certain other racial or ethnic "out-groups" threaten their ability to meet their needs - then they are going to feel justified in taking action against those groups.

There is no question that the actions of those individuals and of that group are bad, because in my worldview everyone is equal and nobody deserves to be hurt when they are just trying to "eat drink and be merry". But the perpetrator, too, was just doing what they thought was right, in order to achieve the same goals. That they were misguided is entirely different from them being "bad people".

That doesn't make the actions of the individual OK, but it obviates the notion of people being innately bad. To be clear: if they do bad things then they still need to suffer the full consequences of the law for their actions (the law's role is not to punish people for being bad, but for doing bad things). It's never OK to hurt people for any reason. But it's senseless to say if an individual who likes puppies, looks after their kids, likes a beer after work, donates 10% of their income to charity, and is also a racist, is "bad", if the latter attitude is the accepted behaviour of the group that they belong to.

I feel like I need to be super clear here: my world view is that racism is stupid; racists do bad things; and the leaders of racists groups are scumbags. But humans learn by observing, so a group member who's a racist is, at worst, generally redeemable.

So, in my world view, it makes no sense to rank people in general in terms of their individual goodness or badness, because I suspect that most people are basically good; I know this because I can walk the streets of my suburb and not get stabbed. It certainly *does* make sense to rank group leaders in terms of good or bad, because groups ossify group behaviour; the very behaviour of in-groups that I pointed out above can be weaponised by unscrupulous people, which includes the obvious historical figures and many, or perhaps most, politicians.

So - to sum up this overly long post - I believe that individuals are almost universally good. Groups, on the other hand...

[0] Clearly, this is not absolutely true. Some people have pathologies which maybe make them unlike this - wanting to harm people etc - and some people are willing to hurt others for personal benefit. But in my world view these people are very much in the minority.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty