The times I have tried being altruistic, the phrase no good deed goes unpunished proved to be true. I have therefore been trained to assess how things can come back to bite me before helping others.
I think we're all good to varying degrees and all have "evils" and flaws. Some of us consciously seek to iron those out while others either don't care to improve them or revel in them.
“We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it: We called it mother, called it w**** and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas.” -Herman Hesse (quote on the Santana Abraxas album)
I had an interesting conversation with a Calvinist once. For some reason he wanted to hammer home the point of Total Depravity... I'm still not sure what he was trying to convince me of in the end, just that we're all evil.
I'm not completely good or evil, unlike most people, we filled with shades of gray and sprinkles of both. For myself, I'm an overly altruistic person to the point I put myself in peril (while being very polite) mainly people or individuals down on their luck, yet I'm fairly indifferent towards most people and their problems in general, including the problems of the world and society. In layman's terms, I really don't give a **** about most of the world or society at this point, whatever happens.
