Do You Believe Most People Are Good?

Before switching to the country station and catching Luke Bryan’s tune, I’d been listening to the local news:

Police arrested and charged three people in a ghastly killing of a pregnant teen in Chicago. Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, 19, disappeared late last month after she went to receive an offer of free baby clothes from a woman she had communicated with online. Ochoa-Lopez’s body was found Tuesday in a garbage can in the backyard of the woman who had offered the clothes. She had been strangled and her unborn baby forcibly removed from her womb, police said. The baby is in grave condition at a hospital. Two people, including the woman who police say lured the teen to the home, were charged with murder, while a third person was charged with concealment of a crime. -CNN

A native Chicagoan, I’m all too familiar with shocking headline stories that highlight gang violence, smash and grab incidents, school shootings, and the mistreatment of the downtrodden such as our veterans and the elderly. Until recently, I was able to sit through accounts of these on the nightly news. Bad news is commonplace, but it hadn’t soured my broader opinion of humanity. Tonight’s grim radio broadcast combined with an unfortunate incident in the O’Hare parking garage has tilted the dial on my bad news mood meter from mildly tolerant to extremely negative.

Last week, I ventured out to NJ to help my pregnant daughter move.  I parked my car in the attached parking garage at O’Hare. When I returned to Chicago, I found a big red ticket under my windshield for an expired registration.  This made no sense. I had proof in my glove box that my license plate sticker wasn’t due to expire until late July. I strolled around to the bumper of my car and saw a naked square where my decal used to be. Someone had peeled off the decal I’d paid several hundred dollars for a year ago.  For the missing sticker, I was punished with a sixty-dollar ticket. Luke Bryan’s hit song, “This world ain’t half as bad as it looks” has catchy lyrics, and that’s all. The words don’t ring true.

As far as the song’s basic premise that “most people are good” well, that is a debatable point. I don’t believe there’s an ounce of good in the people that murdered Marlen Ochoa-Lopez. I believe that whatever good bounced around in the folks that stole my car registration sticker is over-shadowed by their desperation and/or greed. While I’m capable of “forgive and make amends”, I’m annoyed by the inconvenience of these petty thieves. I can fix the transgression done unto me, but no one can fix what happened to Marlen and her baby.  

I guess I could look harder for proof of the better side of human nature, but the local and national news media do not showcase those stories often enough.  I am capable of discerning random acts of kindness, but often my neck aches from the effort. Perhaps Luke Bryan should rename his song, Most People Used to Be Good, because from where I sit, a lot of folks are letting their badness trump their goodness.  

As I look beyond the headlights of my Tahoe on this long dark highway, I’m searching for the positive side of life that Bryan’s song evokes. Certainly, we need better public role models.  Definitely, positive public news stories should be consistently aired. However, simply believing that most people are good is irresponsible, naïve and dangerous.

I haven’t lost my “faith in all mankind” just yet, but I do not “believe most people are good”.  Sorry Luke Bryan.

Feel free to refute or corroborate my comments.  I welcome both.

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