People constantly say that humans are terrible by default, selfish, and violent, but BY DEFAULT, if you ARE a well adjusted human being with empathy, you will ALWAYS feel conflicted about committing violence towards another human, even if they 100% deserve it. In fact, if you kill or severely maim someone, you’ll always feel conflicted about it if you are a good human, and doing it several times (or hell, even ONCE if it’s traumatizing enough) will give you severe PTSD. The problem of humans being terrible to each other is always created by indocrination, propaganda, and the fact that being a selfish idiot is rewarded in capitalist society. This is one of the reasons why I think humanity is inherently good, and that evil people are the ACTUAL deviants, who just happen to be rewarded by the way society has been structured for a very long time (even before capitalism).
The claim that humans are always terrible by default is false, but claiming the polar opposite is also false.
Many people have empathy, but not all, and it varies in strength/quality from one person to another.
Many well adjusted people do not feel empathy. Many people are depresssed/over-stressed and not well adjusted because they have empathy.
As for PTSD, the ability (or inability) to adjust to or move on from traumatic experiences is not directly correlated to empathy.
Furthermore the ability to kill those who wish you (or those you care about) harm is evolutionarily advantageous. Anger and violence in response to stress and pain allows you to fight off predators/enemies/sources-of-pain. The majority of humanity feels these emotions.
When in a state of anger and pain it is harder for us to think about our actions. Your claim that someone with empathy will always feel conflicted about hurting others is therefore false.
Now most people with empathy might feel remorse but if their mind doesn’t put enough weight on that moment to remember it, there’s nothing for them to feel sorry for later. Does that mean they don’t feel empathy? Nope, they can still empathize with friends and family and characters on TV shows, they just don’t have a mind that catalogues their guilt. (There are unfortunately many people like this)
I do think many people cause significant pain to others. But out of ignorance not malice. And there in lies a major problem with empathy. If you don’t think someone is actually hurting you won’t feel empathy for them even if you feel empathy for others. So if you aren’t aware of the pain others might feel around you, you won’t experience empathic responses even if you might for other kinds of pain.
People might not be generally good or generally bad but we are typically stupid.
If you can convince someone that some person is “just faking it for attention” they won’t feel empathy. Now the reverse is also typically true: if you can convince a person with empathy that that someone else’s pain is real they’ll feel empathy. Unfortunately people don’t like being told they’re wrong or having to change viewpoint or listen to evidence rationally so there are many people you cannot convince to feel bad for certain other people.
Another thing to note is that many of the terms you’ve used are indefinite. What does well-adjusted mean? Psychopathy is prevalent in many fields and psychopaths can live healthy/stable lives. (Sadism and psychopathy are different btw) Are they well adjusted?
What does good mean? The greater good or empathy? Because those two do not agree on everything. How far does empathy need to go for someone to be good in your opinion? Are people who eat meat evil because they lack empathy for animals?
If there was a trolley problem-esque situation where you could save five lives but only if you killed a child with your bare hands, would your idea of a good person commit murder or let five people die because they couldn’t overcome their empathy?
Lastly—and slightly unrelated—I’d like to note that I just had an odd thought: if you tried to logically dichotomize all actions into good or bad, you would need arithmetic to deal with the idea of a greater-good / utilitarianism. However by Gödel’s theorems, in any logical system in which arithmetic can be performed, there will be things that cannot be proven good or bad no matter how many axioms you add to the system. In other words it is actually by definition impossible to dichotomize actions into good or bad. Adding a third category won’t even fix it. Right? Any mathematician/logician/philosopher that can back me up or tell me I’m wrong?
That’s one of the biggest flaws in utilitarianism, there isn’t really an objective measure of goodness, therefore aspiring to maximize goodness is always flawed.
The alternative moral framework, the categorical imperative postulated by Kant is also flawed, as it’s presupposes a rational human, and most humans don’t act like rational beings.
In the end people are all personally responsible for their actions, and no higher power is keeping score.
If you want a good read on mortality and free will and how the dichotomy between right and wrong is flawed I would suggest this dialog by logician and philosopher Raymund Smullyan who brilliantly catches the flaws in the western boolean approach to morality. It’s a long read, but quite worth it.