One of my favourite pieces of writing about people.
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/Apple-brown-bettys-into-the-breach-1067052.php
TL;DR - if more than a tiny percentage of people were soulless grifters, society would never have been built in the first place. The fact that it has tells us that we’re surrounded by decent people.
The patterns of human history mix decency and depravity in equal measure. We often assume, therefore, that such a fine balance of results must emerge from societies made of decent and depraved people in equal numbers.
But we need to expose and celebrate the fallacy of this conclusion so that, in this moment of crisis, we may reaffirm an essential truth too easily forgotten, and regain some crucial comfort too readily forgone.
Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant.
