The art of being good

I've just started reading a book by the Swedish author Stefan Einhorn called "Konsten att vara snäll" (freely translated: "The art of being good"). What he wrote about people being nice to each other got me thinking about the phenomenon. He writes about three deifferent ways on looking upon in.

The relgious branch say that it is sort of a law of nature that rewards us when we do good and punish us when we don't. They say that the ability of differentiating between good and bad is innate.

Then there is the evolution biologists branch, they say that humans are able to think ethicial because it gives us a better chance of surviving. Otherwise we would have extincted ourselves too soon or other species would have taken over because of our lack of interhuman cooperation ability.

The sociologists on their hand, say it is all about social conventions. Humans have agreed to treat each other in a good way because we all gain from it. These norms and rules are handed down from generation to generation.

When you look upon it like this, being good becomes almost crude and not very noble, it is more a necessity to survive. In my opinion we are not at all as good to each other as we should be, so no wonder people are dying without reason all over the world...