I watched a great hidden camera segment a few years ago where strangers were asked to watch another stranger’s stuff on the beach. When a new person was sent in to pretend to steal the stuff, some of the strangers chased and began to fight the apparent thieves!
People are generally good (and I will continue to believe that especially because people are more likely to rise to the challenge if they can tell I believe that) :)
People generally want to be good, but they'll commit any number of atrocities if society says it's okay. Like eating meat and driving cars. It's pure, unfiltered evil, but it obeys their idea of what the social construct is, so they do it.
You have eaten of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. A pig doesn't know right from wrong. It doesn't have ethics or philosophy. You do.
What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.