Most people are good. Just this morning a man backed halfway down the street to tell me my dogs were fifty meters ahead and, yester- day, near the school, a father walked ten meters back to give my grandniece a Band-Aid for her heel.And who does the killing in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Croatia, Serbia, Soma- lia, Iraq ...Well, the evil few convince the rest to follow them, per- suading them by appealing to their love of God-or country.So, good people should persuade them otherwise?Well, the good aren't into persuading others that much, are they.You don't agree that most of us are good? Okay, yesterday I lost my wallet for the sixth time in three years and for the sixth time in three years someone handed it in. That is evidence-and not just of my cavalier attitude towards money.Think about this: how many people obey laws-stop at lights, give way to the right (even in car parks where there is no law telling them they have to), stop for old ladies to cross the road. Actually, dare I say it, they're starting to do that for me.Notice how many stand aside on footpaths, wait in queues, say please and thank you, don't steal, don't kill people and don't hit their partners they're drunk. You are wonder- ing why I added when they're drunk? Because it is only they are drunk that they act this way. (Unless, of course, they're also mad and madness is not what we are talking about here. Or is it?)You watch the news and you think the world's a ter- rible place and that people are basically evil. But there is only a tiny minority of people are actually criminals and the sum total of women in jail in my state is 98.Speaking of criminals, there is this gorgeous young ex-jailbird, Ben, where I work, who has many tattoos but very few teeth and whose totally loving care of all our residents is just staggering. He cleans up their dribble, wipes their streaming bums, talks to them with genuine interest.Then there's my street-we see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. Jake next door gets dinner each night from Mary over the road for two weeks while his little daughter, Amina, is being born. Marge, at Number 12, brings Jake plastic bags stuffed with hand- me-downs for Amina (actually, he is obliged to take these to a far-off op-shop because they already have too many clothes) and next to Jake, on the other side, is Hannah. For fifteen years before Jake moved in, Hannah wheeled Betty's bins in and out each week and, every day, gave Betty her copy of The Age to read she'd finished with it. Hannah visits Betty now in her nursing home two suburbs away-which is exactly what I must start doing very soon.Time makes a difference to whether people are good. Where I work at the Deer Center, there is plenty of time- time for Paul, weekend rabbit-shooter, to spend forty-five min- utes reassuring Alec, whose demons are making his muscles stiffen and fingers clench; time for me to stroll through the grounds and talk to Sonya about colors, and time for concerts where Rick croons passionately into the microphone and Nada holds his oxygen tank to hand back he's finished.Some of the mothers at our local pool haven't much time (Just get in the shower, Thomas, and stop talking. Why? Because. Now hurry up.), but those with more stand proffer- ing towels while their kids toddle slowly from shower cubicles then stop, transfixed by the sight of an elderly body unclothed (mine).The infant's mind, according to many early philosophers, is a tabula rasa-unwritten on, innocent, not yet corrupted. None of us is born evil. Mencius, a Confucian, writes that man's original nature is good but becomes evil his wishes are not fulfilled. If you let people follow their original feelings, they will be able to do good; if a man does evil, it's not the fault of his natural endowment.He goes even further: all men (and women) have a mind that cannot bear to see the suffering of others. …