A: Whom do you support?
T: Do you want me to divide people into good and bad?
A: No, I want you to choose a side.
T: I don’t categorize people by religion, nationality, skin color, or ear shape. Moreover, I don’t even divide people into good and bad. These are entirely ephemeral categories*.
A: So, are you willing to defend the bad ones?
T: I try to highlight each person’s actual qualities, such as intelligence and empathy. And if we take a ordered sample from the set of people, we could always indicate a relationship where stupidity < intelligence, malignancy < empathy. This distribution applies universally, and the form of such distribution will universally be approximately the same.
So, in any sample, I always support the intelligent and kind.

What distinguishes communities is the factor of responsibility. In comfortable communities, intelligent and kind individuals feel responsible for themselves, and the wisest among them also for those who are weaker (dumber and less empathetic). This fosters trust and creates connections.

On the other end of the spectrum, communities where kind and intelligent individuals feel like victims (of the wicked and dumb), thus absolving themselves of responsibility for their own lives, let alone the lives of those weaker than them. They often despise these weaker individuals, which breeds hostility and alienates.

A: How can one tell who is standing before them, good or evil? Intelligent or foolish?
T: It depends on the situation and the sample. A person contains all qualities that manifest depending on the situation. (As in that fable about the wolfs)
A: So, how can one understand what to expect from people?

(The ghosts of Frankl and Goethe appears at the back of the stage)

T: If we accept people as they are, we make them worse. But if we relate to them as though they should be otherwise, we help them become who they are capable of being.

———-
* and it’s excellent ammunition in the hands of (power-hungry) opportunists and populists.