Multi - Cultural tradition of human goodness - Sakyong mipham rinpoche. shambhala

This notion of inherent goodness in human nature is something that I would like to express is just not an oriental phenomena. This notion of what inherent human nature is has been obviously within many Asian traditions; but in the West if you look at Aristotle, the notion of goodness and virtue.... And I feel like it has to be a human global wisdom that we’re trying to deal with here. And at the same time if we think a thought, a social thought, or as we’re talking about here, well, what can us proclaiming basic goodness do? And many times when I am talking about this, people feel like they have an inherent, in this culture, sense of not self-worth, but self-hate, self-aggression. And not to make any bad guys out of this whole thing, but if you look at one of the most well-known sort of philosophers, Hobbes; [laughter] he talks about humanity being cruel and brutish and selfish; so to say that we are not influenced by thoughts and philosophy is just not true; as we sit here our mind is full of different accumulation of historical events. This has been very interesting for me, because you know I’m coming from a tradition where I was raised in that tradition of saying when you are very small saying, "You are basically good". But if we are being brought up in a culture saying, "You’re selfish and that’s human nature"; and that’s exactly at the crossroads we’re at. Is that true or is that not true?