TWD, Survival Rule Of The Week: Good People And Bad People
By Liam O'Leary
4) Don’t Lose Faith In People. There Are Good Ones Out There.
While much of this week’s episode of Walking Dead focused on Mays and how good people can go bad, it also focused on Father Gabriel and how, between the Whisperers and maybe even himself, he had grown to lose faith in the inherent goodness of people.
In a drunken conversation with Aaron, Gabriel revealed that he believes that evil was not the exception to the rule when it came to people, but rather that it was the rule. The good people he knew in the communities (And those that they’d lost) were the outliers, and the people like the Whisperers were the norm.
This is sad, but like good people going bad in a zombie apocalypse, it is not surprising. If you’d seen people kill others arbitrarily for extortion, or seek to destroy a community simply because it existed, the way Gabriel had, it’d be no wonder if you’d lose a little faith in people.
But that’s not a good road to go down. Firstly, because, if you do that, you risk becoming like Mays, attacking anyone that you come across, potentially killing a would-be friend out of little more than paranoia because you automatically assume people are bad or going to become so.
And, secondly, because…that’s just not how people are.
Think about it: Since humans first evolved on this planet, our species has seen apocalypses and catastrophes time and time again, and yet, we’re still here talking, meaning that, on some level, people were still able to come together and press on, able to see the good in one another enough to communicate and cooperate, even in spite of the chaos and desperation that surrounded us.
It is within our nature to work together. We are social animals; we always have been. Just because more than half the population is dead and trying to eat the other half doesn’t mean that instinct suddenly goes away.
That instinct to cooperate is ingrained in us and will manifest itself as a willingness to be good enough to warrant that cooperation. Don’t lose faith in people; there are good ones out there, even if you don’t think there are.