I do believe that personal narrative place a huge role here. I know of a poll, in which over 80% of the people believed they’re going to end up in heaven.
most people believe they do good and care about other people.
If we're talking about Christianity, the bible says all you need is to believe that when Jesus died your sins against God were forgiven. It doesn't say anything about going to heaven or hell based on how good you were. In fact, it explicity says that going to heaven is not based on "works".
That's why being brutally truthful with yourself is essential in learning how to love others so as to actually become a good person.
The worst lies we tell are most often the ones we tell ourselves.
It's just like the low-achieving over-confident folks of Dunning-Kruger: they don't really care about the truth, they're satisfied just believing they're an expert. The real experts take a far different tac, one of humility and intense, honest work.
"Nothing is more important than compassion and only the truth is its equal."
> It's just like the low-achieving over-confident folks of Dunning-Kruger: they don't really care about the truth, they're satisfied just believing they're an expert. The real experts take a far different tac, one of humility and intense, honest work.
Of course. Very, very few people are fully cognizant of all their existing weaknesses; those are successively revealed as we make progress on the path of love. The spiritual path is not, to my knowledge, ever fully traversed in one fell swoop of Divine Grace; in fact, it is the protracted struggle that inculcates humility, kindness, mercy, and patience in the student, of which I am but a humble struggler, too. As such, in regards to their and my own desperate need for mercy, I must selfishly insist on being merciful to others, to sow for others that which I need to reap for my own spiritual advancement. It's a benign kind of selfishness that helps foster better and better treatment of others.
So, at least for me, it's a long slog through the morass of my life full of idiotic bad habits of attitude and behavior. No, these vices must be dilligently picked off one by one, whack-a-mole style, using our mind and practices. As we progress, we must develop our humility towards those a bit further back on the progression or even stalled before the starting block, remembering that we all started out from zero when we first decided to take the path of love.
Our struggles with our ego result in either developing a demeaning, self-righteous persecution of others via false pride (thus nipping our nascent spiritual progression in the bud, if not our ill-gotten confidence), or developing a humble gratitude to the universe and its Creator for helping us overcome that vicious beast and our weakness in confronting and defeating its many dimensions of vice, one after the seemingly endless series of others.
We must either humbly submit to kindness, gratitude, and patience or suffer defeat at the hands of an ego gone mad with ignorant power.
The greatest medicine and sustenance for surmounting such formidable obstacles in the ego is compassionate service to mankind, asking nothing in return, and consulting often with the Source for help, appreciation, and inspiration.
To those who haven't begun the journey yet, we must only offer our compassionate, kind help in the best way possible, with gentle touches of wisdom. That is the best way to testify to God's love we are to carry to one and all in our every intention, thought, emotion, word, and deed, purifying them incrementally over time. These are called by some "the fruits of the spirit", and are mentioned in this NT quote:
"You will know them by their fruits."
People can say whatever they want, but the truth of everyone's life shows more and more clearly upon our face as our years of living accumulate, and also in our tone of voice and content of our utterances, but most importantly in our desires and treatment of society's least valued members.
That why Rumi said, "You have no idea how little we care about what people say."
most people believe they do good and care about other people.