I don't argue that people all have the same sense of guilt. Demonstrably they don't. Some people refused to own slaves; some people owned slaves but then re

I don't argue that people all have the same sense of guilt. Demonstrably they don't. Some people refused to own slaves; some people owned slaves but then released them, while other people owned slaves and never showed any sense of guilt. What I say is that everybody (excepting the possibility of true psychopaths) has empathy available to them but many people suppress it. It's a universal ability, but not universally put into practice. > a path to complete failure in my eyes. And I dispute complete failure. Humanity does not behave perfectly morally, so if that's your expectation then we've failed and always will fail. But most people do have the capacity to behave morally most of the time, and people are guided in this primarily by their internal sense of right and wrong (informed by their innate social instincts.) This system doesn't work perfectly but it's very far from a complete failure.