Is everyone good?

I just reread the first Pilate episode from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. If you don't know the book, it's about various surreal happenings in Moscow in Stalin's era, but one of the characters has a book about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, which differs considerably from the Biblical version (including the names). Bits of this first episode are printed below. It loses much in being taken out of context (also the translation is not my favourite), but the gist is there. When reading, consider the question in the title.

'Do you happen to know,' Pilate continued without taking his eyes off the prisoner, 'such men
as a certain Dysmas, another named Gestas, and a third named Bar-Rabban? [other criminals]'
'I do not know these good people,' the prisoner replied.
'Truly?'
'Truly.'
'And now tell me, why is it that you use me words "good people" all the time? Do you call
everyone that, or what?'
'Everyone,' the prisoner replied. There are no evil people in the world.'
'The first I hear of it,' Pilate said, grinning. 'But perhaps I know too little of life! ...
You needn't record any more,' he addressed the secretary, who had not recorded anything
anyway, and went on talking with the prisoner. 'You read that in some Greek book?'
'No, I figured it out for myself.'
'And you preach it?'
'Yes.'
'But take, for instance, the centurion Mark, the one known as Ratslayer - is he good?'
'Yes,' replied the prisoner. True, he's an unhappy man. Since the good people disfigured him,
he has become cruel and hard. I'd be curious to know who maimed him.'
'I can willingly tell you that,' Pilate responded, 'for I was a witness to it. The good people fell
on him like dogs on a bear. There were Germans fastened on his neck, his arms, his legs. The
infantry maniple was encircled, and if one flank hadn't been cut by a cavalry turmae, of which I was the commander - you, philosopher, would not have had the chance to speak with the Rat-slayer. That was at the battle of Idistaviso, in the Valley of the Virgins.'
'If I could speak with him,' the prisoner suddenly said musingly, 'I'm sure he'd change
sharply.'
...
'Listen, Ha-Nozri,' the procurator spoke, looking at Yeshua somehow strangely: the procurator's face was menacing, but his eyes were alarmed, 'did you ever say anything about the great Caesar? Answer! Did you?...Yes ... or ... no?' Pilate drew the word 'no' out somewhat longer than is done in court, and his glance sent Yeshua some thought that he wished as if to instill in the prisoner.
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant,' the prisoner observed.
'I have no need to know,' Pilate responded in a stifled, angry voice, 'whether it is pleasant or
unpleasant for you to speak the truth. You will have to speak it anyway. But, as you speak, weigh
every word, unless you want a not only inevitable but also painful death.'
No one knew what had happened with the procurator of Judea, but he allowed himself to raise
his hand as if to protect himself from a ray of sunlight, and from behind his hand, as from behind a shield, to send the prisoner some sort of prompting look.
'Answer, then,' he went on speaking, `do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath, [22] and what
precisely did you say to him about Caesar, if you said anything?'
'It was like this,' the prisoner began talking eagerly. The evening before last, near the temple,
I made the acquaintance of a young man who called himself Judas, from the town of Kiriath. He invited me to his place in the Lower City and treated me to...'
'A good man?' Pilate asked, and a devilish fire flashed in his eyes.
'A very good man and an inquisitive one,' the prisoner confirmed. 'He showed the greatest
interest in my thoughts and received me very cordially...'
'Lit the lamps...' Pilate spoke through his teeth, in the same tone as the prisoner, and his
eyes glinted.
'Yes,' Yeshua went on, slightly surprised that the procurator was so well informed, 'and asked
me to give my view of state authority. He was extremely interested in this question.'
'And what did you say?' asked Pilate. 'Or are you going to reply that you've forgotten what you
said?' But there was already hopelessness in Pilate's tone.
'Among other things,' the prisoner recounted, `I said that all authority is violence over people,
and that a time will come when there will be no authority of the Caesars, nor any other authority.
Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for any
authority.'
'Go on!'
'I didn't go on,' said the prisoner. 'Here men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.'
...
'I see that some misfortune has come about because I talked with that young man from
Kiriath. I have a foreboding, Hegemon, that he will come to grief, and I am very sorry for him.'
'I think,' the procurator replied, grinning strangely, `that there is now someone else in the
world for whom you ought to feel sorrier than' for Judas of Kiriath, and who is going to have it much worse than Judas! ...So, then, Mark Rat-slayer, a cold and convinced torturer, the people who, as I see,' the procurator pointed to Yeshua's disfigured face, `beat you for your preaching, the robbers Dysmas and Gestas, who with their confreres killed four soldiers, and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas - are all good people?'
'Yes,' said the prisoner.
'And the kingdom of truth will come?'
'It will, Hegemon,' Yeshua answered with conviction.

Now heretofore, I have frequently catalogued my view that mankind is the species of goodness through empathy, and that we are slowly working towards a more perfect expression of this goodness. A species capable of idealising perfection and goodness must be ultimately capable of achieving these ideals. However, at this precise moment in our evolution, there is still a lot of badness that remains in our species from the days when we were animals. I'd basically assumed that a species of goodness can still have plenty of individual anomalies, i.e. bad people, and that part of the evolution is the ever dwindling number of bad people as a percentage of all people.

I have never really believed, or even properly considered the issue, that all individuals are good. But if I am to be consistent, I am starting to think that I must, like Yeshua, consider all people to be good. Was Hitler good? Are the people who slaughter each other across the world good? Am I good?

Yeshua would argue that the answer to all these questions is yes. Hitler may have been a soulless murderer, but he was originally working for his ideals and his people. He had the misfortune of being warped by his upbringing, his society and the first world war. Yeshua would have asked to talk to him for a bit, and would be sure that "he'd change sharply". Anyone who does not act in a good way is simply unhappy, not bad.

I confess that I find this view appealing but very difficult to reconcile with myself. Consider:

1 Logically, is it impossible for everyone to be good, since such a quality can only be relative? For goodness to exist, must there be badness, because otherwise it can only be normal?
1b) Can some people be more good than others?
2 If everyone is good, why is there evil in the world?

Now, before answering slightly pedantic questions like these, I always feel that a disclaimer is needed, along the lines of "we do not necessarily believe that logic is a valid means of answering inherently non-logical questions about the significance of life, God or human-kind." Too many theorists and philosophers tackle questions about crazy deep stuff as if it's a mathematical equation that can be solved by strict application of certain rules.

Now with this disclaimer in mind, I think I can swiftly dispatch with 1 by saying that true, badness is necessary for the existence of goodness, but people can do bad things whilst still being good people. I think this is an important step for me in rationalising Yeshua's belief. I think this also sorts out question 2 fairly comprehensively. I think 1b) is more tricky, since the the whole basis of this idea is that people are good. They just are. That's what people are. Good. It's like people are carbon-based life-forms, and they are good. But they are not better. You can't be more carbon-based than someone else. It's just a thing. So if people can't be more good than each other, does this devalue the nature of goodness? I have to admit that I think it does, but perhaps not too much. I feel it is important to realise, in an entirely non-logical-and-from-the-heart way that people are good, but this doesn't mean that we are in any way deserving of praise, since it's basically in our nature - just like the vast majority of British people don't deserve any praise at all if the team called "Britain" wins the rugby world cup.

As anyone who's read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance knows, musing on the definition of 'good' is the route to madness. Here I think it should not be considered in the traditional sense of just being nice to people - not all people are nice to others clearly. What Yeshua is saying is that people are good in the sense of their state of being, their mindset or their way of thinking, if not necessarily in their actions. Sure, you can see this as a devaluing of 'good', but I think it's still important.

I'm actually quite exited that I've managed to convince myself about this. I don't feel I've been false in wanting to believe something simply because it is appealingly idealistic. I think this genuinely fits with all my other social beliefs. I guess I should thank Jesus!