Answer #9- Do The Right Thing

Life isn't always fair but you can be. OK, that's it. Bye.
Oh, I guess I should expound on that. Well maybe that's the problem, too much expounding. If all the world religions would just stick to their Golden Rule, Karma thing they wouldn't need all that other 'stuff', the parts that somehow gets obsessed over, the dogma, the weird rituals, the ancient tribal customs and prejudices, the mind-numbing and random rules, the misinterpretations, the mistranslations, the 'we just threw that part in because it benefits us politically', the 'don't ask too many questions' warnings, the need to control peoples' minds and limit their free thinking.....then we'd just have the boiled down essentials. At least atheists and agnostics can keep it simple.

 “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.” 
Bertrand Russell

Or as the Dalai Lama says simply, my religion is compassion. So unless you subscribe to Ayn Rand and just hate people in general, I think it is safe to say if you are kind and forgiving, to yourself as well as others,(self loathing people tend to project that hatred onto everyone else) then not only is the world better but your own life tends to be better. At least you won't have assassins on the rooftop across the street waiting to pick you off. Unless you're in a war zone.....then duck.
That's not to say that doing the right thing always works out well. One of my personal heroes of World War II is Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who risked his life saving Jews in Hungary by granting them safe haven at the Swedish embassy in Budapest and then helping get them to safety. He didn't start out to be a hero he just couldn't NOT do something. For all his courage he was taken by the Soviet invading army at the end of the war and sent to a Russian prison camp where he disappeared forever, alone and forgotten.
This is his last know photograph:

And he's really not forgotten:

I guess none of us know how we would react in such circumstances. Sometimes we mean to do the right thing and it is just too hard. Sometimes we wonder if most people are worth the effort. Sometimes we're just in a bad mood.
If you want a real microcosm of the best and worst in human behaviour just go to any middle school or high school. We all read about the bullies and the bullied. (I am now eternally grateful I was part of the latter camp as I don't think I could handle shuddering every time I thought of what an ass I had been as a teenager). Part of me hopes that there is no such thing as reincarnation because it would involve going through school again.

                                                               (That's me in the middle....)
 I know it made me a tougher person, all that mocking and harassment, but if I'd have known about home schooling back then I would have been begging for it. Except I wouldn't have met one of my best friends, Kath. But I have no illusions about the innocence of childhood. They can be some nasty savage little beasts.

Of course, when I was teaching high school it was easy to see the atrocious behaviour in teens, the willful cruelty, the lack of empathy, the need for revenge and punishment, because it was usually in front of your face ( breaking up a girl fight was always a dangerous enterprise, as I found out the hard way). The good, the kind, the helpful often went under the radar unless it was a school-wide campaign like the yearly Canned Food Drive for the South Plains Food Bank (BTW they are short right now, in summer, so a donation would really help). I always tried to acknowledge those students who managed to show true heart and good will, just as I tried to be as fair as I could with all my students, although that was pretty much a Herculean task because you only had to wander casually by a small group eyeing you with malevolence to know someone was complaining about "that bitch who gave me the bad grade".
I got a call from my daughter's junior high principal once that she was in trouble for hitting another student. This rather surprised and troubled me until I found out she had hit a boy who was bullying another child. Good for her. She stepped in when she had to.
Maybe we all just a need a code to live by. The Golden Rule is definitely a good one. We can also ask, not just: What would Jesus Do? What would Buddha do? What would Anne Frank do? What would Atticus Finch do? What would Harry Potter do? But what would I do?