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VoiceOfRa comments on Happiness and Goodness as Universal Terminal Virtues - Less Wrong Discussion
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What do you mean by goodness? If by goodness you mean what els (or more generarly your culture considers "good" then yes, goodness has a large cultural component.
On the other hand, as in this thread, you mean a willingness to sacrifice for what one believes to be a good cause, then yes it probably has a large generic component. Except, "what one believes to be a good cause" has a large cultural component.
For example, as Lumifer mensioned suicide bombers blowing themselves up to spread the true faith. Or the Nazis, who as the tide of war turned against them, diverted resources from the war effort to making sure future generations of Europeans will have fewer Jews corrupting their culture, even if they're rulled by those ungrateful Allies.
In the modern world, goodness is generally understood as wanting others to be happy and not suffer. Sounds like the Golden Rule, as most people want to be happy and not suffer themselves, and goodness is understood as wishing the same for others. To be fair, it does look like a little bit of a narrow view, I remember Roger Scruton remarking that if your philosophy is equally suitable for humans and swine then you may need to rethink something (i.e. happy as a pig in the mud cannot really be the only terminal value, wishing it for everybody cannot be the only terminal goodness), but this is the social consensus today.
Ah, then you might like "Град обреченный" (The doomed city) by A&B Strugatsky:)
This is true. Sometimes people think they know what's best for society and are wrong.
Anyway, I don't know how much of our culture's seeming to care about others is cultural vs. genetic. I think it's unlikely to be 100% vs. 0%, but I'm not making any further claims than that. If you say that goodness doesn't exist at all, ever, that no one really naturally cares about anyone other than themselves, I'll disagree, but I have no evidence to back this up; as far as I know, both of us would just be guessing at what subconsciously motivates people...
Depends on which 'others'.
I think that's probably a good point. You would say that genetics has more to do with caring for those close to us, and culture has more to do with caring for strangers we'll never meet, right?
Anyway, I got back from listening to this podcast and would recommend it if you're interested! I liked it and learned some things. Here's the blurb, as you can see it's relevant to this whole discussion:
"Compassion is a universal virtue, but is it innate or taught? Have we lost touch with it? Can we be better at it? In this hour, TED speakers explore compassion: its roots, its meaning and its future."