God. Real. Right.

A huge window sticker on a car on the highway reads, “Beast Mode.” What the owner actually intends, if anything, is unknowable. But the natural options of such a statement are only two. It either means “I am mindless” or “I am immoral”, although the owner might prefer the word “amoral” on the latter.
It is true that most of us are driven most of the time by the same things that motivate animals. Drivers move through traffic in packs like dogs, or pursue, preserve, and relinquish leads (usually completely unaware) just like horses in a race. Most of us emote and act almost blindly within large crowds exactly as the crowd acts. (It doesn’t take long, after all, for one clap to become thousands, and then again, for the thousands to die to silence.)
Most of the time neither the motivations nor behaviors matter one whit. We eat like animals (except with utensils–sometimes) and it does not matter. But one characteristic which sets us apart from animals is the ability to choose other than the expected biological, pack, or even self-interested behavior in favor of something with real value. Morality is uniquely human (and above, of course, if angels are included). The appreciation of beauty as beauty is uniquely human. Altruism is uniquely human (yes, despite some animal behaviors which make things appear otherwise).
The point is not that animals are bad and people are good. Quite the opposite. Jesus uses animals sometimes to say what we should be like (e.g., the birds of the air.) The point is not that we are like animals. The point is that human beings have a unique responsibility to act freely and responsibly rather than as cogs in a machine, plants in the ground, animals on a farm, or even minds in a behavioral maze. So we may act like cattle, or sheep, or rats, but we don’t have to; and just as importantly, we are commanded not to. Matthew 16:24.

or, more precisely, they can be changed.

While this commandment is hard to swallow, it is basic to understanding the good news of Christianity. And it is undeniable in terms of biblical teaching; particularly, Romans 3:10ff.
An essential element of a functional society is optimism or hope. There must be a belief that things can be maintained, succeed, or even that they can progress. In a secular culture that optimism is in human nature. “People are basically good.” “We all have goodness in us.”
But a Christian worldview is incompatible with that optimism, finding hope instead in the intervention of God to transform people from what they were to what He intends for them to be.
Optimism in human nature promotes foolhardy confidence in appeasement, in value-neutral education, and in government. Realism toward human nature promotes prudence (being wise as serpents) in dealing with those who would harm us, awareness that education is only as valuable as the subject being taught, and a healthy regard for the edict: “that government is best which governs least.”
It is untrue that there are no evil people. Quite the opposite. However, much contemporary cultural analysis is based on the view that every culture’s morality is right for them, and only wrong from the perspective of a different, myopic culture. So, they suggest, if some radical Muslims believe it is right to die as suicide bombers killing innocent people in order to prevent the stabilization of a free economy or the introduction of real democracy, who are we to question their ethics? But the reality is that while some evil is motivated by confusion with good, some is motivated simply by evil. And neither motivation justifies it.
But as grave as our original condition, so great is the desire and provision of God to change it. It is from that desire that both the revelation of our need and the provision of our rescue comes.
The long and short of it is that people are not good to begin with, do not seek God until He moves them to do it (which He does), and cannot get to Him even if they did want to. But God loves us while we are bad, seeks us when we ignore Him, and brings us together Him when we could not do so ourselves.
This commandment does not promote pessimism regarding people. On the contrary, it allows no observer to discount the hope that any person, no matter how bad for the moment, can be changed.