People who bemoan how "humanity sucks" and "people are awful" and "this world is a terrible place." No, this world is just a place. We just hear about the stupid, awful shit that happens because (conspiracy theory-ish thing incoming) that's what people will read. More people--in probably every single demographic on earth--will click on a headline that says "Obama okays straight up killing people who 'look like terrorists'" than one that says "local man talks down an armed robber" if the two headlines are juxtaposed. Or a better comparison, "Woman lies comatose in street for hours before someone calls 911" will instantly get noticed, where "Passerby sees woman lying comatose in street, tries to divert traffic around her, calls 911" will probably not get clicked on despite the fact that such things probably happen with at least equal frequency.
And yes, everyone points to "well what about this war or that war or the Holocaust etc etc." And they completely ignore things like "what about every movement Gandhi led, what about Martin Luther King Jr., what about free clinic doctors, etc etc". It's almost a willful ignorance of the fact that people are, just as often as not, not absolutely terrible, evil human beings. You just don't hear about it as much, because the effects of evil (primarily the destruction, in whatever form, that is causes) are so much more jarring because they're such a change from the status quo. Doctors working in a free clinic or volunteering to help distribute vaccines in impoverished areas is every bit as noble and good as a shooting spree is evil and abhorrent. But shooting sprees don't happen all the time, and doctors are almost always working at free clinics or distributing vaccines or the like somewhere on earth at any given time, so it's no surprise when one continues to do so. Basically, we only hear about all the bad shit people do because it's so unusual and so ridiculously far outside the norm: if people being good and kind and caring were as rare/nonexistant as some people want to insist that it is, we'd probably have news headlines a bit more cluttered with such things, even considering how many people would click such headlines in comparison to the bad ones.
And yes, everyone points to "well what about this war or that war or the Holocaust etc etc." And they completely ignore things like "what about every movement Gandhi led, what about Martin Luther King Jr., what about free clinic doctors, etc etc". It's almost a willful ignorance of the fact that people are, just as often as not, not absolutely terrible, evil human beings. You just don't hear about it as much, because the effects of evil (primarily the destruction, in whatever form, that is causes) are so much more jarring because they're such a change from the status quo. Doctors working in a free clinic or volunteering to help distribute vaccines in impoverished areas is every bit as noble and good as a shooting spree is evil and abhorrent. But shooting sprees don't happen all the time, and doctors are almost always working at free clinics or distributing vaccines or the like somewhere on earth at any given time, so it's no surprise when one continues to do so. Basically, we only hear about all the bad shit people do because it's so unusual and so ridiculously far outside the norm: if people being good and kind and caring were as rare/nonexistant as some people want to insist that it is, we'd probably have news headlines a bit more cluttered with such things, even considering how many people would click such headlines in comparison to the bad ones.
