Why does humanity suck so much?

[Semi-Human]

Because we evolved the abiliy to understand and change/manipulate our environment.
But never evolved the ability to understand/change our selves. Or if we did we've never truly had to use it.

So our basic motivation, emotions and even reasoning some times is still that of a ape.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Oh gawd! Another one of these threads.

Go cry me a river, in the mean time I'll be sitting here enjoying all the amazing food, games and art humanity has to offer.

 

[The Human Torch]

As an idealistic kid, I used to wonder why people became alcoholics, why they smoked, why they did dope, and more. These were clearly self-defeating behaviors even though they involved fleeting pleasures. As an adult, I realized that it is easy to lose hope, or to lose sight of goals, or about the right way to live, and to submerge oneself in short-lived pleasures temporarily as a way of numbing pain. That part of the suckage has to do with being afraid, or feeling insignificant, or not trying, or being sad, or tired. Or angry and trying to impose our will on the world and on fate. How else to explain young people who smoke? Daring the odds, or just hopeless? Either way, it's self-destructive.

As we all know from childhood, some kids are just mean. Maybe they're getting kicked around at home, or maybe they're sadists. If they hit us, does their backstory really matter? No. Do they grow up to be wonderful people? A few do, but others continue to be mean. Do some segue into criminal violence? Sure. Do they get away with it? Yes, and no. Most criminals get caught, but only after they do their bad stuff. Sigh.

Hopelessness is the big issue here. If other people are jerks, you do not have to despair. You can live your life as a good person, and make the world a better place. One person can make a huge difference, whether to the entire planet, or to just one other person's life. Don't worry too much about the suckage; focus on what works, and how you can make more of it work. We are here with the opportunity to do neat stuff, or simply to do good, so go out and do it.

Your post appears like it can be written be me and your thoughts completely mirror mine. Thank you for making your first post in my thread.

To reply to the point you made: I do not despair, I am not going to turn into a misanthropic loner with suicidal tendencies, I was only curious why part of humanity has this 'evil' state of being. Some excellent points have been made so far.

 

[DarksideFlame]

It is in our nature

 

[The Human Torch]

Oh gawd! Another one of these threads.

Go cry me a river, in the mean time I'll be sitting here enjoying all the amazing food, games and art humanity has to offer.

Yes, thank you for your amazingly insightful reply.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Oh gawd! Another one of these threads.

Go cry me a river, in the mean time I'll be sitting here enjoying all the amazing food, games and art humanity has to offer.

Yes, thank you for your amazingly insightful reply.

You can find the bad in everything if you look for it, and vice versa. I'd rather be naive and enjoy all that life has to offer than sit here and think about how it's all futile and nothing I do will ever be remembered, ever.

 

[Zaik]

Well, my previous post disappeared, though I oddly got no notice about it being moderated at all, so I guess i'll post in a bit more detail, must have just been a lack of content issue, though it was a complete idea.

Anyway I'm asking why. What, exactly, is the reason I should stop doing what you would refer to as "Evil"? Why utilize my potential for the Good of Man?? Furthermore, what even makes an act For The Good of Man?? If I trash a beach, and a group organizes a cleanup effort, and two of the people that meet there end up getting married and living a happy life, wasn't that directly caused by me? If by getting your personal information and using it to send you >9000 pizzas and shipping boxes, I make you cautious enough to protect your info against real criminals who will take it and leave you nothing but a catastrophic credit card bill, wasn't I doing you a service? If I break into some underage skank's imagebucket and facebook account and post photos of her having sex with a 37 year old man on her facebook page, didn't I do her a service by showing her parents someone is apparently taking advantage of her?

Your concepts of good and evil are so skewed by a sense of immediate identification(for lack of a better word in my vocabulary) that you don't even really know what is truly good or truly evil. Guess what? Neither do I. The only difference between us is that I know it. I could save a dog from a fire that goes on to get rabies and kill three children that owned it. It's MY fault those kids died. I could walk an old lady across the street to have her get caught in a drive by two blocks down the road she'd have never been in if I had ignored her. I killed her. I could return a thousand dollars that a man dropped and he could take it, buy a shotgun, and kill his family. If I kept it, it would have delayed his purchase, possibly giving him time to re-think about it and change his mind. By giving him the money, I killed his family.

Given that the most noble of actions can be a direct cause of the worst acts, and terrible atrocities can be of great benefit, who can actually say what right and wrong even is? Not me, and certainly not you.

 

[spartan231490]

I did a forum search for a topic like this, but it didn't net me the result I wanted, but please forgive me if this gone up before.

The past few months I've been getting extremely frustrated with the EVIL that man does. It's absolutely uncanny. This ranges from rickrolling someone on YouTube, to raping a woman, or to cause a giant massacre at a high-school. You can fill in plenty of other possibilities, from simple trolling to downright murderous behavior. Even though you can't compare rickrolling to a real rape, they do have a thing in common, that is that it does nothing to progress us a species.

No matter what the underlining motivation is (gloating, religious views, superiority issues, abused as a child, corporate greed), it does nothing but harm and the world won't be better for it.

We are filled with such unbridled potential, whether you chose to use that potential to make your partner and family happy or if you want to cure cancer, it's there. There is so much good in us, yet most people completely squander it, waste their time with stupid trolling, horrific acts of mutilation, pollute the environment, fighting in a bar or whatever else you can imagine.

That's not to say that we should always work hard at improving us and the world 24/7, we should definitely take time to enjoy our own lives, but what harm is it if you treat your fellow man with the same respect that you want to receive, to actually do something worthwhile, so that this planet we call Earth won't be a big stinking ball of shit and debris in 100 years.

Whether it's donating money to a cause, to thanking your baker for the bread he just sold you or to not allow your own insecurity to fester and beat the crap out of your wife, why can't we all just get along? And if you don't like someone else, just raise your hands and go another way, instead of fighting it out.

I am honestly not sure why we does this? All these wars and evil deeds may have had a reason in medieval times when superstition and stupidity ruled, but this is the 21st century, we should be more enlightened.
Can anyone provide me with a reason before I finish tearing the hairs out of my head?

All I know now is that I am going to raise my kids to be better than what we are now.

It doesn't. Humanity is a creation of balance. I know that sounds like some BS, but for every abusive husband, there are hundreds of men who treat their wives with respect. For every school shooter or serial killer, there are dozens of police officers, nurses, firefighters, ect. For every terrorist, there is a legion of men ready to give their lives to stop him. Media just focuses on the bad cuz it's gets better ratings, but there is plenty of good still in the world. Good is also a little harder to see. Every time an alcoholic puts down the drink for his family. Every time a parent hugs their child.
Yeah, some parts of humanity are unspeakably evil, but if they weren't, we wouldn't know how valuable the good parts are.

 

[The Human Torch]

Well, my previous post disappeared, though I oddly got no notice about it being moderated at all, so I guess i'll post in a bit more detail, must have just been a lack of content issue, though it was a complete idea.

Anyway I'm asking why. What, exactly, is the reason I should stop doing what you would refer to as "Evil"? Why utilize my potential for the Good of Man?? Furthermore, what even makes an act For The Good of Man?? If I trash a beach, and a group organizes a cleanup effort, and two of the people that meet there end up getting married and living a happy life, wasn't that directly caused by me? If by getting your personal information and using it to send you >9000 pizzas and shipping boxes, I make you cautious enough to protect your against real criminals who will take your info and leave you nothing but a catastrophic credit card bill, wasn't I doing you a service? If I break into some underage skank's imagebucket and facebook account and post photos of her having sex with a 37 year old man on her facebook page, didn't I do her a service by showing her parents someone is apparently taking advantage of her?

Your concepts of good and evil are so skewed by a sense of immediate identification(for lack of a better word in my vocabulary) that you don't even really know what is truly good or truly evil. Guess what? Neither do I. The only difference between us is that I know it. I could save a dog from a fire that goes on to get rabies and kill three children that owned it. It's MY fault those kids died. I could walk an old lady across the street to have her get caught in a drive by two blocks down the road she'd have never been in if I had ignored her. I killed her. I could return a thousand dollars that a man dropped to him, and he could take it, buy a shotgun, and kill his family. If I kept it, it would have delayed his purchase, possibly giving him time to re-think about it and change his mind. By giving him the money, I killed his family.

Given that the most noble of actions can be a direct cause of the worst acts, and terrible atrocities can be of great benefit, who can actually say what right and wrong even is? Not me, and certainly not you.

Just because a stone avalanche clogs up the access to a tunnel and prevents car from entering, and it turns out that the tunnel was on the verge of collapsing on itself and the stone avalanche in a way rescued the lives of people driving through that tunnel, doesn't make it good or evil, it just happened.

If you rape someone, you are evil, if you shoot people at your school, you are evil, if you club baby seals you are evil. They are varying degrees of evil, but you are arguing semantics. If your wrecking of beach property causes two people to meet and fall in love, that's great. But you did not cause it and you certainly did not chose to wreck that beach because you wanted to play Cupid.

The "road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a moral mindset that only the most cynical cling to. Or in your case: "the road to heaven is paved with evil intentions".

Maybe one day you will rescue someone from a fire, and that person will (in the future) kill 10 people. Could you foresee that? No. Are you evil for rescuing this person? No.

 

[Danik93]

step 1 Think humanity sucks
step 2 play this song:<youtube=Z-5XazrjaIQ>
step 3 ?????
step 4 profit!!!!!!

 

[The Human Torch]

Oh gawd! Another one of these threads.

Go cry me a river, in the mean time I'll be sitting here enjoying all the amazing food, games and art humanity has to offer.

Yes, thank you for your amazingly insightful reply.

You can find the bad in everything if you look for it, and vice versa. I'd rather be naive and enjoy all that life has to offer than sit here and think about how it's all futile and nothing I do will ever be remembered, ever.

Nowhere in my post did I ever claim that I did not enjoy life. I have plenty of hobbies, I work out, I take vacations to exotic places, I have a job I enjoy, I have a girlfriend that I love, friends and family that I hang out with. Just because I am flabbergasted by the evil that can happen around me, does not mean that I don't enjoy life.

This thread was not made to confirm that I like cutting myself, this thread was made because I want to know why so much potential gets wasted.

 

[spartan231490]

Well, my previous post disappeared, though I oddly got no notice about it being moderated at all, so I guess i'll post in a bit more detail, must have just been a lack of content issue, though it was a complete idea.

Anyway I'm asking why. What, exactly, is the reason I should stop doing what you would refer to as "Evil"? Why utilize my potential for the Good of Man?? Furthermore, what even makes an act For The Good of Man?? If I trash a beach, and a group organizes a cleanup effort, and two of the people that meet there end up getting married and living a happy life, wasn't that directly caused by me? If by getting your personal information and using it to send you >9000 pizzas and shipping boxes, I make you cautious enough to protect your against real criminals who will take your info and leave you nothing but a catastrophic credit card bill, wasn't I doing you a service? If I break into some underage skank's imagebucket and facebook account and post photos of her having sex with a 37 year old man on her facebook page, didn't I do her a service by showing her parents someone is apparently taking advantage of her?

Your concepts of good and evil are so skewed by a sense of immediate identification(for lack of a better word in my vocabulary) that you don't even really know what is truly good or truly evil. Guess what? Neither do I. The only difference between us is that I know it. I could save a dog from a fire that goes on to get rabies and kill three children that owned it. It's MY fault those kids died. I could walk an old lady across the street to have her get caught in a drive by two blocks down the road she'd have never been in if I had ignored her. I killed her. I could return a thousand dollars that a man dropped to him, and he could take it, buy a shotgun, and kill his family. If I kept it, it would have delayed his purchase, possibly giving him time to re-think about it and change his mind. By giving him the money, I killed his family.

Given that the most noble of actions can be a direct cause of the worst acts, and terrible atrocities can be of great benefit, who can actually say what right and wrong even is? Not me, and certainly not you.

Dude, a person can know the difference between good and evil. You can't control the future, and you should never take responsibility for what you can't control. If you save a dog, there is a chance that it will kill, but there is a much better chance that it will bring happiness into someone's life. If you walk an old lady across the street, it's not your fault that some thugs did a drive-by and she caught the crossfire, it's their fault. She also might have gone lived because of you to go home to her orphaned grandchildren. If you return a man's $1000, and he kills his family with something he bought with it, you did not kill his family, the man did. Never take responsibility for something others do, that is their control, not yours, and their responsibility. To claim responsibility for their actions, is to say that you can either control those actions, or that you had the right to judge whether or not that man was worthy of his life or his money, and you don't.
To deny your own ability to recognize good and evil is akin to denying the existence of good or evil. By your reasoning, we shouldn't punish criminals, no matter how heinous their crime, because we can't know if, in the long run, their contributions were positive or negative.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Oh gawd! Another one of these threads.

Go cry me a river, in the mean time I'll be sitting here enjoying all the amazing food, games and art humanity has to offer.

Yes, thank you for your amazingly insightful reply.

You can find the bad in everything if you look for it, and vice versa. I'd rather be naive and enjoy all that life has to offer than sit here and think about how it's all futile and nothing I do will ever be remembered, ever.

Nowhere in my post did I ever claim that I did not enjoy life. I have plenty of hobbies, I work out, I take vacations to exotic places, I have a job I enjoy, I have a girlfriend that I love, friends and family that I hang out with. Just because I am flabbergasted by the evil that can happen around me, does not mean that I don't enjoy life.

This thread was not made to confirm that I like cutting myself, this thread was made because I want to know why so much potential gets wasted.

That's the tradeoff you get for sentience. Some people will always exploit the weak, but also remember that evil is the only thing that gets reported. For everytime a man molests their child, there are millions of other fathers who don't.

 

[The Human Torch]

step 1 Think humanity sucks
step 2 play this song:<youtube=Z-5XazrjaIQ>
step 3 ?????
step 4 profit!!!!!!

That is the most schizophrenic and weird video I ever saw. Fantastic!

 

[BENZOOKA]

Why does humanity suck so much? It doesn't. Turn off the computer. The Internet tends to warp the minds and faiths of people who are just waiting to have their own narrow-minded biases confirmed.

Get out there and deal with real people in the real world and you'll find them generally decent, hard working, intelligent, and well worth befriending. But stick to the cesspools of online space and you'll just become a bitter, hateful boil on the ass of society.

And if that's not enough for you, then you are the problem, not the solution. We can't all be Einstein, but we can all be "everyman". And Joe Everyman's a damn fine fellow.

Hey, that's very well said. I agree.

Not much to add, but to enforce the message: It doesn't. That image you have is very distorted and overly simplified. Humans are rather complex creatures; someone can torture others, while another gives a warm bed and food to a person who desperately needs them, but won't even ask for. And that can easily be the same person, just in a different situation, environment or a month later.

 

[The Funslinger]

The acts of humanity are like books. Oh so many occur, but only a small percentage are vastly recognized. Assholes get attention because people are like "oh, no way!"

If all the doucheyness (which is a small part of human activity really.) is getting to you, then the only thing you can do is be as decent a human being as possible and hope you affect people for the better.

 

[GeorgW]

Cuz you're all just animals with a superiority complex. Simple.

 

[Booze Zombie]

It might seem that humanity is terrible because the mass-media focuses on rapists, murderers and other people who are symptoms of problems we can't/refuse to address but for every single murderer, rapist and other assorted angry/confused/stupid person there is a scientist, researcher or other assorted intelligent/calm/forward thinking individual out there.

Also, value judgements are subjective.

 

[similar.squirrel]

Intellect and instinct rarely combine harmoniously. Education is changing that, slowly but surely.
Also, don't condemn the world out of hand without taking a long, hard look at yourself. Otherwise, you're as much a part of the problem as the people you deride.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Why does humanity suck so much? It doesn't. Turn off the computer. The Internet tends to warp the minds and faiths of people who are just waiting to have their own narrow-minded biases confirmed.

Get out there and deal with real people in the real world and you'll find them generally decent, hard working, intelligent, and well worth befriending. But stick to the cesspools of online space and you'll just become a bitter, hateful boil on the ass of society.

And if that's not enough for you, then you are the problem, not the solution. We can't all be Einstein, but we can all be "everyman". And Joe Everyman's a damn fine fellow.

I'm going to write this down. People going crying about humanity is very annoying.

For that, you win a free Internet.

Spoiler