(Warning: Heavy) Thoughts on humanity

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Inner realization and thought is precisely where advancement is not forthcoming. What kind of realization have we achieved so far via our sprawling mess of concepts and abstract relations? What will be achieved by more of it? You might say technology and I would agree, but it's far from obvious that technology will lead to anything but carrying us yet further from ourselves.

That's one way to look at it. True communication and sincerity have been cut down a bit in this world where you have conversations with all of your friends in short, pseudo-humorous blurbs instead of actual human sentences, but I say that that is still OUR fault.

I'm not predicting a technological utopia, or perfection in the world, I just see positive change happening more rapidly.

Technology itself is still misunderstood by people. Remember in the late 90s when people thought the Internet would be on of the most rapid and profound advancements of humans due to the availability of information? Remember how that didn't happen and the most watched video possibly ever is currently a dancing Korean man making fun of American pop stars?

The tech isn't what's making us less human, it's our misuse of the tech. The Internet hasn't made us unemotional, we've chosen that path as a shortcut instead of pairing our shared humanity with the possibilities given to us.

Okay, it's 1 AM, so if this post is shit, give me some slack.

It's better than what I could do at 1AM. I agree, it's the misuse. So what you call inner realization is what is most necessary if we want to be able to wield technology without cataclysmic effect (and not only by nuking ourselves). I don't see any progress currently being made in that area, if any "progress" is even possible and if it is an "area" at all. Saying "we'll get the hang of it" is naive in the extreme

 

[Yopaz]

Focus on the worst and you will clearly see a reason to be depressed. I don't know how old you are, but I have been there myself, lost all of my faith and all that crap. Then I grew out of it.

Things are bad at times and trying to view the world as a whole will make you depressed. I am quite happy with humanity actually. Sure we're corrupt, we're lazy, we're annoying, we're stupid, we kill each other, but some of my best friends are humans. Some people out there are doing a lot to help others. You just don't notice them. They don't get on the headlines. Murder does. War does.

 

[launchpadmcqwak]

we are just another animal man, just relax and enjoy yourself.

 

[SextusMaximus]

we are just another animal man, just relax and enjoy yourself.

Pretty much this.

Sure there's a lot of hatred, sick, twisted and wholly shocking things in the world, but that doesn't mean we have to forget all the beautiful things as well, and I'd go as far as saying there's a whole lot more good than bad.

We like to focus on the negatives, but really there's a lot of positive to focus on as well. Obviously we can't turn a blind eye to war, especially since it's an absolutely vital part of human nature - but we don't have to indulge ourselves to the point of depression with it either. (Obviously, unless you're fighting, or a loved one is fighting and has incurred some sort of tragedy - I'm just talking about war as a concept).

 

[The Sanctifier]

whats so noble about dying, is the universe really gonna care whether or not there are no more humans,and who's to say that that there aren't alien races out there just as horrible or even worse.

Its really easy to just focus on all the bad things, which gets you no where, but what really improves life is when people think on how they can make things better.

I highly doubt anyway that there would be a species out there that doesn't get into wars unless they're a hive mind or have a caste system like ants. But what I do know, is that dying only achieves death, nothing else.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

We are but animals, the difference being that we don't have to fight. We still do, but we can find more to life beyond the continuous fight for supremacy that is the nature. Evolution is itself a testament to survival. Whether or not you find more to the human race is entirely dependent on what you want from us.


By the way, I wonder if people 1000 years ago prescribed to nihilism that people do today (not the same philosophy but something similar)? From what I understand, we are living in one of the most peaceful times in history, suffering the fewest deaths from war (in relation to population size) than any period in history. That and the fact that life expectancy has doubled in the last century, we seem to be living in the best period in history. The difference is how informed we are of the world around us.

 

[Luca72]

Humans haven't even been here for a single breath as far as the Earth is concerned. We fantasize about space travel the way a child fantasizes about being a grown up. We're BARELY out of the wilderness, where you literally have to fight to stay alive - of course some of our basest instincts are still intact.

And I'm not 100% sure technology is going to save us. But even technology is part of evolution - creatures evolve all sorts of traits, one of which is apparently sentient thought. And sentient thought eventually evolves into recombining matter into novel technological inventions.

I think there's a poetic aspect to it - I don't think any species in the universe is entitled to success. If we can't stop fighting and don't make it off the planet before we drain it of resources or find a better way to live, then maybe we failed the test, just like all the mutations on our planet that didn't make it. The fact that you even get to be a part of all this is pretty awesome though.

The worst thing you can possibly do is take this all too seriously.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

I don't really understand the "cycle" aspect of what you are talking about. As we get closer to present day things like xenophobia and ignorance is reduced as communication increases. I doubt mass extinction is really all that noble, considering how we're right in the middle of a major scientific age of technology and information. The public has more influence then ever with the internet. Not to mention the increases in life expectancy and medicine. Our main problems are social issues, overpopulation and the countries who don't have the same technological advancements as more developed countries.

I don't think humanity is really evil, and there really is no reason why we should stop development since it's done far more good then harm.

 

[Vault101]

I found this repeating slideshow of pictures from the Battle for Stalingrad. I felt the hope beginning to dissipate from me just watching it.

It got me thinking: In countless bloody battles like Stalingrad that have occurred throughout the centuries, fully grown humans have been reduced to their very worst qualities. They have allowed confrontations to transform them into twisted, brutal parodies of their former selves. Conflicts boil over borders like an all-consuming plague as these savage butchers systematically destroy everything in sight fighting over land. Earth. The only home they've ever known in their lives. And at the end of it all, those who survived have forgotten who they were.

I could probably poke my head out the fucking window right now and hear someone getting into a fistfight over something utterly inconsequential. And this isn't even Glasgow. The vicious cycles of xenophobia, ignorance and violence don't seem to want to end.

I cannot stand the idea of this race reaching other planets and civilizations in its current condition. What would they bring, what could they bring to other races besides their own poisonous, lethal dogmas? Their diseases? Slavery? The same mistakes of their past would be repeated ad nauseum, on an increasingly large scale.

During my time here I have started thinking that the most noble act the human race could commit would be to end itself entirely. It would be an act of selflessness and mercy to anyone else out there in the cosmos. Otherwise, since starvation and disease don't seem to be killing enough of the population, war will probably pick up the slack. Again and again.

Anyway, I might as well ask people what they think. Do you find yourselves feeling this way? Ever snapped and wanted to "kill all humans", as the saying goes?

-----

TLR version for the bone-idle: The human race - Do we need it?

Waaahhh human beings are mean and I think the killing of innocent humans is ok because humans cause suffering to other humans because starchild logic!

Your not edgy
Your nit the only one
And you sure as fuck are not deep

Now get the fuck over it, go do something to make life better for someone else if you really care that much...oh you don't? Yeah fount think so, people like you just want to pretend they are some deep thinking super villain who truly gets the world

 

[repeating integers]

Wow this is melodramatic. Yeah, humans can be shitty. Get over it. You know what else can be shitty? Other animals. They do some really shitty stuff by human standards. Do you think a bunch of species should off themselves because they don't meet your own subjective moral standards of what's "good"?

This, in itself, is a depressing thing. It seems to me that due to the very nature of the universe itself (with its 2nd law of thermodynamics), life is just naturally evil/immoral. Pure selfishness is the order of the day pretty much everywhere, and it seems like the more intelligent a species gets, the worse they get (see: dolphins, chimpanzees, us).

I'm not gonna say we should just wipe everything out, though. That seems like the lazy solution to me. Ideally we'll eventually reach the point where we're able to change nature for the better, but that probably won't be for centuries at least.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

The last hundred years have changed everything with the rise of the modern era, the future could be amazing....

These days we have the ability to see images of people on the other side of the world, we can go to the other side of the world in a matter of hours by planes and I can even talk to a man from say India any time I want thanks to the internet. I think its getting harder and harder to convince us that the groups of humans different from us(different race, religion or nationality) arent really people but monsters we have to go to war with. We have only had this easily linked world of communication for the last century, its much harder to keep the modern intelligent man in the dark about the people you want him to mindlesslly hate.

I am very optimistic about what our world will look like after a thousand years of humans seeing that the world is full of other humans, not faceless monsters lurking across the sea.

 

[Loonyyy]

Woah. Heavy.

Not.

So there's a lot of shit you can get depressed about if you feel like being deliberately oversensitive and taking to heart things which are entirely nothing to do with you. Why don't you take it to the logical conclusion, and get saddened by the millions of ants ripped apart in wars between colonies? That's about as relevant to who you are as random people unknown to you. Get the hell over it.

Focus on making good things happen for you, and try to have fun. Why should the battle for Stalingrad mean anything to you? The Holocaust? This is the problem with people "Trying to get perspective". All that matters to your human experience is what happens to you. And no, that's not an argument for being selfish, that's an argument for taking personally what is personal to you.

Going all misanthropic and thinking that we're worthless? Screw that, and anyone who thinks that. I'm worthwhile, and if you think that your sadness means my life is worthless. Get off your sorry ass, and do something worthwhile. I refuse to be lectured on how good the human race is by anyone I would consider not morally superior to myself. And a morally superior person does not judge the entirety of humanity based on their teenage wangst. Go out there, give money to the homeless. Give blood. Say hello to a stranger. Pay someone's way when they're struggling for money. What's that saying "Be the change you want to see in the world.". Saying the world isn't worthwhile, rather than trying to make it so is cowardly, and the conclusion you've reached is evil. It's as evil as it gets. The extermination of humanity.

"The world's kind of shitty, people keep killing each other, I'm thinking we should kill all of them." Is the most intellectually absurd and contradictory conclusion ever thought of by the teenage mind. It fairly boggles how the moral premises that judge the world as unfit allow for thinking of exterminating it. If you can get to this position, you are morally incapable of making the first judgement, you are engaged in hypocrisy. To Godwin it: This position is morally inferior to that of the fucking Third Reich! That's a special effort at evil.

If you really have a problem with the way you see the world, that's yours, and yours alone. If you think human existence is not worthwhile, no-one is forcing you to take part. You can cut yourself off, ignore the world, whatever. If you have a problem with your own experience, which I've done before, there are answers. Whether it lies at the bottom of a bottle, the edge of a knife, or the therapists chair. I doubt you have that strength of conviction though. This smacks of armchair pseudo-philosophy. Guess what? This is the internet. Pretense at being deep won't get you laid here.

And OhJohnNo? That's not what the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics means. It means that for any irreversible thermodynamic reaction, there is a net increase in entropy. That's got nothing to do with "Chaos" or "Evil", it means that the "quality" of the energy is reduced. Leave the engineering to the engineers, and keep it out of the pseudo-philosophy please, we're still copping flack from the last time some idiot misapplied it and said that it disproved evolution.

EDIT: I just realised that my favourite song sums it up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC11yI21EJE (I can never remember how to embed them)

"Life for you's been less than kind/
So take a number and stand in line/
We've all been Sorry,
We've all been hurt/
But how we survive,
is what makes us who we are"

You get to choose how you survive. You can do it by trying to make things better, or by being a monster. At the moment, you've espoused the latter view.

 

[JemothSkarii]

snip

That Charlie Chaplin video always makes me tear up, and all of my inside feel like they fall away from realization. If there was any one speech that I had to choose to rouse or rally man into something, it would be that one.

OT: It looks like you seem to follow the line of thinking that is 'what happened in the past is bound to repeat itself'. I personally take History as lessons of what to do and what not to do, like a child can take from a parent. While an inherently flawed system it encompasses what humans are: flawed. While one man might beat another man based on his skin, there's another man who gave someone another chance at life. There will always be conflict, always be discrimination. Some people dream of a Utopia but that would never happen - it would destroy human nature to all live in harmony on a grand scale. Why? Because everyone has different drives and desires, a uniqueness which can always conflict with someone else.

My advice? As terrible a place the world can be, each day of it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Each problem removed will always bring rise to new ones.

 

[dvd_72]

Oh for crying out loud, you probably intended that post to garner some sympathy and agreement but you've just made me angry. At you.

You cherry pick the bad, ignoring all the good we do. Instead of letting people die western society does all it can to keep everyone alive. The wonderful advances in technology, the art, the pure wonder at the world and the desire to explore it, that's stuff humanity has done as well. You're also ignoring all the acts of kindness we humans do on a daily basis!

Even so, what pissed me off most is your aparant desire to see humanity wiped from the face of the universe. When something goes wrong you try to fix it. Yes, humanity isn't perfect but that's no reason for ALL humans to be exterminated. We need to do what we can to change things and the first thing is to be a better type of person. You and your whining isn't doing anything to help, and is probably making things worse!

So shut up, get over yourself, and start doing what you can to fix a problem rather than whine about it. I need to cool off.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

The 20th century was the most peaceful century in humanity's existence, we're currently living in the most peaceful time in history. Violence has declined so much that there's people like our op who consider a fistfight barbaric, something that not 50 years ago was a perfectly reasonable way for two people to resolve their differences (100 years before that a duel: two men shooting at eachother till one was dead, was also a perfectly reasonable way to resolve differences).

OP's observations are not supported by data, as all available data indicates humanity is continuing to progress, and violence is continuing to decline.

 

[AnarchistFish]

So you're picking out the worst aspects and incidents in humanity's history to justify looking down on it? Ignoring all the progress and good and collaborations among us which have led to the ongoing development we can see now, which is miles ahead of where the race started off? Ignoring people living better and longer than ever before? Ignoring that there are fewer wars than there ever used to be? (just look at how the EU has made a European wide war an almost impossibility now, barely 60 years after WW2).

This isn't heavy. It's just the same pretentious 'i've lost faith in humanity' bullshit but somehow you've managed to draw it out into a huge wad of text.

 

[Spinozaad]

"Good" and "evil" are just constructs. They're not intrinsic qualities of the universe.

That said, as another user questioned: what validates the assumption that other species are "better" than us? What if they have a "perfect" society, but achieved it through systematic genocide of "undesirables"? Does that make them good? What would it teach us? Etc. etc.

I find these kind of thoughts rather juvenile and simplistic. In my honest opinion these kind of ideas aren't "heavy" or "deep", but rather silly.

 

[repeating integers]

And OhJohnNo? That's not what the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics means. It means that for any irreversible thermodynamic reaction, there is a net increase in entropy. That's got nothing to do with "Chaos" or "Evil", it means that the "quality" of the energy is reduced. Leave the engineering to the engineers, and keep it out of the pseudo-philosophy please, we're still copping flack from the last time some idiot misapplied it and said that it disproved evolution.

Fffahahaha someone seriously tried to use it to disprove evolution?

Ahh I dunno why I'm surprised, on reflection I'm pretty sure I've seen it on FSTDT somewhere.

Anyway, correct me if I'm wrong but is not the 2nd law of thermodynamics the reason, at heart, that most living things need to consume other living things to survive?