Not G. Ivingname said:
The term "almost gives me hope in humanity. Almost" seams pretty popular around here. While we can agree that most of humanity is... less then stellar, what are the things that stand so far above, inspiring the rest of the species? What gives you hope humanity, more over, what actually makes you glad to be human?
For me, even when surrounded on all sides by idiocy, buttom lines, and investors demanding safe returns, that a former arm of Lucasfilm's tech department could grow through talent, vision, and pure determination could rise up through the ranks of computer animated shorts, commercials, and the best film run (in both quality and finical gain) possibly ever, to being incharge of the branch of Disney that once DEFINED the company.
By it's nature hope defies rationality.
That said, I think we live in an era of cynicism rather than one of wonder. For whatever reason people like to look at the worst, most depressing, and dirtiest things we can find, we're intrigued by it. Sadly we tend not to look at all the incredible things we do as well. I think the perspective varies, and goes back and forth, we're in one of those eras where we produce the dark and depressing as you can see by our current artwork, the proliferation of goths, and nilistic philsophy. In time the pendelum will swing back the other way.
Some time look at a city, oh sure we have the ghettos and the homeless people and everything else, and that is what people like to focus on. You can however look at the city and it's towering buildings, the lights, the archetecture, the statues, and realize we made this, people as a whole created this thing.
Today we take things like bridges for granted, but some time look at what they cross. Think back to what things were like when people were still limited to foot or horses, and very simple constructions, and what an obstacle this was, yet we managed to build these monolithic bridges which made travel accross some of the greatest obstacles in the world such a trivial matter that people don't even think about it.
Once people looked up into the sky, wondered about things like the moon, and made up stories about what it could be. We went beyond that though and went up there to see for ourselves.
On the front of people themselves, right now we're wired largely to look at the worst and most greedy of the politicians and businessmen, and the people who figure everuone else is ruthless and uncaring so they might as well be too. We look at the massacres, the murders, and problems we cannot solve easily. We tend to ignore the problems we have solved and how in many parts of the world conditions are much better than they have been in trhe past despite how our focus might seem. We tend to forget the people who have travelled all around the world to spread knowlege, medicine, and resources. Sure we have had guys like Pol Pot, but we've also had Mother Theresa. We've had some pretty "dark" celebrities like OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson and their contreversies and vices, but we've also had people like Angelina Jolie who have travelled all over the world for humanitarian reasons.
People talk about how religion is a blight, and focus on things like how many people have died in wars over faith, Catholic child molestation scandals, and other things. People tend to forget about the people who have saved lives because of their faith and doing what they felt was the right thing, or whom travelled into horrible, ravaged, war torn areas oftentimes with a hatred of their paticular faith in order to set up places of sanctuary, learning, and healing. Not to mention how these supposedly "ignorant" institutions preserved books, knowlege, and records through the dark ages when barbarians were trying to destroy every vestige of Rome and civlization. Not to mention how while considered anti-science by many it was scholor monks who delved into genetics and developed key techniques like "Punnet Squares" for example.
Now, understand I am something of a cynic, and can also be pretty militant. I see a lot of bloodshed and darkness in our future, but I believe good can come even from that. I feel that if you look at humanity as a whole it's easy to see plenty of things to give one hope, you just have to broaden your view and not just look at the gutter. People look at really bad things and say "oh noes, I have no faith in humanity" but rarely bother to put it into an overall perspective. Not everything is good, but not everything is bad either.
As far as the internet goes, a lot of people talk about say 4Chan and various similar communities, which proudly claim they are the most shocking recesses of the internet, and yes the Internet has a lot of very dark things on it (and I admit I can occasionally derive some amusement from them). People however tend to forget about all the positive things out there like public domain books, the abillity to find news items and information with a quick search, and the simple ease of communication it allows. A site like 4Chan will point out that "people will use the internet for porn, and to send sick things to each other", and this is both true and darknly amusing, but at the same time people do use it for other things and probably far more frequently.
I say vist "Encyclopedia Dramatica" and "Something Awful" once in a while for some "lulz". But at the same time I visit "The Escapist" to discuss video games and such. Also whenever I want to try and find something out, the first place I go usually is The Internet to at least get pointed in the right direction.
Sorry about yet another very long post. Not sure how many will read it.
