What do you think is the greatest epic fail for humanity?

[Cogwheel]

Honestly, for me, it's a toss-up between one of the things mentioned above, and burning down the library of Alexandria.

Care to elaborate? My only source, Wikipoodia, seems to think such an event happened on 4 occasions; which are you talking about?

...Did it? Okay then.

All I know is that the library was burned down (I guess I'd be referring to the last time it happened) completely, and everything in it was lost. Seeing as the library and the knowledge it contained were both something of a big deal, it being gone is quite a shame.

You seem to know more than I do on the subject, really. In any case, I better leave this thread since it seems to be turning into quite the mess (should've seen that coming).

 

[Icehearted]

My vote is more personally biased, but I think the American economic system. Anything goes capitalism is why we root for the underdog, but celebrate people that step on them to get to the top. Too many of us are poor, too many of us barely get by, and still a low percentage of us not only get increasingly wealthier, we do so without concern for each other. Perhaps universal health care flies in the face of capitalism, but thanks to capitalism medicine that costs only about a nickel in communist countries can bankrupt the working class.

But hell, what are a few hundred lost jobs as long as CEOs can still write themselves nice fat bonus checks for a job well done?

Apparently, it's just un-American to look out for each other unless there's money to be had doing it.

I vote this over WW2 because in the long term more people have died and will die from poverty related disease, illness, hunger, etc across the world, because American capitalism is not only about every man for himself, it's also apparently contagious.

I want off this world.

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

I'd like to, as a former atheist, offer a thought; perhaps it is not the religion that is flawed, but those who practice it? At least, I found myself opening up to the concept once I realized it wasn't god or the church I despised, it was the people that used it to justify things like intolerance and oppression. I'm a christian, I do not hate gay people at all (some of my friends are gay), and I am not opposed to their getting married. We're not all bible thumping retards out to wag our smug fingers at people that do wrong, in fact christians aren't even really supposed to be doing that.

Simply, my point is that maybe it's not the club, but the members, you should resent.


*soapbox ends*

 

[bushwhacker2k]

Overall I think just the general lack of empathy and open-mindedness is mankind's greatest downfall.

Some people feel a need for religion because they feel like without it there's no purpose to existence, some people feel ostracized by religion because it has a point of view which greatly differs from their own and it's no lie to say a lot of negative things have been done in the name of religion.

I'm not ignoring the loss of life from WWII, but I recently learned there were a large amount of technological developments during WWII. Whether it was a direct result of the war, I don't know, but it is worth noting that there are often more things to take into account than actually are.

 

[Anarchemitis]

The idea that Man can govern itself justly.

 

[EllEzDee]

Honestly, for me, it's a toss-up between one of the things mentioned above, and burning down the library of Alexandria.

Care to elaborate? My only source, Wikipoodia, seems to think such an event happened on 4 occasions; which are you talking about?

...Did it? Okay then.

All I know is that the library was burned down (I guess I'd be referring to the last time it happened) completely, and everything in it was lost. Seeing as the library and the knowledge it contained were both something of a big deal, it being gone is quite a shame.

You seem to know more than I do on the subject, really. In any case, I better leave this thread since it seems to be turning into quite the mess (should've seen that coming).

I really don't, i'm terrible at pre-medieval history, and all "4 occasions" happened before 600BC. I really just googled it when i read it.
Still, utter destruction of knowledge is fucking horrible.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

seconding this, cause well, they're right

also, racists, hating on some one for being a dick, fine, hating on some one for being lazy, fine, hating on some one for having a different skin color, fail most epic

also gonna add a general lack of acceptance of other peoples 'likes and dislikes', this is a massive problem every where, but seemingly more so on the internet

And you don't see the problem in this post at all?

OT: The largest failure would have to be the Iron age. Back in mah day, we only had the Bronze age. And we liked it!

 

[Darkstorm091]

I'm probably going to sound like a environmentalist even though I'm not, but I think our greatest failure as a race is our disrespect for the land around us.

We cut down trees to make room for cities and civilization, destroy mountains for precious stones, and in general have no respect for the cycle of life. It's almost like we feel we're above it. Rather than working with nature we openly work against it, and we are the only living being on earth that does this. Granted, we've gotten better at watching out for the planet, but we still treat the planet like shit sometimes.

 

[captaincabbage]

Well, I'll either go with Religion, or the current state of the world. The fact that we let it get to this stage is bad enough, but the fact that we're not even doing something substantial about it is even more of an epic fail for me.

 

[VanTesla]

Hm...I think the answer would have to be humanity. People have done so many stupid, terrible things that it's difficult to pinpoint the worst.

QFT.

If the question was- What do you think is the greatest epic fail for humanity of each generation? That would be more easy for me to answer after I read through my history book again.
A few for me would be the 14th century Plague, genocide of Native America, atomic bomb, Holocaust, agent orange, old Europe raping most of the resources of the Middle East/Africa/Mexico thus making them economically ruined to this day, slavery, destruction of history like the Library of Alexandria, murdering intellectuals like Socrates, Vatican Church crusades, man made drugs/viruses, and etc...

 

[jackpipsam]

Twilight I would say, can't stand that sh!t

 

[En Row]

Based on the bible Humanity's epic fail was when Adam and Eve committed sin and got their asses kicked out of paradise.

Ok enough with that religious bullsh*t

"All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure."
~Jean-Paul Sartre

think about it...
Everything we have done and everything we could've done is an epic fail.
Yes, we've made progress but at what expense?
We all do these things just to satisfy our desires, to feed our greed and our curiosity. We are pretty much a failure, individually and as a whole. But that what's makes us human beings.
Sad to say that our species is a failure by itself but really..."nothing is perfect".

Seriously though
The greatest epic fail for humanity(and the greatest epic fail for every living thing) is when our species goes extinct. Especially us humans.
We have the ability to think, the intellectual advantage so it would be pretty much an epic failure if rats survived longer than we do.

 

[Racecarlock]

The space program. We went from going to the friggin moon so often that the news stopped covering it to being stuck in our own orbit. Fuck that. Space station orbiting Jupiter or bust!

 

[Hamish Durie]

all major religions nuff said

 

[Joccaren]

War
Bad internet

War does have a use. It cuts down the human population, which is high enough as is. In some ways, I think another war is coming up. Maybe not in this life time, but it is coming. The Earth is running out of resources and everyone is too afraid of the political turmoil that would occur if they started to develop in space. We will eventually run out of land and resources, and a war will begin for each faction to gain more. This war will likely have one of two outcomes:
1. Humanity wipes itself out with superweapons (Nukes, or whatever else we have by then.
2. Humanity eventually makes peace and realizes that they are fighting because they are too afraid of using available resources (The stuff in space) as it might start a fight. Knowing politicians though, this is probably just wishful thinking

And Yes, bad internet is the absolute worst mistake we have ever made. (Goddamn Nanna's Modem keeps dropping in and out)

Atheism
Charles Dawin (Or what the hell he's called), nothing says Go f*ck yourself then telling peopel they will rot in the ground.
Mabey Australia getting found by the British is a good one

Ummm..... Ok. I have no idea what is meant by most of this.

Atheism is no worse than Religion, and vise versa. Both can be used for good, both can be used for bad. Both try to scapegoat the other when one of their believers does something wrong.
I am personally Agnostic, having no real beliefs about god (which is different to Atheism. Atheism says god DOES NOT exist. Agnosticism says he MAY exist, or he MAY NOT exist). Atheism, however, is not a bad thing. If we count it as one, we must also count religion as one. It is the people in each faith who feel the need to force others to accept their ideologies that is the true Fail in both Religion and Atheism.

Darwin was a great man. He gave us a greater understanding about the world we live in, which is a noble goal. Personally, I like this world where we understand more of how things work, and have proper theories of how things have occurred. I would hate to live in a world where things like this were never discovered, and religions reigned supreme. Calling Darwin a bad person because he discovered evolution and disproved some of religion's teachings is like saying that the burning of the library of Alexandria (what I believe humanities greatest mistake was) was a good thing, as the Greek religious beliefs at that time were not the same as your own.

Also, being Australian, I am quite glad that we were colonised by the British. It has given us a good, modern form of Government, in which it is nigh on impossible for the government to have too much power (unless we let them, which going by how little thought a number of people put into politics, is entirely possible). I do not see how being colonised by anyone else would have had a positive effect on who we are. Back then, all world powers had the same conquering mindset as England, and would have made the same mistakes they did (and I know there are a quite a few...). Tell me, who would you rather we have our motherland as?

If you entire post was just trolling, however, which I see as entirely possible based of the ignorance displayed here that is similar to the ignorance displayed by the person who said that Religion was humanities biggest fail, you may disregard the entirety of the above as this answer was written as if the post were serious.

 

[BlazeRaider]

I seriously want to punch the people who are saying religion and atheism in the face. Just..... shut up.

OT: The fact that somehow people in the dark ages forgot fucking everything that the Romans and Greeks invented.

I find it ironic that you and many others say not to list religion, and then go on to say thing like burning down the Library of Alexandria and the dark ages. Not to be a jerk, but part of the reason the dark ages "forgot" everything was because of the catholic church growing in power and neglecting or outright destroying ancient roman and greek knowledge (the muslims were cool enough to save as much of it as they could, and subsequently kicked ass for a while), and I remember hearing that the library of alexandria was burned down by a religious mob as it was viewed as heretical. I think religion is a valid point for this list. While it's true that many early religions were mechanisms important for allowing our ancestors to deal with living in a world they knew virtually nothing about, and greatly helped the formation of communities, culture, and served as humanity's first awkward steps to earnestly trying to understand the world, now that we have a basic understanding of the world we live in, the laws that govern it, as well as means to attain more knowledge, religion is not as neccesary and at this stage may do more harm then good (and if left unchecked, may even do enough harm to negate the good it did building the initial civilizations). IMHO it went downhill around the time those monotheistic religions started to preach one and only one god, until then the pagan religions, while not always friendly to one another and most likely started or served as a catalyst to a few wars, at the very least tolerated each others existence. Most monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam have a very expansionistic viewpoint (regardless of how poorly most of their followers hold them), which leads to conflict. Yes I am an atheist and TBH I think it is quite an epic fail to have religious fundamentalists (of any religion) and nukes coexisting in the same planet, just doesn't seem very safe no sir.

 

[EvilPicnic]

The biggest epic fail? Coming down from the trees.

Or was it leaving the oceans?

 

[MrJKapowey]

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

We get it, a lot of people hate religion, but the world stopped caring about such biased opinions a long time ago. How are the casualties religion causes "still going strong"? When did part of the world take up arms against another religion (The Crusades don't count, that was quite a while ago)?. Religion in the past was simply abused by the powerful by inciting fear in their subjects. What about wars, death and destruction committed in the name of "liberty"?

Would the war in Afghanistan count? Since that is Muslim extremists fighting against people, one of the reasons being religion.

OT: Yeah, Religion.

 

[Aprilgold]

Uh, shit.... I KNOW! Money grubbing power figures, combine one sin with another and you get a great big bowel of deadly, evil person. Thats about number 3, and then the last 2 is WW2 and the sudden rise of undeserving pop culture singers [Joking on the pop thing, mostly.]

 

[rednose1]

I'm gonna go with Rome falling. Sure, we had civilizations with culture and science, but Rome just knocked it all up a couple notches. To let all that just crumble away into the dark ages is just downright nutty.