Our Opinion on the Human Race

In My Humble Opinion
1

Should this go here? Elsewhere? I dunno.

Beginning now is Our opinion regarding the human race as it stands on the world today.

Humanity is so gifted - so intelligent, so rational, so very much gifted. Humans created such magnificent buildings and artwork. Humans have produced such amazing works. Everywhere one turns, one sees the glorious skill and high position and rank of humanity. Certainly, humanity occupies the pinnacle of evolution and sentient existence and development.

But it is such a shame that, compared to humans, animals are noble and good, whereas humans are vile, ignoble, predatory, abominable beasts.

Humans have such lofty ideas, such far- and high-reaching dreams. But when humans seek to implement these ideas and dreams, all that results are bloodshed, chaos, suffering, and sorrow. Nothing is without its oppression of other humans, humans oppressing humans “for the good for humanity.”

So often we hear of such-and-such person doing such a remarkable, selfless, compassionate, and charitable deed. Why are we so much in awe of this? Because deep down we realize that this is not how we are wired. Such acts are rare in a species that doesn’t think twice about mowing down innocents in the name of some nebulous cause - chosen only to justify one’s acts. We are fierce in protecting our young and our loved ones: this is because we realize we must be so. If we were not so, our line or tribe or nation or people would be extinguished by those who aggressively attempt to exterminate us. And that is what they are trying to do, as we are trying to do to them.

And we can sit, as we often do, and wonder why this is so. But to do so would be futile. Understanding why will not change that this happens. It exists within us, has been with us from the beginning, and will remain with us forever more. We may embark so a million efforts and programs to uplift humanity, accelerate the development of the undeveloped, and make them like us, peace-loving, and servile to our interests and values. Ah, how wise of us! To spread peace by the destruction of societies and cultures, by the enslavement of minds and thoughts and hearts!

We sit comfortably in our homes, enjoying the fruits of decades (if not centuries) of stability, enlightened thinking, rationalism, secularism - all which prevailed by ruthlessly destroying their enemies - and we fail to realize that we still are a vile, despicable species. We may be tempered and controlled in our cushy chairs, but in the world of the less advantaged and developed, there is little to differentiate between human and animal, except that animals are nobler and better with their own than humans. Or we may fall into the trap that we are better, more evolved, more developed than they are: but we are humans, and they are humans: we both cause much suffering by our very existence, whether in the spacious mansion or the mud-brick hovel.

On flimsy excuses we massacre peoples and make peoples to suffer. We flash our own superiority, and fail to see how that in itself makes us so vile. We diminish the value of our enemies, we seek them out, we exterminate them. And they do the same to us. On and on, vicious spirals of violence, hatred, and irrational rage. And there is no reason, but that we can. If one problem is solved, another excuse will be found. God, land, money, honor, pride, revenge - our excuses are endless and all solid and irrefutable.

Oh, that day when the human race shall become extinct, it will not come a day too soon. We suffer, we cause suffering, and we have no way out. Justice is a myth. Compassion is but honoring those whom we also honor. So selfish, vile, and unbelievably horrid we humans are. Not one good person has ever existed nor does now exist nor shall ever exist. We are all vile, all horrid, all worse than animals in our hearts and minds and acts. There is no reason why we should survive, only that we are a part of humanity and every member of each species desires its survival regardless how vile and abominable it (the species or the member) may be.

WRS - If We were God, humanity would have become exinct soon after its creation. (And We predict this thread shall be moved eventually - to Great Debates or the Pit.) This thread brought to you by “Cynics International - Expressing Ourselves to Make You Think” and by the Press Secretariat of the Office of Public Relations of His Lordship Sauron, by the Grace of Melkor the Dark Lord of Middle Earth, the Lord of the Rings, the Forger of the Rings, the Flaming Eye, the Nine-Fingered Sovereign of Barad-Dur, the Terror of All Sentient Beings.

2

WRS, you must be one very sad man. I feel for you.

3

I was originally going to reply to this point by point but I don’t have the energy to do so. No offense to you or anything, but I simply disagree with 98% of your thesis.

Go to the bookstore or the library and look up Jared Diamond. Then get “The Third Chimpanzee” and “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. He’ll be able to explain to you much better when you’re wrong than I ever will be able to.

4

I can remember similar feelings of horror when I realized that it was a very thin line that separated me from the most vicious and cold-hearted human beings that I could imagine at that time – the Nazis. I had always empathized so with the victims of the Holocaust.

When I realized that I was never really going to deny myself much in order to feed starving people, I felt pretty much as you have described.

Yes, there are horrible things being done by people who are a lot like me who refuse to “see” the consequences of their actions. But there is an enormous amount of kindness too. It just doesn’t make interesting news and it’s a much quieter thing. More personal.

Outside of watching the news, I actually see more human kindness and courage than any other quality.

5

Kill them all off. Start again breeding from hamsters. Imagine a mighty hamster race running the planet…

6

Let’s take a look at some of these “noble animals” of yours:
[ul]
[li]Male lions will take over a pride and kill any cubs that are not sired by them.[/li][li]The chicks of some birds will push their unhatched siblings’ eggs out of the nest, to their deaths.[/li][li]Ducks have been observed to gang rape females on occasion.[/li][li]Chimpanzees will sometimes gang up on a hapless monkey, beat it and torture it before killing it to eat.[/li][li]Spider females are known to kill and devour their mates as well as rejected suitors, from time to time.[/li][li]Gerbil mothers and some other rodents will sometimes eat their own young.[/li][/ul]

Humans are animals and are no better or worse than they are. We can aspire to rise above our nature, but our baser animal instincts will always be a part of us.

7

You need to get out more; try to re-establish contact with reality and stop with those role-player computer games.

8

I agree with WeRSauron. (explination later)

9

Need to make a new foil hat?

10

A quote from Michael Moorcock (sp?)

“Man is cursed, by being half animal and half angel”

I like that one, we are still animal enough to be agressive, brutal, selfish yet we are angel enough to understand the effects of the bad and good things we do. So we are cursed to not live up to our own expectations.

None the less we have those noble ideas and we can at least strive towards them, someday we may even succeed, we are after all the most resourceful and inteligent animals on this planet.

11

I agree as well, the cosmos are better off without us.

12

So they’re better off just sitting there with no one to appreciate it?

Humans are animals. We kill and eat other animals, just like other animals also kill and eat other animals. However, we at least rationalize our killing. We realize that killing is wrong unless it is necessary, we try to mend our mistakes, we strive to better ourselves, even if progress might be slow.

Have you ever seen a lion feel guilty over killing a gazelle? The alpha male chimp contemplating whether killing the lesser males is really necessary? Wolf packs turning to diplomacy before resorting to attacking another pack?

And we’re morally worse than animals how?

13

Have you some objection to eating planets containing sapient life forms? You just want us humans to get rid of ourselves so you can eat our planet. I know your game.

14

Bravo.

As part of my job, I sometimes have to kill animals. I don’t take any pleasure in it; I wish I didn’t have to do it; but I recognize the utility of animal models of disease, and the necessity of testing certain ideas out on living creatures other than people before seeking clinical approval. I love animals. I have a pet cat that I behave like an idiot for just to keep him happy. Yet my lovable cat does things to mice I’d never even dream of. The hapless rodents he’s caught in the sundry appartments I’ve lived in before getting a real job were abused in simply ghastly ways before they finally expired from accumulated minor trauma, and probably psychological stress. He would torture them with sadistic glee, and then mewl pathetically when the poor things finally stopped moving. He had no interest in eating them, since he’s well fed; he simply wanted to play with them, completely unconcerned with the pain and terror he inflicted on them.

I’ve been asked: How can you kill animals? I reply: Can you imagine what they would do to me if I were as small to them as they are to us? Life in the food chain is a bitch. There’s no point in holding all life up to this standard of morality that the vast majority of living creatures give nary a hoot about. That human beings in particular often lack compassion does not make them all inherently worthless. Sure, we’ve done bad things collectively, but cut humanity some slack! Given how powerful we’ve become, it’s a wonder we haven’t destroyed ourselves comletely by now, and taken everything else out with us. For some bizarre reason, human beings not only often display selfless altruism towards other humans, some of us aspire to extend this generosity to all life on the planet. This quality seems to be part of what has made us a successful species, perhaps one of our most adaptive traits, so there’s hope yet!

15

Hey, compared to a lot of other animals, most humans spend a pretty small amount of time running naked through the woods killing things with our teeth.

And, to be honest, I don’t think the cosmos give a shit if humanity dies off tomorrow, or if we swarm out to colonize hundreds of galaxies.

16

I certainly don’t think we are the pinnicle of evolution. The suggestion that evolution has a goal or a pinnicle to reach aside, human intelligence is amazing yes, but barely scratching the surface on a whole. Our memories fade and are unreliable, the majority of us have difficulty in learning things after a certain age, our bodies are soft and weak, and we are too affected by our emotions and environment, such as other peoples emotions.

I see a future where we defeat these limitations and truely become the giants. The truely marvelous thing about humans is our ability to make ourselves better, to realize our shortcomings and overcome them. Nothing else really matters but that.

17

Ah, but we are developmentally more than just animals. We have the ability to reason, rationalize, moralize, and communicate. Acts such as those above are by animals that cannot know any better. But we humans can know better, or at least should know better.

Animals are instinctive - they do, for the most part, what they feel they must to survive and/or propagate their species. We’re different. We should know good from bad, right from wrong. We are inventive and resourceful, but we destroy so much in being so. We’re so careless, so short-sighted, so stupid and unwilling to look at the greater picture of how our acts will affect our own development, let alone the survival of other species.

And there is no doubt that there are a few groups who are dedicated to right these wrongs. But they are still human - their intentions and actions are not without corruption. And they somehow think that their actions, as few as they are, will make any change in humanity’s psyche. Hah. Humanity is too thick-skulled for that.

Sure, going through the newspaper might seem to be biggest source of noticing this negative aspect of humanity, but it is very clearly seen in one’s everyday life as well. Senseless hatred, prejudice, bigotry; arrogance, self-aggrandizement, exploitation of others; selfishness, and self-absorption - these are all qualities of nearly every human being that has existed and that lives today. They may not all exist in great quantities, but they exist nonetheless. Why else have nations and peoples, to this day, been unable to work together for or in anything? Why else do we friction with people around us, if not for such negativity within ourselves? Why else do we feel hatred or anger or being slighted before charity or love or mercy or forgiveness? Why else is there so much road rage and other displays of arrogance and inability to tolerate other human beings and their actions?

Why else would people weep and mourn and gnash their teeth at the suffering of a precious few but not even bat an eyelid with the suffering, enslavement, or wholsesale massacre of thousands others? Are we that short-sighted that we cannot realize that human life is precious, regardless of where or whose? Are we so heartless that we able to empathize with the suffering of only those near us or like us?

And certainly this vileness of humanity - made greater than anything any animal could do because, for whatever reason or from whatever source, we have abilities and possibilities that place us at a higher level than the rest - is nothing new. It’s been with us since the beginning of our existence. It’s almost as if the animal passion and vicious nature has endured, even though we have mechanisms whereby we ought to be more circumspect, developed, refined, and better.

But there is no solution to this either. Take away emotion, and we become robots. Take away rationality, and we become animals. And it is simply impossible to educate all of humanity in the principles of non-violence, peace, stability, tolerance, patience, humility, goodness, charity, equality, and love. Not without engaging in draconian measures to punish those who don’t understand or who don’t want to understand. And so humanity remains wretched: and because of our pride in ourselves and our inability to confront that dark aspect within each of us (but which we readily point out and magnify in our enemies), we remain in ignorance of just how truly horrid we are.

Of course, I still want our species to continue. It’s an instinct: I am wired to desire the survival of my species, of my people, of my close ones. But I also realize that it’s a pity that we will survive, since we do no good as it is. All we do is introduce more humans into the world to suffer, sorrow, and die. Happiness, joy, and positive experiences are few and far between, breaks from the struggle of daily life. Perhaps even cruel treats to make us want to continue on despite the tempest we live in.

WRS - My eyes have been opened, and what I see shocks me.

18

Humans are remarkably diverse. What is amazing is that on biological grounds we are relegated to one species.

We are capable of great acts of altruism and great acts of selfish tryanny; all in the same sentence. What animal can compare to us?

What animal can think, calculate, and determine actions and outcomes? Only us, as far as we know.

What animal can either destroy the world as we know it, or save it? Us.

Would the World be better off without us? Undoubtedly. At the present time; we have done more damage than we have created solutions. Perhaps at some future time we can redeem ourselves; please don’t hold your breath.

Do we have the capability to save the world from ourselves? Well, if we don’t (and I believe we still do), then no other physical species does…

My opinion on the Human Race? GREAT potential, amazing accomplishments, but a shaky future…

:eek:

19

WRS, is this conclusion something that has been a recent realization for you? Is there something in particular that has brought it about?

20

Animals are neither noble nor good: they just are. And humans can be good, noble, charitable, gentle creatures: they just don’t make the 6 o’clock news.