Misanthropy and existence

nyarlothothep

Consider the heinous crimes of humanity; genocide, holocausts, wanton destruction and stupidity, everyday cruelty and inaction. Is the human race salvageable? Secondly consider the way our reality is structured to facilitate this evolved nastiness and our ability to understand it as such. What is your opinion on the human experience and the existence in which it occurs?

Joe1919

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Consider the heinous crimes of humanity; genocide, holocausts, wanton destruction and stupidity, everyday cruelty and inaction. Is the human race salvageable? Secondly consider the way our reality is structured to facilitate this evolved nastiness and our ability to understand it as such. What is your opinion on the human experience and the existence in which it occurs?

Is the world really that bad? The current population of the world is about 6700 million and I think much of the population gets by without running into 'the heinous crimes of humanity'. I admit many people have died in wars etc. from time to time but these numbers are only a fraction of the overall population.
We can be all cruel and lazy (inaction) at times.( at least I can). Indeed, we can be all stupid at times but is stupidity a crime?

I think that people are salvageable and we can take an optimistic view that it's a great credit to the modern world that so many can live relatively free from starvation etc. and can get bye without killing one another.

But I do think that a certain amount of pain and strife is a fact of life and we ought to try to make life as painless and peaceful as possible but we will never be totally successful.


"It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous..... I make appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman and sponger and thief are hereby invited,.....
There shall be no difference between them and the rest."
(Walt Whitman)

nyarlothothep

considering that most of the worlds population live in poverty with limited opportunities is the world a nice place? I would say stupidity is not a crime but in its own way it can be devastating, ie the fact that people will buy into the ideology of a charismatic yet dangerous leader or a property bubble or will blindly carry out orders/perpetuate injustices/status quos/brutality instead of refusing to acknowledge the authority of their leaders who are giving the orders for these things to happen in the first place. As for starvation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/10/hunger-population-un-food-environment

We seem to live in a hostile universe of scarce resources. We humans compete for these resources and unfortunately there are winners and losers. Sadly for the losers they have to starve/die/live in filth/lack of education.

There are two strategies that have evolved to my mind, one is the vicious predator route which ensures short term gratification at the expense of many. However decreasing the pool of wealth and centralizing it imo creates an entropy whereby the predator has less wealth to suck out of the masses and lives in a more destabilized an unhealthy environment. Ultimately he/she is overthrown in a variety of ways. The alternative solution is for people to be nice to each other and show solidarity to increase the survival of the whole whereby everyone benefits. This has long term benefits but a certain subsection will always want more for psychological or cognitive reasons. In any organism you will have workers and parasites, the latter of which will benefit from cheating the system, it happens in nature all the time and while we have the cognitive ability to counteract this on a small scale statistically there is too much seepage to deal with every case. Even then cheaters may perform a valuable function in forcing the organism to become more resilient and intelligent. So evolution is painful. It doesn't need to be but this is the way the universe is set up so it seems.

Ultimately I think it is a problem of resources and the apparent dominance and willing acceptance of the predatory strategy which throws up the question of whether humanity is worth bothering with.

Joe1919

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Ultimately I think it is a problem of resources and the apparent dominance and willing acceptance of the predatory strategy which throws up the question of whether humanity is worth bothering with.

'The question of whether humanity is worth bothering with' is really a question of value. i.e. What is humanity worth to me and ultimately this is subjective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_theory

In other words, the value of humanity is as much about how you, the individual feel about humanity as it is about humanity itself. i.e. Its relative and about the relationship of humanity to the person and visa versa.

Personally, I value humanity. I cannot see how my life could have much value without other humans. Everything I have, my language, my education, my very being has come from someone else.

But of course, much depends on our individual mood and I do admit that at times I get pessimistic and curse and hate humanity. But thankfully this usually passes away and my mood and my relationship with humanity returns to its normal and sometimes miserable condition.

jady88

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Consider the heinous crimes of humanity; genocide, holocausts, wanton destruction and stupidity, everyday cruelty and inaction. Is the human race salvageable? Secondly consider the way our reality is structured to facilitate this evolved nastiness and our ability to understand it as such. What is your opinion on the human experience and the existence in which it occurs?

As a race maybe, maybe not, but hopefully we will be judged (if we are to be at all) as individuals.