If humanity were decent there wouldn't be so much inequality, poverty, injustice, greed, violence etcetera. Humanity decent? No species that had any moral sense would have done what we have done to our kind alone. Not to mention fuck up our one and only planet out of sheer greed and undilluted egotism. We royally screwed over the coming generations: doesn't sound very 'decent' to me.
How can you (or anyone) have any faith in the human race after Auschwitz to name but the most recognisable horror?
In a world where millions die each year of hunger and completely curable diseases the conclusion that humanity is garbage is quite reasonable.
Optimists who claim humans are basically good simply do not care about the horror humans cause each-other and wilfully ignore just how good we are at not caring one whit about our fellow man.
I agree. I'd like to hear one gift humanity has given to the planet. I can't think of anything. Not other people, but the planet itself. We've certainly taken just about everything.
I have been doing my best to rise above my pessimism and depression to create a good life. That spark keeps on shining. I'm due to begin online grad school at an Ivy League college in January and I recently spent weeks working myself to exhaustion so that I could invest in a new business, but today...I walk outside in the afternoon and hear my psychotic neighbor torturing and soon thereafter, killing a cat (I have a screen on my fence to give me privacy from his stares and his friends, and I do not see his property either -- I did not see the killing, but I have an idea how it was done). He is a known cat killer, but thankfully, I have not been aware of anything since I arrived. I am closer to animals than people and I live with cats, and I was and am so traumatized that I can barely function.
I think of the words of the author Cormac McCarthy, who said that his books are about people who are simply trying to figure out how to live in this world. In my state in the USA, animals are property and it is legal to kill your pet if you want to, as long as you don't torture them. A call to authorities would be my word against his (torture), and this is a man with no boundaries. He is strong KKK, alcoholic, and enraged. He is also a respected businessman because his mother left him some money. He is more important in my country than I am due to his financial status, nothing else. The authorities would side with him. He has already terrorized me and my animals, using lies and a boy's club to help him, and I will finally be forced to leave this sweet property I moved to in 2017 asap, if I live long enough. Homicide or suicide. I guess that is now the question...if I say a word about him anywhere other than this forum.
I began to post a few months ago in this forum and each time I'm driven to it, I've had a devastating experience with another human being and the spark within me goes very low. Time passes, and I feel better until the next encounter. Just a week ago, a man stood outside my gate demanding I give two cats to him that he and his girlfriend had abandoned earlier this year. I knew nothing of him, as a local person gave the cats to me six months ago, but he was very threatening and told me he'd "get ugly" with me if necessary. This happened just as I was beginning to make a nice dinner. The dinner was forgotten due to calls to the sheriff, etc. I visited this forum after that nightmare but didn't post.
I have met a few people who are the very best anyone could hope to happen across in the world. Not many, though, and I am older, I believe, than most people here (older than most people generally). I find humans to be the most frightening animal on the planet, and the lowest in many ways, as a whole. To know how to build a skyscraper doesn't impress me that much. I will say that the very few kind people I've met have kept me going, along with my animals. I don't know how to recover from today's soul crushing horror though, and I have no one to talk to about it. My mind keeps trying to normalize it, if that makes sense.