"Humans are the Absolute Good" and misanthropy

[BennyJackdaw]

This has been on my mind for a long time, and I kind of get scared about talking about a subject like this (unless I'm angry at someone, then my anger often clouds my better judgement). But basically, I've noticed that in today's media how pretty much any form of media that portrays humans as the "Absolute good" (as in humans are the absolute ONLY think that can be friendly and good besides things that look exactly like humans but technically aren't. If it doesn't look like a human, it's evil) is considered unhateable. Like anything else that doesn't have settings like this, you can look around and it may be popular, but you'll see a bad review every once in a while, but anything that portrays humans as the absolute good gets absolutely NOTHING but good reviews. Bonus points if the villain is misanthropic or an animal lover and ONLY wants to destroy the human race and nothing else.
 
 This is something I've noticed in media anyway. A good example is the game Kid Icarus Uprising. Every person I know adores this game and I can't find a single bad review for this game anywhere no matter how hard I look, yet I can't stand playing it, watching it's plot, seeing all the trophies and enemies in Smash Brothers dedicated to it (I swear, it's like half the enemies in Smash Run are from Kid Icarus), or just the thought of it's existence really, and to be honest, I thought the gameplay was clunky and awkward as well. My main problem with this game is one of the game's main anti-heroes, Viridi. She is just the typical "Hoomans r ebil n mus bee deestroied" type characters, and the plot talks about how humans are oh-so misunderstood and what-not, and at the same time it portrays nature as an enemy of the human race. Frankly, I am sick and tired of misanthropic characters and nature/animal lovers/etc. always being portrayed as evil.
 
 There are other characters like her in other media that want to destroy the human race, and to be honest Misanthropy is not as evil as those characters make it out to be. To be honest, yes I am a bit misanthropic, but I do not wish to see people die, nor do I deny the existence of good people, but I do have a lot of reasons why I dislike my own species in general. (And yes, it's also why I don't play as human characters in RPs). Still, I've met some nice people in life, in fact a lot of people I've met here are actually some of the nicest people I've met online.
 
 I also dislike the situations where humans are basically destroying the earth, then something comes to destroy the humans, and then the humans basically have to destroy whatever is trying to wipe them out, and humans basically learn NOTHING from it. It's kind of the same with shows that actually do have human antagonists to non-human protagonists and shows the flaws and misdeeds of powerful humans. People just cry "Misanthropic!" and learn NOTHING from it. There is every once in a while a show or something where humans actually come to amends and try to better themselves, but still. Like I said, I know there are good humans out there, but often times the actions of bad humans overpower the actions of good. Maybe part of it is that I dislike how powerful bad humans are over good people.
 
 Talking to people about misanthropy and glorifications of the human race is difficult because a lot of people aren't open-minded and they think I'm some evil person for my opinions, which is why I generally don't like talking about them to people I know and like cause I'm worried they will be the same way. I hope I can still get a level headed discussion out of this topic though. ...Please go easy on me.

[Teiko]

I think I'm the opposite extreme, because I think humans are overrated. All we do is ruin the planet, torture eachother and animals for no reason, our default setting is "be rude to other people as much as possible for no good reason", we impose our values on others, people are completely contempt with being stupid and living pointless lives (existing versus living; people who lack any kind of ambition in their lives other than to reproduce like a rat), most people care only about their tiny bubbles that are their lives, and lack any desire to learn. Nobody asks, "how can I make this world a better place? What things can i invent? When will we be exploring outside of our solar system? When will we find other life? How can I help to protect the life on this planet which is so precious?" Instead, most people are absorbed in "wow, Kim's butt is totes fake". It's just embarrassing.

I'm one of the nicest people you will meet - I am always very polite to people, and I would never think of imposing myself on someone else or hurting anyone. But in the back of my mind, I am PRAYING that a rock from space comes and removes humans for good. We have done enough. We are a disease. We will spread like a disease. We need to go extinct already. We live pointless lives, and at the same time, try to cause as much destruction as possible. How do you justify that.

[Angder]

Hating humanity is silly, we are all human after all

and yes there are a LOT of stupid people out there, but there are a lot of good people also, and I firmly believe there are more good people than bad people, its just the bad people scream louder...

and to Teiko I will point out people DO ask those questions, hell, you asked them in that very post. not everyone does, but a lot of people do, and even those who don't pay attention when new things are discovered in those area's.

The issue is that there are a small number of vocal morons, and an annoying percentage of them end up in a position of power. why? hey, this is a forum not an essay on politics! that would take far too long to go into now.

[Teiko]

Logically speaking, i can't really justify calling any humans "good". You might say "oh, that guy is picking up litter, he must be a good person". Or whatever. But in my mind, stuff like that is a responsibility that we all have in the first place. If someone is actively trying to maintain a healthy planet, then they are simply not-bad. If you bust out a scale and weigh man kind's good influences and bad influences on nature, it will be entirely bad. There's nothing we've done for this world that would make it better off than if we weren't here.

I don't hate people necessarily, more like I'm disappointed. I just can't justify our existence.

It seems like almost everyday i witness some form of animal torture (just the other day I saw images of a puppy who had a firework taped in his mouth. He survived, but his face is gone. Then a saw someone skin a frog alive and eat it slowly while it was squirming in pain. I see videos of people beating dogs to death with bats. And we all know how the meat industry is). When I see stuff like that, it breaks my heart.

There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with us that makes us find death and destruction amusing. Those of us who are smart can overcome these primitive urges, but not enough of us are smart.

I flip on the news,
"Oh, another person crashed a plane killing hundreds of people". "Oh, these guys just decapitated these other guys alive, and for literally no reason too".

And I think the movie Idiocracy may actually hold some water - because nature does not value intelligence, or kindness. It values the ability to reproduce. Generally, unintelligent people will tend to reproduce a lot, while intelligent people will do so less or not at all. That's just the way it is. And eventually, humans will devolve. I'm not sure that we can become better in the future.

[Angder]

Speaking as an Atheist, trying to justify our existence is like explaining why a sound is blue, completely nonsensical.

also a lot of people want to go further with being a good person than just "Picking up the litter", but just don't know how, look how many people give to charity! and yet the issue is taking an active roll and saying, "I will do this for the good the planet/humanity", partly this is due to laziness, but I also reckon there is a level of uncertainty over what you can do.

But the thing that proves to me humanity is a force for good on average is our literature and TV, there are very few TV shows where being an asshole is shown as the "Right" thing to do, and so many where friendship, goodness, honesty, etc, are said to be important.*

IN short we know where we want to be, we just dont know how to get there 

((*not saying holywood is a good example of how to live life mind you, just saying that it clearly shows the sort of things we admire in people))
 

[BennyJackdaw]

Hating humanity is silly, we are all human after all

and yes there are a LOT of stupid people out there, but there are a lot of good people also, and I firmly believe there are more good people than bad people, its just the bad people scream louder...

and to Teiko I will point out people DO ask those questions, hell, you asked them in that very post. not everyone does, but a lot of people do, and even those who don't pay attention when new things are discovered in those area's.

The issue is that there are a small number of vocal morons, and an annoying percentage of them end up in a position of power. why? hey, this is a forum not an essay on politics! that would take far too long to go into now.

People generally hate humans for a good reason.

Every time I meet new people and they first seem like nice people, they usually turn out to be complete jerks like most people I meet. Also, the actions of evil people generally tend to outweigh the actions of good.

But the thing that proves to me humanity is a force for good on average is our literature and TV, there are very few TV shows where being an asshole is shown as the "Right" thing to do, and so many where friendship, goodness, honesty, etc, are said to be important.*

That's funny, cause I see things rather differently on TV. Not to mention what I mentioned up top in animal/animal lover Demonetization while animal killer Anglicization being EXCRUCIATINGLY common in today's media.

Plus, I hate how our species...
1: Forces people to eat meat as if vegetarians and vegans are evil.
2: Push around hunting as if it's this angelic practice to murder innocent animals and pretend it's fine because "they r not hoomans."
3: Justifying truly AWFUL practices such as poaching, fur farming and other things.
4: REFUSES to accept we are an overpopulated species despite the fact that most non-domesticated species are constantly lowering in numbers because of OUR parasitic tendency to breed and refusal to control it.
5: Justify all out actions by saying "Oh, this animal is billions in numbers (usually domesticated animals)" or "this animal does this horrible thing," and what-have-you.

But what I hate the most about our species is that we do so many horrible things while having the knowledge and intelligence to know it's wrong. Plus, a lot of people I know who talk about how misunderstood humans are are among some of the absolute biggest scumbags I know. ...Not saying you are, just to clarify, just that a lot of people I know who plaud about how great the human race is are generally the ones who fit the above criteria.

[anoni]

What I dislike about the argument of "Oh I hate humans" and such, is that most of the time you're not really saying you hate humans.

Like, it's self-serving bias right, when someone says "I hate all humans" they're really saying "I hate the people I disagree with", like your friends are humans and they're fine, you're a human and your fine, but that guy that does something you don't like? He's bad and people like him are bad and therefore humans are bad. I believe that anytime you say "I hate humans", you CANNOT think that you are SEPARATE from humans, because you are a human. When you say "Humans are evil" you have to think YOU are evil, because you are a human.

  If you don't believe you are evil and you don't believe that everything you've just said about humans can be equally applied to you, then you should more correctly specify the group you hate, rather than humanity in general. For example, instead of saying "I hate humans" you could more correctly say "I hate people who abuse animals", but that's just an example.

  And to be perfectly honest, saying you hate humans is basically bigotry and stereotyping. You are generalizing a HUGE (literally the largest) group of people and generalization leads to significant problems like discrimination and unwarranted hate.

[BennyJackdaw]

What I dislike about the argument of "Oh I hate humans" and such, is that most of the time you're not really saying you hate humans.

Like, it's self-serving bias right, when someone says "I hate all humans" they're really saying "I hate the people I disagree with", like your friends are humans and they're fine, you're a human and your fine, but that guy that does something you don't like? He's bad and people like him are bad and therefore humans are bad. I believe that anytime you say "I hate humans", you CANNOT think that you are SEPARATE from humans, because you are a human. When you say "Humans are evil" you have to think YOU are evil, because you are a human.

  If you don't believe you are evil and you don't believe that everything you've just said about humans can be equally applied to you, then you should more correctly specify the group you hate, rather than humanity in general. For example, instead of saying "I hate humans" you could more correctly say "I hate people who abuse animals", but that's just an example.

  And to be perfectly honest, saying you hate humans is basically bigotry and stereotyping. You are generalizing a HUGE (literally the largest) group of people and generalization leads to significant problems like discrimination and unwarranted hate.

Please tell me by "you" you mean people who say that and not just me.

Maybe it's safe to say "I hate MOST humans" then. There are people I've met who are actually very nice people, but the amount of these people feel like they are regularly shrinking every day. It's also safe to say I hate a lot of the things humans do, teach, and what have you. Plus, the power of these actions, in a lot of cases, lead to irreversible damage caused not just to the planet, but to ourselves to the point where the few good things we do aren't enough. Blanket statements like "I hate humans" generally do have exceptions, but depending on the amount, it's easier to just say "I hate humans" than to say anything else, because even if you don't hate every last human on planet Earth, there's still some truth to simply saying "I hate humans."

Also, would someone care to comment on my initial post? This wasn't designed purely to be a misanthropic topic, it was meant to rant about the media's portrayal on humans, animal lovers, animal haters, and such.

[anoni]

By "you" I mean people who do say that in general, not you specifically

Comment on the original post:

  I don't believe the media enforces the idea that we are "Absolute good", especially how the media frequently features stories on how people can be bad, such as ISIS, terrorist organizations, wars, war crimes and so forth. There are also plenty of movies where humans are seen as the bad guys, Avatar, District 9 and even Bambi to name a few. So no, I don't believe the media paints a portrait of humans as absolutely good.

  Also, while I understand that "I hate humans" is used with exceptions in mind, the phrase is significantly misleading and sort of seems like someone who says that is basically saying "most people are inferior to me", because they seemingly separate themselves from the rest of the race.

[Trixsie Vixen]

On OP, I think the media goes both ways and also finds a happy medium too.


But, there is a particular ad on at the moment for Taronga Zoo that really annoys me.  Now I think they are a great organisation and do lots of good stuff.  What annoys me EVERY TIME is this phrase:


Our cause is the wild. We believe that we all, humankind and animals, have a future together. We believe in a world that we can share, a world where all our wild species can make a comeback. And we believe that for this future to become a reality, one species must lead us there....ours.


It is a noble goal sure, but the fact is there is only one species preventing it in the first place and that is ours.


And that is says "humankind and animals" rather than "animals including humankind" bugs me.  It's lie saying "the number four and all integers" or something.


I should let it go I know, but it just seems so smug and self-aggrandizing on behalf of our species.

[anoni]

Our cause is the wild. We believe that we all, humankind and animals, have a future together. We believe in a world that we can share, a world where all our wild species can make a comeback. And we believe that for this future to become a reality, one species must lead us there....ours.


It is a noble goal sure, but the fact is there is only one species preventing it in the first place and that is ours.

Haha that's a good point xD

[Trixsie Vixen]

More to the morality of humans topic, I think reworking the old George Carlin joke is apt:


If you consider how moral the average person is, just remember that half the people are less moral than that

[MrRazot]

I was going to post here earlier, but couldn't put thought to keyboard.


I think it would be easier to see from your point of view if you were to show us some examples.

[Teiko]

For the record, i don't consider myself and my friends to be "better" than the rest of humanity.  It's just that some people are less-bad than others. I am not an absolutely good person. I think the world would be better off if we all went extinct. That includes myself. I've done my share of destruction just like anybody else. And it's not even our faults, but we are born into a society that demands us to operate this way.

[BennyJackdaw]

By "you" I mean people who do say that in general, not you specifically

Comment on the original post:

  I don't believe the media enforces the idea that we are "Absolute good", especially how the media frequently features stories on how people can be bad, such as ISIS, terrorist organizations, wars, war crimes and so forth. There are also plenty of movies where humans are seen as the bad guys, Avatar, District 9 and even Bambi to name a few. So no, I don't believe the media paints a portrait of humans as absolutely good.

It's not so much I do not see contrary, just that forms of media that DO portray humans as "absolute good" and romanticize animal killers are generally the ones that are "unhateable" and everyone has to like it, where anything that doesn't is garbage.