This is tautological, as we're the only lifeform capable of any evil.
There’s a lot of current day love offsetting arbitrary historical torture sessions.
what I am, is this: aware of how shitty people are to each other, at almost all times. all it takes to end a marriage or a decades-long friendship is a bit of money, or a small opportunity, sometimes.
slavery is more common today than it ever has been, it's just all underground now, instead of out in the open. dictators exist and make millions upon millions suffer each day because they can't let go of their power, and those same dictators are surrounded by people who would gladly assassinate that dictator if it meant they could become the new dictator.
I've seen people I work with become absolutely drunk with power when they get a new job title; so drunk with power that once I witnessed a power-tripping "team lead" push someone down a flight of stairs because that person printed six pages instead of the weekly quota of five.
people are self-destructive, power-hungry, and evil. prone to violence, and many seem to need to feel superior so much that they will make a mountain out of anything just so they can climb it and look down derisively at others.
we are an absolutely garbage species.
I don't need to do anything to help our destruction along, nor does anyone else. we are all contributing to the demise of our species already, as part of daily life.
More than 99% of all species that have existed are extinct. Did something make them worthy of existence? More worthy than us? What conveys this worthiness?
The sun will burn off the atmosphere somewhere between .5-1billion years from now. Humans understand the problem, and our progeny might be able to adjust orbital mechanics to add life to our earth. We are the only species that has ever existed here that is capable of contemplating or acting on this problem. Does that make us worthy?
The answer to both questions is no. Worthiness comes from within you, and you do what you want with it. I cannot give you worthiness; you must find it within yourself.
- the British extraction of colonial resources (at the heavy expense of the colonized) of literally every single British colony, ever. (I'm primarily thinking of India and Africa, here.) How many millions died due to British imperialism solely because keeping those people alive was less profitable than letting them starve? The British are joined by the French and the Spanish, here, if I'm being semi-inclusive.
- systemic racism.
- war for oil (war for money).
- class warfare, where the rich create policies and laws to keep themselves rich, and to make it more difficult for others to become rich.
- caste systems.
- the ultra-rich when contrasted against the ultra-poor. if humans were worth anything, extreme wealth inequality as seen today would never happen, ever. it simply would not be tolerated.
- slavery.
it would be one thing if humans simply didn't care about each other, but we take it several steps away from apathy deeply into malevolence: humanity will gladly devour entire races of other humans for land, or money, or power. I don't think animals do that, even on small scales.
leaders of small ape communities sometimes do things like this against an individual or two, but it doesn't become part of the culture of entire swaths of that species as it does with us. you may not live in a country with a caste system, but I bet you know what it is. you may not live in a country ravaged by the British, but I bet you know what they did. these things are familiar to us because we are familiar with ourselves at that level. we accept these things as they are happening instead of challenging these systems and stopping them.
our global culture knows what happens around the world, generally speaking, and our global culture does VERY little, if anything, to make any real changes to any of this.
a species worthy of existence would go well out of its way to right these wrongs. human life has inherent value, and if you are reading this, and you think it does not, you are an example of why we do not deserve to succeed as a species.
yes, MY worth is determined by me. and the worthiness of the collective species is determined by the collective species, and we are simply not worthy of leaving this planet or even surviving on this one.
we care about power. we care about money because it grants power. we somehow deeply NEED to feel superior to others, so we create systems which grant the power we crave. we "eat our own tail" by doing this, and will ultimately destroy ourselves, because no one is willing to care about it once they have attained any position of power over others. no one wants to give up their power to benefit others, so they don't, and we continue to demonstrate ourselves as a species unworthy of note, even on our home planet.
We might not go out of our way not to exploit others, but we continually build new tech that makes exploiting others and using real resources seem like more trouble than it's worth.
Most people are to some degree not happy with various atrocities people do, they're just not sure what they as an individual could do.
Also the obvious: Fashionable misanthropy is all fine and well if you enjoy pretending that obvious things aren't actually the case, but if you're taking it as seriously as you claim, nothing stops you from removing yourself from the human world around you if you hate it so much. Personally, i'd suggest therapy and some calming, professional external perspective.
For myself, I am uncertain.
You will likely claim that your misanthropy has nothing to do with this relic of Judaism, but the end effect is identical.
You assert that mankind is damned, I suggest that he is not. This difference of opinion does not require me to hate you, nor you me.
"No snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche."
As you yourself said a few comments ago, this is a tautology: humans are the only creatures capable of evil.
Lots of species are perfectly capable of doing evil things.
I can’t remember the movie now, but I remember being chilled by a character advising a soldier to shoot a man and his wife, and instructing the soldier to shoot the wife in front of the man first. That seemed uniquely human in its cruelty.
Not only are we unfit to exist, I feel we are entirely and completely unworthy of existing, or of becoming a species that spreads to other worlds for colonization.
we just don't deserve to persist. and because of who we are as a species, I don't think we will last very long at all.