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I find it fascinating to watch human evolution. More than three Million years. Our history is captivating. It's a gift to be part of that. I still don't unde

I find it fascinating to watch human evolution. More than three Million years. Our history is captivating. It's a gift to be part of that. I still don't understand why is there so much negativity about the humankind, when the good overwhelms the bad and the trend is towards improvement.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
It's honestly amazing how fast the field has evolved. I have textbooks that were bleeding edge when they were written less than a decade ago that are now so profoundly out of date that I couldn't recommend them to anyone. It'll be great to see what we know in another 10 or 20 years time.
bmitc 4y ago
> when the good overwhelms the bad and the trend is towards improvement Do you have any data or references to back that up? There are more people starving today than there were people even alive just a couple hundred years ago. Around 10,000 years ago, 71% of the Earth's ground surface was covered by forests. Today, it's just 27% and still decreasing. Most of that deforestation obviously occurred in the past century. America is supposedly the land of the free but committed genocide to take the land. Other such imperialism took and takes place. Wealth inequality continues to widen in ways that requires new mathematics to properly model the extreme distribution and wealth and power continue to concentrate. Democracy is at its most feeble point in history. Over 5 billion pounds of carpet goes straight into the landfill every year, most of which has been replaced by other brand new, non-recycled carpet. Native plants and wildlife are at all-time lows, and yet, nothing but vanity and invasive plants are sold at nurseries. Depressing facts like these could be listed nearly ad infinitum. Just go read the following UN report or a local talk by a native plant expert. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/ https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/natur... Humanity is a cancer upon this Earth. If you think there is hope, watch this talk to get a sense of just how complex the problem is to reverse human behavior: https://youtu.be/zHbOfgjcd9k https://youtu.be/zHbOfgjcd9k. Although the talk gives a message of hope, it also describes how real change requires deep, fundamental adjustments in how we humans live our lives, something that will not happen. Our primate brains are not capable of the level of adjustment required.
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  Do you consider that perhaps it's possible that maybe your judgement is a little biased towards an unjust pessimistic point of view?
  - bmitc 4y ago
    What is unjust about it? What I listed are undeniable facts about humanity. They are not sentiments. So, what is unfair about facts? Regarding pessimism, I view my base stance as actually optimistic. The reason is that there is an acceptance of the state of humanity and room for improvement and change. The only way to make actual change is to address shortcomings, rather than continually deny them, and make deep adjustments to how we view our place in the world. I actually view a naive sentiment of “the good overwhelms the bad” as incredibly pessimistic, because it does not address reality and the state of things and how destructive humanity has been. If you think that the good overwhelms the bad and that we are improving, that seems to imply that we are, at a minimum, at a local “peak of humanity”. But that’s vastly pessimistic, especially considering the facts. What may be actually pessimistic is that I have little hope we can turn things around as a collective. In my local life I try to live by principles that try to address these things, and I am trying to understand how to broaden that circle. I believe my lack of hope is founded in reality though, because for every one person aware of our unsustainable and harmful effects on the world and even humanity itself, there are several people that are naive, ambivalent, unknowing, or just downright hawkish. Just re-read my first fact about starvation. It is true. Even with that alone, how can you view things as trending towards improvement? In just a few hundred years, we have introduced nearly a billion starving people, and that is just a snapshot of this moment in time. That isn’t even cumulative.
8bitsrule 4y ago
It is fascinating, as is the progress in dating techniques (based on radioactive half-lives which make the impossible possible. I've not seen that story told anywhere. Advances in tree-dating, DNA recovery, and correlations with archaeo-astronomy as well. Fifty years ago it was all sci-fi. Negativity about humankind goes back at least as far as written history. (The ancient Romans and Greeks were full of it.) Lots of room for improvement (well-noted in the early 20th-century) as we continue to share each others' stories.
smolder 4y ago
Simply put, the negativity comes from expectation. It's not from a lack of recognition of what amazing things humans have done, but from wanting and believing that we can do better. The same applies to complaining about one's country, oneself, etc. Complaining is only really bad when it gives way to hopelessness and inaction. Sometimes it's more of a deterrent against complacency and can be seen as constructive. I think it's important to strike a balance where you hold onto the positive and still hope to overcome the negative --to see problems, but as opportunities.

AlotOfReading 4y ago

It's honestly amazing how fast the field has evolved. I have textbooks that were bleeding edge when they were written less than a decade ago that are now so profoundly out of date that I couldn't recommend them to anyone. It'll be great to see what we know in another 10 or 20 years time.

bmitc 4y ago

> when the good overwhelms the bad and the trend is towards improvement Do you have any data or references to back that up? There are more people starving today than there were people even alive just a couple hundred years ago. Around 10,000 years ago, 71% of the Earth's ground surface was covered by forests. Today, it's just 27% and still decreasing. Most of that deforestation obviously occurred in the past century. America is supposedly the land of the free but committed genocide to take the land. Other such imperialism took and takes place. Wealth inequality continues to widen in ways that requires new mathematics to properly model the extreme distribution and wealth and power continue to concentrate. Democracy is at its most feeble point in history. Over 5 billion pounds of carpet goes straight into the landfill every year, most of which has been replaced by other brand new, non-recycled carpet. Native plants and wildlife are at all-time lows, and yet, nothing but vanity and invasive plants are sold at nurseries. Depressing facts like these could be listed nearly ad infinitum. Just go read the following UN report or a local talk by a native plant expert. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/ https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/natur... Humanity is a cancer upon this Earth. If you think there is hope, watch this talk to get a sense of just how complex the problem is to reverse human behavior: https://youtu.be/zHbOfgjcd9k https://youtu.be/zHbOfgjcd9k. Although the talk gives a message of hope, it also describes how real change requires deep, fundamental adjustments in how we humans live our lives, something that will not happen. Our primate brains are not capable of the level of adjustment required.

rmbyrro 4y ago
Do you consider that perhaps it's possible that maybe your judgement is a little biased towards an unjust pessimistic point of view?
- bmitc 4y ago
  What is unjust about it? What I listed are undeniable facts about humanity. They are not sentiments. So, what is unfair about facts? Regarding pessimism, I view my base stance as actually optimistic. The reason is that there is an acceptance of the state of humanity and room for improvement and change. The only way to make actual change is to address shortcomings, rather than continually deny them, and make deep adjustments to how we view our place in the world. I actually view a naive sentiment of “the good overwhelms the bad” as incredibly pessimistic, because it does not address reality and the state of things and how destructive humanity has been. If you think that the good overwhelms the bad and that we are improving, that seems to imply that we are, at a minimum, at a local “peak of humanity”. But that’s vastly pessimistic, especially considering the facts. What may be actually pessimistic is that I have little hope we can turn things around as a collective. In my local life I try to live by principles that try to address these things, and I am trying to understand how to broaden that circle. I believe my lack of hope is founded in reality though, because for every one person aware of our unsustainable and harmful effects on the world and even humanity itself, there are several people that are naive, ambivalent, unknowing, or just downright hawkish. Just re-read my first fact about starvation. It is true. Even with that alone, how can you view things as trending towards improvement? In just a few hundred years, we have introduced nearly a billion starving people, and that is just a snapshot of this moment in time. That isn’t even cumulative.

8bitsrule 4y ago

It is fascinating, as is the progress in dating techniques (based on radioactive half-lives which make the impossible possible. I've not seen that story told anywhere. Advances in tree-dating, DNA recovery, and correlations with archaeo-astronomy as well. Fifty years ago it was all sci-fi. Negativity about humankind goes back at least as far as written history. (The ancient Romans and Greeks were full of it.) Lots of room for improvement (well-noted in the early 20th-century) as we continue to share each others' stories.

smolder 4y ago

Simply put, the negativity comes from expectation. It's not from a lack of recognition of what amazing things humans have done, but from wanting and believing that we can do better. The same applies to complaining about one's country, oneself, etc. Complaining is only really bad when it gives way to hopelessness and inaction. Sometimes it's more of a deterrent against complacency and can be seen as constructive. I think it's important to strike a balance where you hold onto the positive and still hope to overcome the negative --to see problems, but as opportunities.