Humanity...at what cost? Are we even worth it?

I'm being overtly aggressive. Don't call it passive.

For, if I were to think & behave like that, I'd be believing something SOLELY because I WANTED to believe it. It would be insincere, it would render me false.

It's because you lack courage. When you want to improve, you strive against yourself. When you work out you take your weak muscles, grind them down, feed them protein, and then you watch them grow. Is working out 'rendering your weakness' false? Yeah, it is. That's the whole point of improving — rendering false your present circumstance.

I am dismantling your point of view. It's not semantics. I'm saying that your perspective is limited and limiting and whiny and self-defeating and corrosive and lacking answers. You can complain, you can sigh your eternal sigh and feel sorry for yourself. These are all okay. But don't frame them as if they were solutions. Solutions are something else. For example…

Hope isn't the appropriate response when learning humanity is the 6th biggest extinction event of all-time. Optimism isn't appropriate when countries are bombing children & innocent people and calling it liberation. Happiness isn't appropriate when discovering your girlfriend has just stolen all of the money from your bank-account.

No shit. Hope is the belief of improvement. Optimism is seeing the possibility of improvement. Happiness is feeling improvement. If you feel happy because your girlfriend just stole from you, you're clearly seeing the world through skewed lenses. The proper response is not anger though. It's hope ("it'll be okay"), optimism ("it could be okay"), and happiness ("I don't need her, and she clearly didn't want me. Imma do something else").

I flew from Texas to Oregon a few days ago. The landscape was beautiful but barren. All I saw were cities, huge agricultural patches, beautiful mountains, rivers, and trees. I saw no herds of animals, no major fauna. I felt the cycle of life and the signs of death itself. I felt sad for a moment, then I moved on to better things.

I'm telling you to take your feelings and refine them. Improve yourself. What you're saying could lead to answers but you're settling for the lesser stage of development. Voice your better self.

I suppose all I CAN do is continue to be a recluse, and avoid participating in the behaviors which perpetuate humanities negative impact on the world.

Naaah, that's so wrong on so many levels. That's not the only thing you could do. It's one possible thing you could do, but if you avoid participating in things, you'll never actually attempt to improve anything. You'll never voice your true opinion. You'll just complain! Stop fucking doing that. You can complain but you also need to propose a solution.

What is your solution? Please tell me you have a solution besides euthanizing all of humanity — which is what you were proposing in the OP, and precisely the feeling that I wanted to dismantle.

/r/askphilosophy Thread Parent