What Happened to Us?

What happened to us as a species? As a whole from the drive-thru attendee at your local fast food restaraunt to the world leader governing a country? Humankind progressed towards a fork in the road with which we had a choice of our destiny. From our earliest beginnings as savages, beasts with no reason, we strove to a focal point where beast began to use reason and thought. It was a time when humans finally became their own masters in this planet of a domain. We are capable of great feats. We are capable of the most beautiful of artistic works ranging from music to paintings to righteous philosphies. Technology has become the epitome of our prowess along with our ability to love like no other species. We have a range of the most complex emotions. You can't help but look back at our history and revel at our work and look in awe at some of the few glorious, prominent, people throughout the ages. However, we could be so much more and slowly our potential has slowly eroded away.

It would seem like we took the wrong fork in the road. What has happened to us the past thousand years to allow us to get to this point? I'm talking about us on a personal level to us as a whole. We humans have completed acts of much brutality with senseless wars, the sloppy caretaking of our world, the idiotic belief in nationalistic pride and notion of superiority against one another. Our own species no less! Along with beauty, we have created some of the most dangerous, and perverse inventions known to this planet from chemicals all the way to the atom bomb. Not to mention bioengineering man-made diseases for our own germ warfare.

We are perpetrators of so may things. Things have run rampant from pathetic political correctness to the careless need for greed. Pick your poison so to speak. Find something that you think is unfair and unjust and morally wrong and ask why must you have to feel this way. Multiply that with millions of other things that are morally wrong and it becomes like a tidal wave of failure as a species. We have become petty. Why must we live in a world where we must have checks and balances when as a supposidley level-headed, open-minded, thought provoking, and morally just species, we shouldn't need it? Why must people have to find faith in religion when they should have faith in themselves? Why must people be told by religious zealots and holy books that they need to be good when they have the ability within themselves? How has greed blinded us so? How can a fake, valueless, monetary system turn us backwards so?

If you are, as I mentioned, an open-minded, level headed, and morally just individual, you can't help but look around and find yourself in a place you can't really identify with. A place that is strange and sad. A place where the few bastions of hope and good are being swallowed up by the darkness of greed, corruption, lies, bigotry, double standards, and perverse mutual understandings. How can we change things before it really becomes too late as a species? I try to think of ways to change things and to help educate people who are blind to this but then I find myself stuck. How can one person truly began with what's going on today? How can one person truly change and alter what is wrong with us? There are so many wrongs to right that one can't help but feel overcome with sadness and helplessness. I bet there are and were many good people who feel the same but eventually fell into the trap of the dull and vicious cycle of status quo that presides over us all.

Maybe we have to start over but how? An overhaul of this species means a certain disentegration of it and that means innocent people will have to suffer. Something I don't like. In other words...is it too late to change on how we think and feel and act as a species? If we are to survive, evolve, and progress as a species, then we must first think of ourselves as one entity and do what's right to insure the overall saftey of it. With the way things are going, we will not last very long through extinction caused by us or if we do survive in a long term duration, we will eventually decline and devolve back to our roots of a beast derived of thought and reason.

I am not by any means a saint. I have my faults just like every other person but I like to think that I'm one of those lucky few who have conquered the dark side of themselves and try everyday to do what's right. Try to keep an open-mind and to not let myself sink. Not just for me but for other people and I know there are many others out there who feel the same. You could be one and if you are, thank you for helping try to keep the dim light shining.

If you dont agree with anything I said and have your own differing thoughts and philosophy of why we are the way we are, then you must agree on one thing. We are truly living in a mad world...

Dear fellow ATS member-
Thank you. I could not have said it better myself. This is exactly how I feel. How my significant other feels also. I'm heartened that there are more of us. I can count a total of 8 people I know personally - grew up with them in fact ( my parents and siblings) plus my 2 children. That's 9 people including you. I say we start our own "protest"...one person at a time. One act. One kindness. To borrow from my being Methodist - turn the other cheek. Only a small thing, but add them all up..... . Touching off a positive response like a pebble thrown in the pond.

Thanks for the heartfelt response. I'm glad there are others who feel the same. Maybe there is hope.

Nice rant.

The human condition resembles a situation in which two dogs are locked in a cage with no food. They are friendly and happy at first.

What will happen after a few days?

A disturbing image to be sure...but then, so is the human condition.

We are hardwired for a very different world than the one we are in now. We used to live in a much wider world, where it was easier to breathe free.

What changed?

Here's a hint:

Yeah. That's what I meant when there needs to be a certain disintegration of the human populace but for that to happen, there is going to be a huge cost. Maybe that's why more and more people are becoming interested in "end of the world" type events? Maybe people in a way know that that is what needs to happen to reboot our species and give us another chance.