Stop Criticizing Humans. Stop Talking Crap About Humanity.
“I like animals more than I like people.“
”The Earth would be better without us.”
”Humanity was a mistake.”
”Nature is magical.”
”Human extinction would be great.”
Stop.
I’m sure you’ve seen people say this online. Or perhaps you subscribe to such ideologies.
It drives me absolutely nuts when people preach this anti-humanist propaganda.
Nature is not your friend. Nature is not some lovely magical entity.
The default state of the world we adopted is suffering. Remove humans out of the equation, and you know what you’re left with? Suffering.
Nature is apathetic. Nature is merciless. Nature is suffering. Nature is primitive. Nature is death.
That’s the default state of this world.
Nature will kill you without a second thought if you mess up just once.
Nature kills 274,000 children every year due to malaria. Children who did no wrong.
Nature tries to kill us at every turn. Nature is the bubonic plague that wiped out nearly half of the European population. Nature is the wide array of diseases, viruses, bacteria, and prions that seek to kill us in slow, agonizing deaths.
Nature is Ebola, a disease that makes your body rupture from the inside out and die an extremely horrific death.
Nature is evil disguised in beauty.
In a village near where I grew up, two brothers, one eight years old and one five years old, were playing in a forest near their home.
They were ripped apart and eaten by a bear.
Do you think, for a second, that the bear considered morality?
Do you think there was one single neuron in its mind that decided maybe it would be wrong to kill these two innocent children who did no harm?
No.
Nature is apathetic. Our default ecosystem — the human-less attribute of this world we’re living in — is apathy.
We adopted a cruel world. A world characterized by suffering, by evil, by impurity.
And you know what we humans did? We decided that we want something more. Something better.
Driven by our innate curiosity, a factor that separates us from every other animal on this planet, we set off to reduce human suffering.
We set off to create our own world. A world that is run by our own values. A world of right and wrong, a world that reduces human suffering.
We came together. We started innovating. We started building beautiful civilizations. We harnessed agriculture, we established markets, we studied science, and we invented incredible machines that crafted a new world.
We tripled our lifespans. We invented cures for diseases that used to kill us in the millions.
We were not satisfied with the world that we adopted. We were determined to leave a better world for our children.
Humanity is not perfect. Not at all. We have made some terrible, terrible grievances in the past. We have hurt each other. Some of us are continuously hurting each other, even today.
But, adversity yields improvement. We came back together.
Look at our civilization today. You may not realize it, but it’s beautiful.
Right now, there is a surgeon who is working tirelessly to save the life of a stranger they don’t even know.
Right now, there are people with relief organizations like the Red Cross, working tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of others.
Right now, there is a scientist working long hours in their lab, seeking cures to natural diseases that take the lives of our loved ones.
Right now, there are thousands of pilots operating sophisticated machines, responsible for the lives of everyone on board.
Right now, there are construction workers and engineers building beautiful infrastructure to make tomorrow better.
We tend to take for granted the beautiful attributes of our global civilization, and instead focus on the negatives.
Focusing on the negatives is important for improvement, but not when you’re jeopardizing your own mental health and ability to perform by sitting around and falling into depression about the “state of mankind.”
Humanity did not come here by accident. We were driven by incredible people who sacrificed to get us to where we are. To alleviate suffering.
Think about how incredible it is that in most of the world, dialing three numbers will render to you an immediate team of professionals dedicated to saving your life.
We are constantly bombarded by bad news, making it seem like we’re heading in the wrong direction.
But the truth is, in the last twenty years, we have significantly reduced poverty around the world. We have created opportunity. We have expanded medical access. We have lifted so many out of suffering.
Humans have an innate desire to help. Contrary to what you may think, most people are good. Most people want to help.
Our mission, as humans, is to continue crafting our own world. We must leverage nature, protect our fragile ecosystem, and engineer it to reduce suffering.
Your mission, and my mission, as members of the human race, is to reduce the suffering of others. So that our kids could inherit a better, kinder world.
Given our incredible advances in the last 100 years, I’m more than confident that we’ll succeed. And I’m optimistic about our future.
There are some incredibly talented, bright, and kind people in this world. Working hard at this very moment to achieve this goal.
We are masters of our own world. Let’s make it better.