I Hate Humans

I have slightly different criticisms (mostly that masses tend to be fearful, hateful, dangerous, obedient, and cruel as compared to individuals and small groups), but I can understand this.

I still tend to like "humans", though, weirdly enough.

I tend to feel the other way. The more I get to know someone, the more critical I am of their flaws, which is a bad habit, because it makes me not want to know people very well, also, I'm just as flawed if not moreso.

Thank you, it's not uncommon for me to get depressed thinking about how we, humans, are really fucked up and how the world could be a much better place, yet feeling helpless realizing how little i can do to change the system.

How can you not like humans? How can you not empathise with humanity? Seems like an epic failure of big-picture imagination.

I love people and I love humans.

I like it. Inspired by Hugh MacLeod?

Sigh, humans are OK. It all depends on the spicing.

But seriously... As an old cynic and ex-misanthrope I should say that I have changed position.

>>Whenever I find myself riffing about bad systems and the humans behind them, I try to think about them as people.

Most of human behavior is culturally programmed. If you read about e.g. Scandinavian history before 1500 AD, Afghanistan(!) looks peaceful. Compare that with the present world.

Democracies implement realpolitik and lie about it. But internally, they are quite nice to voters. Few in democracies are violent and actively, well, "evil". See "democratic peace theory".

The whole world is becoming democratic, because that is the only thing that works (except getting free money from oil).

You need to accept that humans aren't perfect, but with the right environment they are OK. (The old misanthrope in me still mutters about spices.)

Enough with teenage angst. It becomes boring after 30.