Crude and rude people seem to be the majority among humans. Some even value their crude-rude behavior above all other behavior saying things like “ I value brute honesty no matter how hurtful and scathing.”

Honesty, it is true, is valuable in the daily dealings of human beings. If you buy a product you want to know its faults. In the pursuit of your daily life you need to know possible dangers. Honesty can provide safety.

The pursuit of honesty to the nth degree can be harmful. Brutal honesty can destroy the fragile dreams of a child. Self-confidence, once destroyed, may never recover. Alternatively, a well placed compliment or encouragement, neither the truth nor a lie, may spur the child to new heights of achievement. A clumsy hapless child may be molded into a wreck or a piece of art. Even a harmless fib (is that a micro-lie?) may allow a fragile ego to strengthen and become strong. Yet … there are those who insist that absolute frank and caustic honesty is the best path, regardless whether the child ends up needing psychiatric treatment, or chooses as many do, to end it all.

The problems of humanity are many fold. One thing I think that makes human beings such a miserable lot is the “me first” mentality. This can also be described as “I’ve got mine, the rest of you can just do without” syndrome. It is almost as if something has effected the base emotion of empathy. No one seems capable any more of putting themselves in other’s shoes to know how they feel about a situation.

A bum sits upon a street corner. He is obviously handicapped. Today people are more likely to tell the invalid to get a job rather than to drop a coin in his cup. “I’ve got mine, the rest of you can just do without!”

My idealistic faith in the goodness of humanity has taken a severe beating in the last few months. I search with strained eyes to see the goodness that continues to elude my gaze. Even that which claims to be good, has a smooth and friendly veneer of decency, upon examination has an ulterior goal. It does not pay to examine those of “godly” nature too closely. The altruistic claims of non-theists fall flat as well with minor scrutiny.

I am not unaffected by the greed and callousness I have seen. I, too, find it difficult to sympathize, to express empathy, for those “me first” and “I’ve got mine” sorts.

There seems to be social engineering taking place upon the population. This engineering is suppressing the empathetic instincts evolution has instilled in the human species. It seems to be bracing us for some coming calamity that might require the deaths of many. A feeling of “everyone for themselves” seems to be welling up within our species. Empathy will have to go if the population is to be culled. Many have spoken of just such a conspiracy scenario. Whether this is actually an orchestrated conspiracy, or just the natural reaction of an animal (humans are just animals, let’s admit) to over-population, we cannot be sure.