The fact that the human species is a disgrace is not debatable. There are many facets to this issue. It is why the human species is a disgrace, not if.

Of all the species on this world, humans are the most advanced intellectually. They can ponder, consider, decide a course of action. They have the ability to look at issues from the other side and to express empathy. When they hurt others, the others being other humans or other species, they know they are hurting them. If that hurt is carried out needlessly, then that hurt becomes malice. When malice is intentionally manifest it is a misuse of empathy. You are hurting someone intentionally because you know it hurts.

It has been said that the failure to take action can be thought of as bad as actually harming someone. You see a man in the street. Dirty, disheveled, and hungry; it is obvious he has been there for a while. His reasons for being there are irrelevant. The fact that he is there means that society has failed him. The much vaunted human capacity for empathy has either failed or people that look upon this man are satisfied that he is in such horrible conditions. They know he is in bad straights and parade their own “well-off” state as evidence that they are superior. A misuse of empathetic power, I posture.

The human species, because it had the capacity to understand the  state of fellow humans was able to act together and survive against physically superior foes. It was this quality of empathy that provided the glue that held us together. The individual human was no match for the saber tooth, the wolves, and other hosts of forces capable of destroying him.

Our empathy has failed us much. It has been used as a means to determine how to harm, too often. Human failures include rigid religions, barbaric laws, war, violence, starvation, and arrogance. The list of failures is much longer and the length of this list grows each time something that could have provided positive improvement is turned instead to some harmful and destructive course.

How could a caring human species carry out atrocities culminating in the deaths of thousands, if not millions? Just how did a bomb manage to be produced that could annihilate an entire city? Such a force was meant for better use. It was predicted that this force would provide electricity so cheap that it need not be metered. What happened? Was it greed? Was it miscalculation? Was it beyond our grasp?

When the bomb was first proposed it was conjectured by some that it would ignite the atmosphere and end this world. The fools went ahead anyway. The struggle for the doomsday machine was relentless. The conjectured ignition proved inaccurate and led to the desire for even more powerful explosive force. The race went on to such a level that when all was said and done, all existence was in peril.

The first world war was to end all wars. Then came WWII, surely it would be the last. Numerous wars have raged since and no end is in sight. Death and destruction is rampant everywhere. So many factions no way to diplomatically sway those determined to enforce their own perspective upon all other peoples. Turmoil.

Justification enough for the eventual rise of misanthropes like myself I should say. More later…