Do you think humanity is a net positive or negative?

[prone2fury]

Personally I think humanity as a whole is more inclined towards hurting itself than anything good. Even past tens of thousands of years, we still have war, rape, abuse, slavery, and other ways people choose to hurt each other. Yet we still perpetuate them. For every problem we solve, it seems like we create 50 more. We invent cell phones, then we build swathes of call centers designed to fool people into giving up their money. And I don't even need to start on what happened after we made the internet.

Of course people do a lot of good things too. But I think society should, even if it never will, understand that what we're best at is inflicting suffering, whether intentional or not. And do you really think that we'll create an even slightly better world in the time we have before armageddon?

I'm open to the idea that I'm wrong but I'm wondering how everybody else thinks.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I think that humanity is a net negative towards each other and also towards the world. Like you said, there's still a lot of human atrocities happening such as war, rape, abuse etc. Additionally, humans enslave everybody else into doing their arbitrary and useless system. Our entire lives are dictated by mere pieces of paper and coins (money) and people go homeless when they have a lack of this arbitrary human construct. It's so absurd. There's no reason for the system to exist yet it does because humans are all about exploiting each other and making a profit out of others. This is why I don't trust people in general as humans are not to be trusted and there are countless stories of people getting betrayed by somebody else.

I don't understand anybody who sees humanity in a positive light when all we do is hurt each other for the most part

 

[Plentiful_Despair]

Negative. Please delete all files and restart the entire game.

 

[zengiraffe]

I think concepts such as "positive" and "negative" were invented by humanity. I think it's meaningless to say whether humanity is a net positive or negative, because relative to what?

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I'm going to be a contrarian Devil's advocate and say humanity is a net positive. Why? Because we live in a time that has Shadow the Hedgehog as a fictional character.

 

[Death Diviner]

Evidence may suggest we're net negative. Ever since our emergence, we've been characterized by destructive tendencies, intra-specific and interspecific. Hell, it's likely that we intentionally caused the extinction of other human species, alongside various flaura and fauna. As our population exponentially increased, the damage we created became more prominent. We've wiped out entire species (leaving several endangered), destroyed habitats, dropped suns upon ourselves and we shall continue.

 

[prone2fury]

I'm going to be a contrarian Devil's advocate and say humanity is a net positive. Why? Because we live in a time that has Shadow the Hedgehog as a fictional character.

Damn you got me there. And Blaze exists too... we must be living in the best of all possible worlds!

 

[-Link-]

I find it interesting that "positive" has managed one-third of the vote on a suicide forum, of all places.

My initial reaction was, "How can this even be a question? Negative, duhhhhhhh!!!"

Maybe the answer isn't as easy as all that...

On further thought: In order for "positive" to overcome the "negative", "positive" sometimes has to stoop to the level of "negative", at which point the "positive" becomes the very "negative" it's trying to overcome.

Ergo, "positive" can never win this battle, and humanity is indeed a net negative.

The only thing that might change this, I think, is the rise of technology. In particular, artificial intelligence. But if artificial intelligence ever starts forcing change on humanity, then human beings will have much bigger problems to worry about than each other.

 

[Pluto]

 

[_AllCatsAreGrey_]

I was thinking about this poll today at work. I haven't voted because I don't agree with either. Good and bad are human notions. I agree with the comments about the negative impact of humanity, we're clearly making a problem on this planet. But, we don't critique the value of a forces of nature. "Was that hurricane good or bad?" Humanity is just another system existing in this world. It's not good or bad. It exists.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I expect if you took a vote- were that possible... Asked every human that ever lived- I imagine you'd come out with a positive majority. Most people probably aren't quite as cynical and pessimistic as most members here. As a race, we continue to procreate- if people truly realised we were a negative, they wouldn't be replicating themselves- surely?

Humans are a pretty impressive species when you compare them to everything else. Pretty impressive to be able to leave the planet and explore space for example. Create music and art. Synthesize medicines, transplant organs. To be able to study and understand our world.

Of course, we are horifically destructive too. I don't think we've benefitted the planet or other species. We've just exploited, tamed and destroyed a lot of them. Really, all of our exploits have been for our own benefit or, to desperately try and reverse damage that we've caused.

Having said that, I don't see nature as some pure, idylllic, fair minded system either. Animals have evolved to cheat and exploit just as we have- eg. Cuckoo's dumping their offspring on other birds to raise. I don't think there's anything necessarily especially evil about our race. I think most things on this planet have an instinctual drive to survive however they can. Some have evolved symbiotic relationships, others exploitative. I suppose the difference is, we attach moral values to each. Probably to try and reign in our most cruel tendancies because, maybe they weren't benefitting us overall. We live in societies, we likely do need some order to them.

Personally, I think we've been a negative but I suspect- had another species got the jump on us, they may well not have done any better.

 

[pain6batch9]

Positive I think. Or rather, I think we eventually will be. It feels like we're on the cusp of solving many of the world's worst problems.

Take energy production for example. Or working out how to produce food in countries under pressure from climate change. Or environmental degradation. These are things it is within our power to solve. I don't think we're there yet, but we can see the finish line. (Insert joke here about being a metre from the line when the bombs drop.)

 

[AbusedInnocent]

Negative. Please delete all files and restart the entire game.

Restart? Why can't this all just be over?

 

[Plentiful_Despair]

Restart? Why can't this all just be over?

That's probably even better, yeah. Every improvement I can think of would be corrupted at some point. Human mind is the problem

 

[obligatoryshackles]

The world is a net negative on humanity.

 

[sserafim]

Negative

 

[alltoomuch2]

Negative. We destroy any species that isn't useful to us. We use up the planets resources without guilt. You only have to look at wpd to see the horrors that humans can inflict on other humans. But we don't restrict our cruelty to other humans. The most successful humans are the greediest and the most callous. Humans focus on accumulating wealth, land and possessions, will destroy others perceived as weaker or at least have no empathy for their plight.

 

[Fvck_Society1337]

I think that humanity is a net negative towards each other and also towards the world. Like you said, there's still a lot of human atrocities happening such as war, rape, abuse etc. Additionally, humans enslave everybody else into doing their arbitrary and useless system. Our entire lives are dictated by mere pieces of paper and coins (money) and people go homeless when they have a lack of this arbitrary human construct. It's so absurd. There's no reason for the system to exist yet it does because humans are all about exploiting each other and making a profit out of others. This is why I don't trust people in general as humans are not to be trusted and there are countless stories of people getting betrayed by somebody else.

I don't understand anybody who sees humanity in a positive light when all we do is hurt each other for the most part

And they have the audacity to say speaking like that means we're mentally ill. No, that's just reality. This planet is a prison planet and we are tax slaves. I do not wish to bring a child into this planet ever.

 

[lamargue]

it's neither, but i think that if we had somehow never evolved into sapient lifeforms, nothing would have been lost