It’s easy to forget that humanity is not an unmitigated disaster, and in fact humans have done many amazing things and will continue to do so. To concentrate only on the negative is to lose sight of the forest for the trees, to borrow a cliché. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:
Every time I write one of these pieces, a certain number of people freak out, and often quite vocally. But it’s a huge mistake to define ourselves by what we’re against, and darkness is not all that exists in the world.
And we are magnificent creatures. I want my writing to help humans realize that this is true, and to start acting on it. Decrying what is wrong has a place, but a limited place: that of warning good people to avoid it.
The focus on evil is massively overdone. We are inundated with all that is bad in the world: News broadcasts are fully dedicated to nothing else, politicians are dedicated to nothing else, and the very existence of contemporary governance is predicated on “keeping fear alive.”
But all of that is degrading, distracting, and devolutionary. Sure, evil exists, but the truth about evil is that it’s small and weak (stay tuned next week). It’s time to stop devoting the whole of our lives to it.
Who Is “We”?
Since I’m saying, “We are great,” and since I’m expecting a lot of instinctive objections to the concept, I should define the term.
“We” refers to productive humans. And there are billions of us. We are the majority. Our big problem is we’ve been conditioned to think that darkness and destruction lurk for us on every corner and that nonproductive people are our natural superiors. But those are lies. We are superior to the willfully unproductive.
And yes, in this article, I’m completely ignoring murderers, criminals, and the various dependent classes. They don’t define me, and they shouldn’t determine the shape of your mind either.
Celebrating Our Greatness
The Romans used to celebrate themselves: their arches and domes, their aqueducts and fountains, their roads and farms, their prosperity. On the other hand, we’ve accomplished far, far more than the Romans. And yet, we are fully convinced that we suck. There’s a problem here.
The past few centuries have seen the most productive generations ever to inhabit the Earth. Never before, in our long history, have humans accomplished anything remotely close to what we have. And we’re poised to jump much farther… except that we’ve been convinced – irrationally and maliciously – that we deserve no credit for anything, that we’re vile and filthy and caustic.
Entire academic disciplines are devoted to convincing us – against any and every objective fact – that we can’t know anything, that thinking we do know sets us at the lowest depths of self-delusion, and that our only rational role in the universe is to hate ourselves and to obey our betters (aka, authority).
To continue reading: We Are Great
Mr. Rosenberg is correct. And that’s what angers / depresses me – not that things are bad, but that they could be far better. The only thing standing in the way is bad thinking; so trivial in one sense, so insurmountable in another.
“. . . we’ve been convinced – irrationally and maliciously – that we deserve no credit for anything, that we’re vile and filthy and caustic.” True enough, but isn’t it time to consider how and why that happened? Maybe Mencken was on to something when he said: “I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind – that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.” Would the current secular manifestations of anti-reason have been possible without the ground being prepared by the hostility of religion, particularly Christianity, to reason and the mind?
You raise points that deserve debate.