My selfish arguments for saving humanity

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

– Albert Einstein

Humanity doesn’t deserve saving. I mean that in the nicest possible manner, humans have dome some pretty screwed up stuff over the course of history; the holocaust, the Armenian genocides, wiping entire species off the face of the earth, we have very few redeeming qualities. In the name of progress we tread on the weak, we move forward with little regard for the consequences and countless atrocities are committed across the globe. We fight, and squabble, merchants of death cause wars for profit and our most idealistic and righteous institutions are plagued by corruption and depravity. Humans are bad to one another and sin plagues clings to the fabric of humanity like an anchor holding us back from perfection. Humanity struggles towards perfection, our failures, points of learning and our capacity for courage and heroics is matched only by our fables to inspire. Humanity is vile, depraved, and beautiful.

Our species doesn’t have the best track record, our planet is polluted beyond repair, species are being pushed to extinction faster than any point in history, and over 9 million people die each year from starvation even with our massive surplus. We have worked to rectify these matters, but none of our actions are enough, the world has sunk, and has continued to sink; every month we set records in climate change, 750000 people die of starvation, and 830 species die. Our methods are failing, the people with power are content with sitting in their glass towers, too oblivious, too uncaring to push for real change, our leaders maintain the status quo and that just simply is not good enough.

Humanity is not perfect, we learn from our failures trying to get better yet we never learn. As George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” Over and over the past has repeated, every atrocity a new landmark for the depths of human depravity. Every new landmark in depravity desensitizes us to the small ones, small atrocities no longer get the attention they deserve in our culture, its always onto the next big story, the next trend. Since April 2014, people of Flint Michigan no longer had clean drinking water and the United States called out in support, but after a month, Flint was forgotten for the next big news story, the next crisis, 3 years have passed and nothing has changed; Flint is without water but forgotten, our current president threatens the start a nuclear war on twitter while the people living in his country don’t have clean water to drink, while mass shooting are seen as a monthly occurrence that nothing can stop, and thoughts and prayers are the best things that can be offered to all of these crises.

Beauty is subjective, a construct which is different for everyone, yet something that everyone agrees on. The human struggle is unique to us, a species hanging off a blue marble hurtling through space towards a fate unknown. At any moment our species could be wiped out, yet, we continue to struggle. We struggle to make the world a better place to live, we struggle to make the world cleaner and less polluted, and we struggle to better our fellow man. Most struggles are done in vain or in a persons own, selfish, personal interest. We work to make the world a better place not for each other, but for ourselves, something we can point to and say, the world isn’t that bad look at what we are doing to make it better; It’s time to admit it however, humanity is simply not doing enough, our current path in unsustainable and a failure to recognize this will have impacts that reverberate throughout generations. The human struggle is beautiful, a species toiling a way in a multitude of different directions, each individual working with their own dreams in mind, their own hopes and aspirations to achieve, a melting pot of different goals, aspirations, hopes, dreams, emotions, and failures coming together and forming humanity.

Humanity has one shot, one chance to get it right; our selfish, corrupt, greedy species has one shot to prove that we are worth saving, that we are more than the sum of our goals and aspirations, that we are more than the sum of our past, that we are better than squabbles over who has the bigger button, that we as a species aren’t just a species that profits off of making each other suffer, that we can accept each other no matter skin color, gender, race, or political differences. We are humanity, and we have one shot.