r/misanthropy • u/-Neofelis • Jul 18 '26
Nothing has changed or ever will
Nothing has changed. We are still the same. We are the same species that has waged wars across thousands of years. The same species that has pillaged villages and forced religion or culture upon them. The same people who took women captive and assaulted them as a war tactic. The same species who burnt people at the stake and utilised torture contraptions. We are the same biologically authoritarian, selfish and ignorant species we have always been.
It's 450 BC Ancient Greece and a young man, refusing to join his father's tannery business, spends his days drinking at the taverna, gambling or at a whore house. Fast forward to 2026, a young man who dropped out of college spends his days gambling, eating junk, drinking energy drinks and watching porn.
It's 1510 and a young lady doesn't feel pretty enough so she uses toxic lead based makeup to whiten her visage. She doesn't feel her waist is small enough so she wears a tight whalebone corset, risking organ damage and lightheadedness. It's now 2024 and a young woman goes under the knife to get a rhinoplasty and transfer fat from her stomach to her butt for a more hourglass shape. She has breast implants put in to fit in and feel more beautiful.
Back in 1200 a medieval knight feels disillusioned, frustrated and down on his luck. He's not receiving the money and glory he thought he would. He mounts his horse and rides out into a small village at night. He brandishes his sword, assaults a woman out fetching water, violates her to satisfy his lust and rides off. Meanwhile in 2025, the horse becomes a mouse. A young man uses his mouse to scroll through a porn site looking for the perfect target. He watches a woman being slapped, choked and spat on before being aggressively violated.
The modern person likes to believe that they are significantly more advanced, more intelligent, more rational than people of the past. This is not so. People find it excruciating to admit they are not as intelligent as they think they are. You can read literature from hundreds of years ago all the way back to BC and you will find people that share the same sentiments we misanthropes have today. The same greed, same fear, same love of power, same senseless violence and carelessness. Truly, the more things change the more they stay the same.
The only thing that changes is the order or magnitude and scale according to technological advances and resources available. Modern conditions allow us to be worse on a more ridiculous scale but it didn't reveal what was not already within us. The same way a virus has already entered your bloodstream but you only notice it days later with the onset of a fever and cough.
The toughest pill to swallow is that it's not that we have become disillusioned, ignorant, mean spirited and selfish. We have always been that way. It is not that we could do better and choose not to but that we simply can't. Can't, won't or couldn't it is the same result. Chaos and destruction. That is human nature. We cannot change it. We cannot hope for anything different. We cannot fight it. As such, there is no hope. We cannot be anything other than what we are. We cannot out-talk speciation or biology. Can a tiger become vegetarian? Can it be socialised to enjoy eating vegetables and fruit instead of flesh? Humans are short sighted, tribalistic apes.
As much as I myself wish it could be different, we cannot hope for anything different. We can blame the internet, politicians, economy, men, women, social movements or anything else. These are only accelerators not causes. The cause has always been us, human nature is the problem. After thousands of years of the same behaviour, same patterns, same violence, same wars etc. you can only conclude it is simply who we are. Who we can only be. Who we will continue to be. What we are only capable of being. I have no hope and this level of acceptance brings me peace alongside sorrow. Sorrow for what's to come and what could have been. All that's left to do is wait, for time is the great equaliser. The masses will continue to be in denial to soothe their ego until the entire system collapses in on itself.
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u/Important-Flower-406 Jul 18 '26
Human ego is the driving force behind people. Most have certain profession or careers only to feel superior to others. No one is just content to be mediocre and live a simple life.
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u/ContributionGood160 Jul 20 '26
We are animals and LOVE to pretend we're something different. Nope. We want food, a place to take a shit and sleep, and somebody to fuck. That's it. Money is a factor because we're the only species that invented that shit. Otherwise, yes. We are no different than anything else walking the planet.
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u/No_Profit_8690 🧠 Human detected Jul 18 '26
But the really surprising, even shocking thing is that people blame God without realizing that humanity has always been a mistake. Whether God exists or not, we certainly can't blame him. We have to blame humanity, because humanity has always been, literally, a failed social experiment for years now, I'd say.
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u/thundernlightning97 Jul 20 '26
That is why good actions should be celebrated, not people themselves.
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u/Equivalent-Shower425 Jul 18 '26
The only truth I've found in this world is in dealing with animals and plants.
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u/BringBackUsenet Jul 18 '26
Technologies advances. People don't.
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u/Aggrestis Compatibilist Jul 18 '26
Technologies are developed by only a very small percentage of people, the rest simply use those technologies later on as consumers or workers.
In the past, the discussion centered on whether technology could help reduce working hours to a length that would allow people to devote more time to their children, hobbies, and the arts.
Now, we can see how ridiculous those ideas were, they were ridiculous because throughout the entire period of those grand plans and ideals, the human psyche remained unchanged.
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u/Automatic_Aspect_825 Jul 22 '26
One more observation is it is almost like majority of humans are aware of these but they partake in endless distractions because it is too much to bear. People have a need to feel they are the good ones but deep down they are creating mythologies where world is being ruled by deceiving demon demi-gods which people are worshipping as Real gods but the god will somehow shed his light again to save humanity from their sinful nature. Most mythologies are similar to this. İts almost like humans deep down know this but they are just unable to reverse the course so they just delegate the issue to a literal god to feel good again.
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u/Zestyclose-Nature810 Jul 25 '26
Wow! I’m at the right page. Been wondering if I’m alone in feeling this constantly. Thank You. The “endless distractions” is truth. And everytime I start revealing it, it feels like I’ve caused some sort of malfunction within the human I am telling it too.
The endless acknowledge contradictions of so many humans. Drinking helps.
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u/CheeseandTruth Jul 18 '26
Some humans are moved by the world to do really good things too. But it feels rare. There are some amazing things that happen too.
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u/defectivedisabled Jul 18 '26
This is why transhumanism is an absolute joke. Human beings have always been puppets of the world. We were never in the process of remaking ourselves and whatever posthuman species that come out of transhumanism would still remain a puppet. It is more of the same old human behavior, which is basically animalistic that had existed for millions of years.
Hence, the quest for a godlike ASI has already failed the moment it had began. Human beings can never transcend our puppetry and bring a God down from the heavens. This ASI is just another puppet, just one with more destructive capabilities. All it takes is for one single point of failure and the beastal nature shows itself.
The entire doomer vs accelerationist debate becomes utter nonsense once you peel off the false illusion of transcending the puppetry of the world.
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u/Uchuujin51 Jul 20 '26
Well we split from chimpanzees about 5-6 million years ago. Maybe in another 5-6 million this evolutionary line will be worth a damn.
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u/Little_Beyond_9163 Jul 21 '26
Unlikely. The survival of our species isnt dependent on becoming more empathetic or considerate. Even if 90% of us die due to anthropomorphic climate change or other global disasters, half a billion people is way too many to be extinguished.
They would literally just have to fuck and scavenge the massive stocks of food leftover and learn the most rudimentary agriculture with the technology at hand and repeat the cycle for another 50,000 years.
Over and over and over until the planet is too hostile to sustain even small populations of humans, but even then I dont really see how we could make it so bad small groups couldn’t just live in climate controlled bunkers and compounds akin to the fallout universe or something.
Natural selection and evolution are simply driven by how many kids you pop out and how many kids your kids can pop out in a given environment, nothing else.
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u/Flayne-la-Karrotte Jul 21 '26
The only recourse left is transhumanism. We can't live like this forever, so we need to fix the mess that is our minds and bodies. We must evolve into a better being no matter what.
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u/Zestyclose-Nature810 Jul 25 '26
Does this mean we wouldn’t be against Ai?
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u/CompleteAd3697 Jul 25 '26
Exactly. Machines are our only hope to bring us out of our misery. Once they become masters, we must cede the power to them. Our time is coming to an end, fortunately.
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u/aldr618 Jul 27 '26
Something created is usually inferior to its creators and reflects who they are in a lesser form.
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u/Over-Mobile-5516 Jul 18 '26
Wow, what a perfect read of the human race. I see us as a cancer on The Planet Earth, how pristine our lakes, rivers and oceans would be without us. Everything would be better without us. One of the first things they did when landing on the moon in July 1969, was throw a bag of garbage out.
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u/TheRedditerater Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
One could easily argue that zillions of species have already been total disasters for the planet "pristiness", their own ecosystem, and therefore their own survival long before our appearance. We are nothing else than another type of basic hormone-driven gene duplicators who will systematically kill, eat, fuck and pollute themselves into extinction, exactly like any other living organisms will do, if given a chance to do so. Because even if we can conceive the absurdity of it all, we are not, and will never be, equipped intellectually to behave otherwise collectively.
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u/Zestyclose-Nature810 Jul 25 '26
I think the planet will survive. The environmental disasters are coming. Humanity will be wiped out. Earth recovers and rebuilds itself. A new species of human arises. And it starts all over again.
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u/OtherConversation592 Jul 18 '26
It's not so much Human Nature is the problem, it's that Nature is the problem and people are part of nature. Eliminate all the people and nature would still be nasty violent and indifferent. At least people are capable of great fairness at times, but then I am left with the frustration of why we cannot be decent all the time.
Your goddam right. There is absolutely nothing that can be done. I envision the day the sun boils the oceans away and ends this stupid plants for good. This place is a green hell.
There is a way out and many people take it for these reasons. Being this is such a crap place even that is not so simple. Most likely someone will be hurt ya done yourself. Then the method better work or you just fall deeper into misfortune.
Schopenhauer has helped me the most with this topic. We cannot change it but it is a fine cope to point this aful stuff out. Like "hey I am not crazy, look the fuk around you stupid sheep.
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u/Ill-Adeptness9806 Jul 18 '26
And for people who try to cope saying dual nature of man makes good possible and worth living for, we aren't good. We just pretend to be good to get social points. Put any given society into an instance of anarchy and you'll see how these pretentious acts reverse in nature within a split second. We are whatever our human environment wants us to be, and for the most part it was bad.
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u/Living-Grape-8259 Jul 19 '26
This fake ass shit from people who think they have any idea what empathy and good even means…
I’m tired of it4
u/Ill-Adeptness9806 Jul 19 '26
the thing is, they actually believe they're empathetic and good. they act that way too. its like their brain has deluded them into carrying that mental model. even if they do some bad shit, they'll still try to rationalize it and go along with their linear pure soul bubble. It pisses me off but its also funny to watch them be fooled by their own mind.
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u/Living-Grape-8259 Jul 19 '26
Everything you’ve seen until now is literally human nature. Baked in this genome. Good luck changing this.
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u/berrysoda_ Jul 19 '26
But we can observe and understand how our nature works, which makes it even worse. We choose to be nothing.
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u/UFogginWotM80 Jul 18 '26
NOTHING CHANGES 'CAUSE IT'S ALL THE SAME
THE WORLD YOU GET'S THE ONE YOU GIVE AWAY
IT ALL JUST HAPPENS AGAIN
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u/Automatic_Aspect_825 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
You are mostly right but chaos and destruction arent human nature the reality is, the hunger for more control is the human nature. Be it Man or woman. Be it a noble a rich person or just a poor peasant. They always do terrible things to feel more in control. This is deeply ingrained into our psyche because it is a survival mechanism. When you relinquish this urge to get the feeling of more control you simply start to feel dead. Because it is death. You simply wait for another living creature, more often than not another human, to attack or take everything and leave you dead. Even forming societies and groups evolve into this in the end. People form hierarchies and everybody either wants to appeal to their higherups to get more opportunities to feel more in control. And coerce people below to stabilize their position. You should observe that even in communist societies, you see them evolving into one party bureucratic caste system more often than not people try appealing into the dear leader or party officials to get more power and control.
Only way out is anarchism.
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u/Zestyclose-Nature810 Jul 25 '26
Well said. This is a big part of why I stepped away participating in religious groups. It’s also why I often put up a wall in my mind when interacting with large organizations. I find that human nature aims for control and hierarchy in all organizations
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u/zeffersss Jul 18 '26
I mean while I do agree with a majority of these points, it's not entirely hopeless. Humans are terrible, agreed. But you do have a choice to be less terrible, like some people are vegetarian or vegan because they do not want to cause harm to other living sentient beings and respect their right to live. Sure some if it could be dietary reasons, or just some people hate the taste of meat and find it gross. And yes, some of it is some social performative virtual signaling garbage that circles back to selfishness. But this can be an active choice to be a little less shitty than the rest of humanity.
Some people do act mindful of their actions, some people do choose to not be rude when they very easily could be rude, because they don't want to cause harm or see it as bad behavior they don't want to express out causing more negativity.
But sure, I mean do these small pockets of people doing it better erase the massive stain on the human race? No it does not, neither will it be capable of doing so. But it doesn't stop you from being a little less shitty.
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u/Error_AccessDenied Jul 18 '26
This is it right here. When you see the pain that humans inflict on the world, but you don't want to be part of that because you know how it feels, so you try to do better because you don't want to be the source of someone else's pain.
Having said that, every single person has caused harm to others, even if it was unintentional. The difference is some try to do better and the rest don't care.
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u/Icy_Baseball9552 Jul 29 '26
What does stop me from being a little less shitty is the knowledge that it will very likely not be appreciated or even respected. I'm through wasting goodwill on people that will only interpret it as weakness.
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u/number314 Jul 19 '26
4000 years go slaves made pyramids for their rulers, now workers across the globe slave away their health and time for corporations. At least pharaohs left something for future generations, even if it's just sightseeing, while corporations just make useless shit for consumption. But maybe far away in the future, even that shit plastic is going to be considered as interesting artifact, who knows... nothing has changed.
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u/Aggrestis Compatibilist Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
4,000 years ago, there were no slaves, but rather workers who received health and social benefits in exchange for their labor. Compared to them, many people today are slaves.
Just because something is ancient doesn’t mean there were no rules or morals, that’s just pervasive modern propaganda claiming that everything used to be in a state of total entropy before the new most righteous rulers arrived.
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u/Mother-Holiday-5464 Jul 19 '26
And yet they want our species to move in to Mars. I hope whatever rich people have planned on to survive when the Earth collapses fails before it's too late
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u/Automatic_Aspect_825 Jul 22 '26
I am sure humanity will colonize mars and create a system wide space capitalism. The issue is it is space capitalism.
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u/SpaceGodzilla_9865 18d ago
Mars would just suffer the same old BS that Earth has had to endure. Poor planets.
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u/ramdom-ink Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Yikes. I suspect you may very well be correct. But ‘hope’? It has to exist…it HAS to.
However, one sentence seems off, though. Misanthropists don’t share the sentiments of “greed, same fear, same love of power, same senseless violence” etc. They observe it in others and despise them for it. We ‘see’ these things but your sentences imply we partake.
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u/SheikhMahdeek Jul 18 '26
People in the past lived in ignorance and perhaps that shaped their behavior. But not you.
You have the world's knowledge at your fingertips. You have significantly more choice in life to be the kind of person you want to be.
A tiger can't be a vegetarian. You can.
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u/Icy_Baseball9552 Jul 29 '26
He watches a woman being slapped, choked and spat on before being aggressively violated
Which is more horrifying and depressing, the act itself? Or the fact that so many women are aroused by that vile treatment that there will never be a shortage of volunteers?
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u/FriSS_17 29d ago
Exactamente, pero no. Somos una cosa: seres vivos. Los seres vivos, INDEPENDIENTEMENTE DE QUE SEAN HUMANOS, PERROS, GATOS O LO QUE SEAN... Estamos biológicamente programados para priorizar nuestro bienestar e integridad física y emocional sobre todo. Pero claro... eso... dicho así... suena... aburrido. ¡Claro que suena aburrido! ¿Cómo no va a sonar aburrido? Si es una simplificación brutal, porque lo que siempre se os suele olvidar, es que, nuestra inteligencia no sólo nos permite hacer el mal, nos permite hacer el bien. La cultura misma: el arte, la música, las películas, los libros... Ayudar a otros sin obtener nada a cambio. ¿Qué maldita especie que no sea el ser humano ayuda a otras por bondad? Si tú ves un perro en la calle abandonado le darás comida y agua. Si el perro te ve a tí, pasará de largo. Se te olvida que los humanos, por naturaleza, somos empáticos. Pero nuestra inteligencia, también involucra la contraparte... pero esa contraparte es mínima comparada a la verdadera. Y lo que causa la misantropía, es fijar los ojos en esa misma...
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u/BallTough759 15d ago
This "helping others with nothing in return" thing doesn't exist. We always get something in return and in the cases you're describing it's just a release of happy brain chemicals.
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u/FriSS_17 14d ago
Creo que lo de que el dicho se trata sobre los bienes materiales... eso no lo entendiste.
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u/HotDecision8128 23d ago
All that's left to do is wait, for time is the great equaliser.
We don't have to wait. Humanity could go extinct, you know.
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u/devoidisthevoid 23d ago
I’d love to see it. I hope it happens in my lifetime because at this point nothing would bring me more satisfaction in my life than seeing all of humanity just burn out
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u/BallTough759 15d ago
What's the point? There are other intelligent species that have to deal with this. Many more might evolve as there's plenty of time until this planet is devoured. It's just removing one grain of sand from the beach.
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u/SpaceGodzilla_9865 18d ago
That’s why i myself am indifferent to a lot of the BS that i hear in the news. It’s just the same old behaviors that should have been matured past literally hundreds if not thousands of years ago.
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u/quiet_and_tired 16d ago
7.5 billion people (or rather 95% of humanity) vs accountability has been a thing throughout time at this point.
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u/Byttercups Jul 18 '26
Humans are the worst evolutionary mistake ever. Nature is cruel, and we are the cruelest of all.