Is the human species just awful in general?

I am very pro-human. I believe the human species is magnificent for all of its beauty and all of its faults. The fact that we can recognize tragedy is one of our greatest features, and the little kindnesses of everyday life make the human experience a thing of beauty.

If you stop watching the news... and focus on the connections you have with other real human beings, your family, your friends, and the people in your community, you will see.

Human beings act very badly on TV and computer screens. In real life, we are magnificent.

I have none of the above. I am isolated, with not much chance of changing the situation.

But I have plenty of former life experience with that. I still feel the same way. Not to say it was all awful, but human nature seems to be mostly awful. My subjective opinion.

I am sorry to hear that. Why do you say there is not much chance?

It's a long story. I'm actually working right now or else I could explain more. My first post on this site elaborates somewhat about my situation.

I just read what I think is your first post. People offered advice. I will give more unsolicited advice (which you can choose to ignore, but I have personal experience with depression).

1) I had a very good experience with therapists. I suffered a traumatic experience in adolescence that I ignored as it screwed up my life in my late teens and early twenties. In my mid-twenties I ended up in therapy and finally started dealing with what had happened to me.

I highly recommend talk therapy. Having someone who can listen to you without judgement, and then talk you through emotional issues is sometimes incredibly valuable.

2) I have had to work through the **** (I feel I have dealt with more **** than many people) to figure out a decent life. Much of this is finding people that I can relate to.

3) I haven't found this to be a place where you can find emotional support (as much as we would like to). Able2know (and other forums) is a good way to entertain myself and to vent off some steam. I have only found a couple of people I really click with here (I have met a few people here in real life).

I have found it is good to get out and meet real people. But, I first had to do some work on my emotional baggage before forming meaningful relationships was possible.

I highly recommend that you try talk therapy. It is a little work to find a therapist that is good for you, but it very much worth it.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I don't check this site very often.

I have tried talk therapy. The therapist I met with either wasn't paying attention to what I was talking about, or wasn't absorbing it and giving meaningful thought to it. He seemed like he was going off a script in his head, and was just throwing cliched sayings at me. He also recommended mind altering medication after barely getting to know me.

I'm just going to paste some comments from another thread of mine here because they are relevant to what you mentioned.

Me:

jespah:

Me:

I tried to kill myself a few months ago. It's quite a scary thing, facing death at your own hand. I couldn't do it all the way. I'm scared of death. I actually posted here about it before I tried. I got banned for a month and my post was removed.

I care way too much about people, my old friends and family specifically. I've never emotionally gotten over my dad's death for example. I'm better to people than they deserve, even to the point where I've hurt myself sometimes by sacrificing my own needs for others. Not talking about women, but friends where I went out of my way and never was appreciated for it, or reciprocated by the other person. People have taken my generosity for granted and felt entitled to it in the past. I think I want to have connections with people that can't exist in reality. I'd like to believe that people can be selfless and unconditional in their friendships.

If you read my post about my elderly friends, I actually re-assessed our relationship in my mind after re-connecting with the woman after the male died. I now think they never valued me as a friend the way I valued them almost like family. Family I wish I had.

I talked about this in my topic "Real Love". I want to believe that friends and family I've had, and appreciated in life weren't just random luck. But they were ...that's all they were. None of my friends were ever capable of caring about me as if I were family, and the only reason my parents loved me, was because they shared so much genetic material with me. I especially want to believe that my dad had some kind of special bond with me, because I miss him so much. But it wasn't some magic bond. We shared 50% of our genes and that's it, that's all it was. And because I'll never share 50% of my genes with another person again since my parents are long dead, I'll never experience the closest thing to 'real love' ever again in my life. It's a hard truth to accept, that there's no 'magic' in life, no mystical connection between anyone that isn't explained by evolution and survival. But it's the truth regardless.

Life is pretty awful when you have no connection to anyone at all. That's why solitary confinement is used as punishment in prison.

The only two things that really matter in life are luck and money. Life is a completely random crap shoot. If you're unlucky and born without good genes, you're essentially fucked unless you have money. Even freedom is less important than luck and money, because you can buy freedom if you have enough money. You can't buy good genes, but if you have enough money you can buy a life where it doesn't matter quite as much if you lack them. I'm not particularly ugly, although I've allowed myself to become somewhat out of shape because I just have no motivation to care for myself. But even though I'm a normal looking person I cannot connect with other people.

Sometimes being lucky by being born with genes that make you pleasing to others is far more important than just being born with genes that make you 'good looking'. For instance, think of your favorite comedian. They might not be 'good looking', but there's something about them that makes people drawn to them, and that comes from their genes. The sound of their voice, their cadence, mannerisms. Another person could write 'better' jokes and material, but if they weren't born with the genes that make a person pleasing to others they could never be as successful.

Alan Watts is correct that life is a game to be played, but high scores and objectives matter in games, otherwise we're just giving out participation trophies.

I hate to say it, but I think some people might actually be better off killing themselves. If there isn't enough money available to them to buy a more comfortable life and they have poor quality genes, they would be fooling themselves by thinking that if they keep chasing the carrot and working hard that it will ever make a difference. Some people are just fucked. If I'm being honest with myself, my predisposition to depression is likely a sign of genetic defect. Since, for instance, the mental health field has no sufficient resources available for men, taking a voluntary leave one day may be the only rational option I have if my mind gets too dark and overwhelming to live with. I worry about attempting and failing, becoming disabled in the process.

Life cannot have objective meaning because life is finite. One day even the most remarkable person who ever lived will be forgotten, because time will erase them and all that they are and were. In that truth, and only in that truth does luck cease to matter.

I've never been therapy, exactly, but you have perfectly described my impression of most practitioners.

Thank you. It's strange when you think about it. Paying someone to listen to you. You wouldn't have to pay someone to do something unless it was something they wouldn't otherwise do. So by it's very nature almost, the concept of talk therapy is flawed. Also think about it, a standard session is one hour. If you have major issues that need addressing, one hour a week is like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound.

I am a man. I have never had a problem asking for a male therapist.

I hope you find the help you need.

It is very difficult for us as strangers on the internet to give you anything other than anonymous support.

You need to find a therapist that will work for you. What you are writing describes pretty difficult depression. This is treatable... I hope you find someone good.

I do sincerely hope that you can get help with this, and I wish that there was more that I could do to support you.

This hasn't been my experience at all... a good therapist is thoughtful, empathetic caring and attentive.

The science seems to say that over the long run, talk therapy (specifically CBT) is as effective as anti-depressant medications. For someone like me (averse to mood changing drugs) it is a very good choice.


The main value of therapy for me has been to provide an objective voice... someone who can get me to see past strong emotions to get to a rational place.

Admittedly, my experience is limited to two separate speech pathologists who seemed to think they were board certified psychologists. Of course you specified a good therapist.

Glad it worked out for you.

Humans will do a lot for other specific humans, friends, family, members of the tribe, and animal companions. But our contributions to the cosmos have all been negative. Humans are a product of natural selection which got out of hand; we figured out how to game the system and free ourselves from the process of evolution and chose to rearrange our environment for our momentary success, to the detriment of just about everything else — air, forests, water, and other species.

That said, the few redeeming qualities we might have can be cultivated in oneself and sought from others. We're not here long enough to change the destructive trajectory of our species as a whole but that shouldn't prevent individuals from enjoying many aspects of being alive. The big picture isn't that good but along the way there are plenty of miniature masterpieces which can be discovered or even created.

Sometimes i am very disappointed in humanity, especially in the last period... But even in general, we are really destroying ourselves. This is very sad.