Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Discussion about serious personal, political, educational, or other issues.
Forum rules
This is Serious Discussion. If you want to tell us how your day was or just get some things off your chest, you will find ample opportunity to find a corner to discuss all the good things we see, or reach out to anyone who needs help. Just remember to pay attention to the Principles of Serious Discussion, and link to the source if posting news.

Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Postby Charcoal » November 29th, 2015, 1:40 am

So we now had and/or have people thinking that Islam is evil or something.
We have or have had people getting obese from going to places like McDonald's so many times.
I've seen Americans not knowing who the heck the first president is. I've seen Americans use the amendments as an excuse to get away with dropping F bombs at work or whatever the case may be.
There are parents letting their kids that are 10 years or below (and maybe throw in anger problems) play Call of Duty which they are too young to play the game in my opinion (isn't it rated M or something?).
I see tons of dumb comments on the Internet like the ones one FailArmy's channel; it's like the people commenting there desperately want to get laid. Or I see people just trolling or saying whatever they want and not giving any thought of the consequences or how their words will impact others.
I assume some people probably believe in some of the dumb or biased stuff that's said on social media.

I see this ♥♥♥♥, and even as a Methodist Christian I'm thinking whether or not I should even care about the human race anymore...or at least as a whole? I might as well be socially awkward and not-so-talkative because I don't want to interact with stupid people no matter how the ♥♥♥♥ many times my mother and stepfather keep telling me I need to communicate with people.

tl;dr I've seen people do stupid things. Should I care for these people?

If this needs to go to my Get Things Off of Your Chest topic, that's fine. I just felt that this issue needed a topic of its own.
Image
User avatar
Charcoal
Prophet of Shadowsquid

 
Posts: 1171
Joined: March 20th, 2011, 1:40 pm
Location: Valentia

SM63 Level Designer Contest Winner
25quared: Mini-LDC #5

Thumbs Up given: 49 times
Thumbs Up received: 77 times

Re: Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Postby Bogdan » November 30th, 2015, 7:35 am

Vesoralla wrote:So we now had and/or have people thinking that Islam is evil or something.

Major problem with islam is that their fanatics were not silenced in time or controlled enough and things eventually got out of hand. A conclusion if islam is evil of not can be drawn only after one studied it deeply. I haven't read the Qur'an, nor know enough about the religion to have an actual opinion.

Vesoralla wrote:We have or have had people getting obese from going to places like McDonald's so many times..

Short answer: Strictly their problem. One cannot tell the other what to eat.
Long answer: OK you can tell them that their eating habits aren't exactly healthy and can lead to diseases such as obesity or diabetes, but still the choice is theirs. If they want to continue to eat junk food, although you told them the risk it's nothing you can do about it. Move on with your life.
Plus I think the problem with obesity is a little more complicated than just "It's McD/KFC/etc's fault."

Vesoralla wrote:I've seen Americans not knowing who the heck the first president is. I've seen Americans use the amendments as an excuse to get away with dropping F bombs at work or whatever the case may be..

That's about poor education. Or not, maybe they aren't exactly interested in the subject. Around here there is a thing that you learn poems during language/literature classes and you're expected to know them for a "lifetime". I think they are ♥♥♥♥ and honestly cannot retain any single one. Some people may even call you illiterate for that.

I don't know how your amendament mumbo-jumbo works (like most american things actually) so I cannot comment much there. Just going so far into law for merely swearing is pretty embarrassing.

Vesoralla wrote:There are parents letting their kids that are 10 years or below (and maybe throw in anger problems) play Call of Duty which they are too young to play the game in my opinion (isn't it rated M or something?).

>implying anyone actually cares about age restrictions
>implying people won't lie about age anyway
I had classmates playing GTA: San Andreas when they were 9. My parents didn't let me play, so I was stuck with Captain Claw, Tetris and Minsweeper. And frankly there are other flaws, way worse than game age restriction (such as people selling cigarettes and alcohol to underage, I have classmates drinking and smoking since they were 12).

Vesoralla wrote:I see tons of dumb comments on the Internet like the ones one FailArmy's channel; it's like the people commenting there desperately want to get laid. Or I see people just trolling or saying whatever they want and not giving any thought of the consequences or how their words will impact others.
I assume some people probably believe in some of the dumb or biased stuff that's said on social media.

First it's internet. You cannot control what people post on it, you cannot ban certain people from using it or so on. Daily reminder that places like 4chan, Youtube and even Reddit exist are full of those kind of people.
People hardly give a ♥♥♥♥ if you are affected by their words in person, let alone on the internet, where you can be kilometers away, not even knowing the guy, again nothing much you can change.
Yes, there are people that believe in dumb stuff from social media. Facebook, buzzfeed, huffington post, even Reddit and and many others still exist. Mass media, such as actual newspapers, news and so on aren't any better anyway.

Vesoralla wrote:I see this ♥♥♥♥, and even as a Methodist Christian I'm thinking whether or not I should even care about the human race anymore...or at least as a whole? I might as well be socially awkward and not-so-talkative because I don't want to interact with stupid people no matter how the ♥♥♥♥ many times my mother and stepfather keep telling me I need to communicate with people.

tl;dr I've seen people do stupid things. Should I care for these people?

I'm mysanthropist, introverted, anxious, etc. No one can force me to interract more with people or change my opinion on human race because "hurr you're human after all, you are like others, get over it". Analyse subjects, check opinions, then form ones of your own. Don't let others force their opinions down your throat and at the same time, don't force your opinions down other people's throats.
Image
User avatar
Bogdan
The Legacy

Error contacting Twitter
 
Posts: 770
Joined: February 22nd, 2011, 1:06 am
Location: Stanistan

Runouwian Fighter

Thumbs Up given: 39 times
Thumbs Up received: 98 times

Re: Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Thumbs up x2

Postby nin10mode » November 30th, 2015, 8:40 am

As someone that has been fortunate enough to have grown up in an extremely supportive and rather open-minded environment, I think that connecting with at least some people is important. You don't have to be friends with the entire world, but its good to have at least a few friends. My main circles have always been between 3-10 people in real life, and extend through acquaintances to a few dozen.

A very quick way to dismiss half of these problems is to remember the phrase, "vocal minority." Now typically, vocal minorities are negative because anger is a much stronger emotion than happiness and acceptance. That's just how it works.


To go into a few specifics:



I knew a few overweight individuals; most had different experiences. Two started doing sports and working out, and their fat turned into muscle. People still made jokes about them. One had a diet and never ate fast food. He was simply born overweight. He was often jealous of the high metabolism of myself and our other friends. There was one more, and although I didn't know her that well, I could tell from the lunches she bought that she wasn't trying too hard. I'd wager a guess that she was made fun of her entire childhood.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that obesity has a lot of factors. Some people are simply born into it and are victims of genetics (yes, obesity can be hereditary), some people do not get the time to learn how to cook a healthy meal or do not have the companions to cook them a healthy meal once in awhile and are stuck as the Working Poor, some are born with disabilities that disallow movement and thus cannot exercise as easily as fully well people.

Just accept that the ones that eat simply to enjoy themselves are making excuses for themselves (i.e. not the above examples).



Language changes every day. Swearing is a useful tool when trying to express emotion, and I think the world is becoming much more personal as the information age comes into full swing. The internet exists, as does a new form of entertainment: videogames. With these, children are more connected to both the role models of society and the future criminals of society, and everything in between. Just as kids will learn how to research effectively, make meaningful friends, and start useful discussion on sites like this, kids will learn how to filter out the truths they don't like, remove the filter from their minds, and swear away their enemies.

That is simply the price of progress. I'm of the opinion that filters are useless, and that the quicker a child falls down to hell (with at least some moral guidelines), the quicker he or she learns to rise back up with something meaningful.



You seem to be worried about how these comments affect other people, but first you can observe how it is affecting you. If these trollish comments had a part in urging you to type this post, does that not mean that their trolling worked? They incited a response, even if invisible to them. A lot of us have been desensitized to troll comments and use them sarcastically now. As for the sheep-herding at the hand social media, once again, people have the tools to research properly and to filter out what they don't want, also known as confirmation bias. A hammer can both fix and destroy.

Being able to laugh at everything is an amazing ability. Not at people mind you, but at situations.
Image
Art: show
Anime: show
Imagei use mal now but this sigbar is pretty
Videos: show
ImageImage
im@s: show
Image
User avatar
nin10mode
Immune to Death

Error contacting Twitter
Error contacting last.fm
 
Posts: 3087
Joined: October 3rd, 2009, 6:11 am
Location: Not here

Credit To Team

Thumbs Up given: 102 times
Thumbs Up received: 221 times

Re: Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Postby Charcoal » November 30th, 2015, 1:26 pm

Arturia wrote:Don't let others force their opinions down your throat

I kinda base my opinions off of others because I don't want to be disagreed on or make a fool out of myself with my own made up opinion. That makes me more of an outsider.
nin10mode wrote: If these trollish comments had a part in urging you to type this post, does that not mean that their trolling worked?

Tbh, I got somewhat ♥♥♥♥♥♥ off about PY's autism post. The fact that I grew up as the oddball child at school making an exploding pigeon rather than a normal pigeon like everyone else and being in a social skills class rather than normal classes like all my peers, I'm paranoid about this stuff and not doing as well as other people. Seeing autism jokes is a different story; I'll laugh at that. I see artwork examples my art teacher shows us before a project, and I see how great other people do on there projects: it looks better than mine. Then I see I have a B in art, and that I ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up on a couple of assignments or not doing great on assignments, and I lose it. This is why I base my opinion from others and take some comments seriously, because what I do is wrong. It's been wrong since I was little, and I can't rest easy on this.
Image
User avatar
Charcoal
Prophet of Shadowsquid

 
Posts: 1171
Joined: March 20th, 2011, 1:40 pm
Location: Valentia

SM63 Level Designer Contest Winner
25quared: Mini-LDC #5

Thumbs Up given: 49 times
Thumbs Up received: 77 times

Re: Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Postby Venexis » November 30th, 2015, 11:57 pm

Vesoralla wrote:This is why I base my opinion from others and take some comments seriously, because what I do is wrong. It's been wrong since I was little, and I can't rest easy on this.


I am basically a self-promoted authority on never being wrong, so I'd just like to leave a question to think about (and also because it's one in the morning here): You say you're wrong, but according to who?

What entity decided it knew what was right better than you, and more importantly, why should you just accept it as unquestioned truth?

I'm not saying you should just kill people because "murder being bad is an arbitrary point of view" (protip, don't murder people, this kills them) but rather that people who do things differently will always stand out. Can it be depressing, frustrating, hurtful, demotivating? Yeah... but if nobody ever challenged the "right" choices, we as individuals and as a species would be woefully unequipped to make sense of and cope with our surroundings.
Spoiler: show
Image
10/10, thanks FrozenFire :3

Or add me, at Venexis#9902.
User avatar
Venexis
Prophet of Shadowsquid

 
Posts: 1342
Joined: August 19th, 2009, 7:15 am
Location: Headquarters of EVIL! And definitely NOT my garage... Nope...

Thumbs Up given: 89 times
Thumbs Up received: 211 times

Re: Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Postby Bogdan » December 1st, 2015, 2:23 am

Vesoralla wrote:I kinda base my opinions off of others because I don't want to be disagreed on or make a fool out of myself with my own made up opinion. That makes me more of an outsider.

I've found a thing:

An opinion is a judgment based on facts, an honest attempt to draw a reasonable conclusion from factual evidence. (For example, we know that millions of people go without proper medical care, and so you form the opinion that the country should institute national health insurance even though it would cost billions of dollars.) An opinion is potentially changeable--depending on how the evidence is interpreted. By themselves, opinions have little power to convince. You must always let your reader know what your evidence is and how it led you to arrive at your opinion.

Unlike an opinion, a belief is a conviction based on cultural or personal faith, morality, or values. Statements such as "Capital punishment is legalized murder" are often called "opinions" because they express viewpoints, but they are not based on facts or other evidence. They cannot be disproved or even contested in a rational or logical manner. Since beliefs are inarguable, they cannot serve as the thesis of a formal argument.

Source

Now think if you're talking about opinions or beliefs there. Also " I don't want to be disagreed on or make a fool out of myself with my own made up opinion". All opinions are made up by a person. OK, you don't make your own, but in that case you adopt somebody other's made up opinion which can also be disagreed and make a fool out of yourself. In other words you're letting others think for you and you may adopt opinions/beliefs you yourself may not even agree with and somewhere outthere there will still be at least one guy to disagree with you and consider you a fool. Also I came to the conclussion that you consider yourself a fool for not forming personal opinions/beliefs because they may be false or that everyone will disagree with you.
Image
User avatar
Bogdan
The Legacy

Error contacting Twitter
 
Posts: 770
Joined: February 22nd, 2011, 1:06 am
Location: Stanistan

Runouwian Fighter

Thumbs Up given: 39 times
Thumbs Up received: 98 times

Re: Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Postby Charcoal » December 1st, 2015, 2:44 am

Vendai wrote:You say you're wrong, but according to who?

What entity decided it knew what was right better than you, and more importantly, why should you just accept it as unquestioned truth?

Every C. Every F. Every "no" said to me. Every cruel laugh direct to laugh directed to me. That proves I SUCK and am wrong. And the fact that I sometimes can't analyze a situation or learn from a mistake just proves it even more.
Arturia wrote:Also I came to the conclussion that you consider yourself a fool for not forming personal opinions/beliefs because they may be false or that everyone will disagree with you.

People I see come up with opinions just fine. Of course I'd say I'm a fool at times because I've been an odd sort of child ever since, and I've pretty much accepted that fate.
Image
User avatar
Charcoal
Prophet of Shadowsquid

 
Posts: 1171
Joined: March 20th, 2011, 1:40 pm
Location: Valentia

SM63 Level Designer Contest Winner
25quared: Mini-LDC #5

Thumbs Up given: 49 times
Thumbs Up received: 77 times

Re: Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Thumbs up x1

Postby Bogdan » December 1st, 2015, 4:01 am

Vesoralla wrote:Every C. Every F. Every "no" said to me. Every cruel laugh direct to laugh directed to me. That proves I SUCK and am wrong. And the fact that I sometimes can't analyze a situation or learn from a mistake just proves it even more.

Are you seriously using school notes as a proof you're wrong? I am a part of the unfortunate souls that has to take literature classes regardless if I'm studying sciences and not humanistics, furthermore I need to have my baccalaureat exam on it too. Once we were analysing a text and our teacher told us to say what we think is the meaning of a certain phrase or so. I answered and she just said "Wrong". And I mean, "wrong?", from all the things that cannot be wrong, this is the most obvious example. I analysed the phrase in a certain way and draw a conclusion based on my thoughts. You asked me to be subjective and I was, if I didn't share the same view as you, then too bad, different persons, different minds.
Other story regarding school notes, last year, geography exam, did EXACTLY like my classmate, he got 10/10 I got 8/10. Showed the teacher and she began barking and yelling at me how I am a piece of ♥♥♥♥ for questioning the teacher's decision.

People will laugh at you, that just doesn't prove anything. Unless they can bring arguments and facts to support that you are wrong they can't do ♥♥♥♥. I saw a lot of people going like "Oh wow what a looser >2015; >still believes in god lmfao u a little ♥♥♥♥♥, science ftw" (probably the best example I could find). That is not proving anyone wrong, that's directly attacking a belief/opinion without having a solid counterargument or fact. You're wrong? Let them prove. Usually if I go to prove someone wrong, I try to give examples and reason in such a manner a 12yo can understand.

Vesoralla wrote:People I see come up with opinions just fine. Of course I'd say I'm a fool at times because I've been an odd sort of child ever since, and I've pretty much accepted that fate.

Hey, I'm a weirdo too, most of my opinions and beliefs are extremly unpopular and a lot of people not only disagree with them, but are also shunning me for them, yet they are my personal beliefs, designed by my own mind for myself, I won't abandon them just to fit with the rest of the flock.
Image
User avatar
Bogdan
The Legacy

Error contacting Twitter
 
Posts: 770
Joined: February 22nd, 2011, 1:06 am
Location: Stanistan

Runouwian Fighter

Thumbs Up given: 39 times
Thumbs Up received: 98 times

Re: Faith in Humanity? Or not?

Postby Charcoal » December 1st, 2015, 6:00 am

So what you're telling me is "who cares if you're wrong or don't have the popular opinion?" Probably not a valid assumption from my part, but it's what I thought of.

Sigh...if I knew what was really bothering me, bringing me down, or making me feel negative or how to put it into words, then I would. But I can't find the right words to get the best response for it. Initially, it was getting a C in Driver's Ed, failing to talk to a girl, and not getting my XC time was what made me angry. Now I'm just using or thinking about other things in my past, and getting angry from that now even though I finally got my XC time (twice), got my license, and don't care much about dating...well, I don't care about a whole lot now. There's my hopeless behavior. I don't know what to do, what to think, or how to change or anything. I've given up so many times like I always have, and I realize I have this "Go Big or Go Home" mentality of mine; and I don't how to change that mindset unless I suffer some kind of brain injury or something traumatic happens. I just...don't know anymore.

"Faith in Humanity?" More like "Faith in Myself?"

EDIT: So, I was feeling great about playing Smash 4 and drawing and felt happy. I guess I stress too much about what I'm bad at. Maybe
Image
User avatar
Charcoal
Prophet of Shadowsquid

 
Posts: 1171
Joined: March 20th, 2011, 1:40 pm
Location: Valentia

SM63 Level Designer Contest Winner
25quared: Mini-LDC #5

Thumbs Up given: 49 times
Thumbs Up received: 77 times


Return to Serious Discussion