When I was little I believed the best of everyone and everything. I had no idea that cruelty and pain existed (beyond a scraped knee while roller-skating).

Now that I am 20 I am a tad disappointed in the world and in humanity. Sometimes I think that I would rather not be a human at all. I love people as individuals but humanity as a whole repulses me a bit (this is just my personal opinion).

I have always been a Christian but lately I have been wondering why God lets bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. I do not understand how God can let people suffer so.

The entire world sometimes feels very surreal and fake to me. I keep waiting for the 'man behind the curtain' to step out and show himself (as in the "wizard of OZ").

Maybe I am alone in feeling this way. I suppose some people would consider my way of thinking to be rather dark. But I cannot help but draw negative conclusions about the world when so many horrible things that make no sense are going on.

As far as my original question: I think the world is both good and bad. It certainly has good in it...but sometimes I get the impression that the "bad" has consistently outweighed the "good" throughout history.

I personally feel that a lot of what goes on in our world is very messed up and that as life is supposed to become simpler it becomes harder

but when asking the question is earth good or bad ask a different question instead

do i enjoy my life on this world

if your answer is yes then can this world really be such a bad place

sometimes i enjoy life. sometimes i dont. Sometimes it feels really empty and meaningless. I have what can easily be considered a good life...yet I never can get rid of the feeling that the world is a very cold brutal place where no one is immune to pain.

do you feel you could raise a child in this world?

this may be a better question as it removes self desire

All I can say is that I agree with you. There is both good and bad in this world.... And I know that sometimes the bad can seem overwhelming, but I think it helps to try to surround yourself with as many good people and things that you can. It isn't much, and it definitely doesn't make the bad stuff disappear.... But if we are constantly thinking about all of the problems in the world, how can we ever be happy?

i want to have a child but I really really do question bringing another life into the world. I mean, the world seems so harsh and I would not be able to tolerate it if my child suffered in any way. It would kill me to see that....

lol *composes self* I guess I am just in a bleak mood right now. Maybe I just think about things too much..

I Know just the man to cure any depression

his name is Pierre Smirnoff

ha! His pleasure is temporary.

so should depression be

sometimes i like being moody. Maybe i am a little depressed at times....but then again so are most people. Sometimes the entire world seems to be an insane free-for-all. LOL It is a little depressing to think about.

then think about bunnies instead

Ok.

*trains mind to think about bunnies instead of the struggles of life on earth*

Ooooooo cute ikkle bunnies. Hooray!

another success for prezgfish shrink to the masses

I must admit, I am actually mesmerized by your avatar.

its flippy from happy tree friends

Do what the ancients did. When your god doesn't do right by you go get a new one. (my attempt at humor)

I'm with the others, life is bad and good and sometimes one outweighs the others. It does seem rather odd how bad things seem to happen to good people so frequently, and that good things happen to the bad people. Thing is could it possibly be that the bad things happen to the good people because those things make the good people stronger, therefore making them better people?

Well if the world truely is such a bad place and it disterbs you that much (I already know it's a bad place) Then do something about it. If there is ever going to be change someone has to start it. It may not effect people today and it might not effect people tomarow and you could die and it has no effect but one day your efforts will pay off. So if you have a problem then help fix it.

"If your not part of the solution you are part of the problem"

Just like in the lord of the rings. lol. The message was that even the smallest (hobbits!) can change things. Sorry I might be sounding kinda loopy after a few beers.

if your talking tolkien

it better be more than a few

Why is that ?

Well I don't feel quite so down on the world today. Sometimes I just get into weird funks where it seems like everything is morbid.

I think most of us have days (weeks/months... lol) like that. I'm glad that you are not feeling so depressed today!

either good or bad, the world is varied and interesting at any rate. and i would MUCH rather it be interesting than boring and tasteless.

also, without good you cant really have a definition of bad, and vice versa. to counteract lots and lots of goodness in life, you would either need great amounts of nastiness or little amounts of really nastiness. or maybe just a random system of niceness and nastiness.

yeah hangovers suck

The world's not a bad place at all. It's not a good place either. It's just a place. It's inhabited by a bunch of nasty, evil, mean folk, and a bunch of lovely nice scrummy folk, and folk of all intermediate levels of nastiness and yummyness.

'Twas ever thus.

Where else you gonna go?

ignorance

aparently many people live there

I look at primitive cultures in the world. I mean primitive, as in hurling sticks at one another. I think, these people are nice to their own, fight others, and live happy while living simplistically. They got it right, even if they worship the rain, etc. That reinstaes my hope for people. One day, perhaps we'll realize my dream. As animals of the blood, we should live as close nature as possible. We are not people of the soul, above the world, eve if we preten to be.

hey man, I dont think hurling sticks at ppl different from u is the way to go. Its one of the things that troubles me about humanity

the world can be a happy place. the world can be a cruel place. the world can be a desolate place, it all dpeends on who you are. however, the world cannot be good or bad. the world is there, that is all. it is neither good nor bad, happy nor sad, kind nor cruel. this is only how we perceive it to be. nothing is anything, we put labels and likenesses on things, even if it isnt true. Guns arent bad, people arent bad, death isnt bad, people MAKE them bad. people say they are bad and thus we beleive them to be bad. someone may argue that death part, but if death is bad, then life is good. life is not good. not for everyone anyways

That is very true. The earth is just something that exists and people tend to interpret it in so many different ways based on how they feel.

I really think the earth is lovely in many ways actually ...

There is a quote that states 'life is like licking honey off a thorn'. There is always going to be bad with the good.

I prefer sticks to bullets. The point is, they are relatively stable, and many peoples are quite non-violent.

what about those foamy sticks on the show "american gladiators"

Ah, but foam is technologically advanced. A grave disservice to maxerpoppleanism.

and what are the tenants of maxerpoppleanism>?

Live in a simple existance like primitve peoples did (and still do, for a few). TEchnology is bad, IMO, only because it is corruptable, so I see an easy way is simply to avoid it. No, my idea isn't for everyone, but when we lived in the woods, how many problems did we cause?

Well, I don't think the answer to humanity's problems is to revert to a 'chimpanzee-like' way of living.

I think that the only way humanity will not cause problems is if it ceases to exist.

I must disagree. Our problems will be minor in the long run. Plus, we arent CHIMPANZEES! god no, if that was it it I'd be against it. It is possible to hjave a simple existance. then again, there are alternatives to where i want to have the human race go. Multiple ideas work, but mine is perhaps the most stable.

Well, life will never be perfect. And every system has its flaws.

Just imagine: if all of humanity were to live simply then a lot of culture/achievements that have been developed over the years would be lost: book printing, the internet, modern medicine, scientific discovery.... However, this same scientific discovery has produced such nameless horrors as the atom bomb. I would rather fight someone with sticks than fight someone with atom bombs...

Living simply w. nature doesn't sound like such a bad thing sometimes...I have always admired how American Indians such as the Cherokees lived. (I do have some cherokee blood in me! a good bit of mexican indian as well...i am glad about that..)

Keep in mind, the indians weren't perfect. Alot of animals are extinct because of them, but all animals cause others to be extinct, but only if we could get ourselves under control....


I know this is a spam post, but it's important to know that even the primitves make errors. Then again, who is at the center of all the worlds problems? Not the indians!

what animals would those be?

The buffalo were actually thinned out by 'westernized' settlers. The indians had little effect on the buffalo population.

It is only natural that humans will end up changing some things on earth. I think anything that lives on the earth ends up altering things a little. Humans alter the environment a great deal because of our intelligence.

Actually, many species of deer were wiped out by indians, read the book the noble savage I beleive it's called. You will see what I mean. The buffalo were not what I was referring to. As for the second part of your statement, I completely agree. All animals affect their environment in one way or another. 99% of all species that have ever existed are extinct. This is because the survivors made them extinct, unless they were able to cope with each other. Example: the hawk and owl hunt in the same place and the same food, but to prevent extinction, the owl started to hunt at night. It is merely important to show the no society is perfect, however to reiterate my opinion, the indians got it more right than we did.

By the way, if you are posting right after me, no need to quote my whole post, just make sure you address me before you make an arguement. Thanks, makes your post shorter and to the point!

There are a lot of things i like about modern western society.....it has a lot of good features that we take for granted. For example, indoor heating, computers, good food, beer, etc.

and guns, pollution, radiation, bombs, missles, tanks, etc.

Yeah, but humanity brings those things on itself. People would always kill each other no matter what. I dont think getting shot with a gun is much worse than getting scalped with an axe. Actually I would think the scalping would be worse.

I think we agree, there isn't an arguement. But advanced weapons can kill far more than simple weapons can.

The world would be a worse place for humans to live in without immunisations... Although a lot of the problems of modern disease have happened because there are more people living in close proximity that biology expected.

Disease has always been a way of keeping down the population. If we were to give up technology then before we had the chance to settle into a nature based lifestyle there would be millions of deaths. There just isn't enough land for each person to have a plot and produce food for their family anymore, we rely on an inter/national traffic of food, and millions would starve.

The Unabomber proposed an abandonment of technology, and while his manifesto was very interesting it always eventually meant that a huge amount of people would die before his 'perfect world' would come into existence. A world that is based on the deaths of so many people can never be considered _that_ perfect can it?

I don't see natural selection as bad. I do see holocaust as bad though.

Well purposely depriving the world of modern technology is not really natural selection. It would be an unnatural and brutal act. And the resulting deaths would be no better than the ones resulting from the holocaust....

**I'm not saying you would want to deprive the world of modern technology. I am just discussing what would happen if some nut like the unabomber had his way.

BTW it is interesting that when a lot of animals are in one space they often get sick much easier than they would in the wild. Domestic horses have all sorts of terrible problems with parasites that require constant medical treatments (dewormings). Wild horses do not have this problem as bad because they can move over a greater area and do not come into contact with each others manure as often.

How so? If anything it would be returning to naturality.



But the deaths of the holocaust served no purpose, it was just to satisfy someone's sick and twisted will. Natural selection puts the trigger in the hands of the most qualified to use it for the best of everything, the force of evolution.