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Health & Fitness

Justin McClean's blog: Oh the Humanity ...

A deeper look into humanity and the human race in general in hopes of showing that humanity is, well, detrimental to humanity.

This blog post will just be talking about humans and their humanity in general in three basic parts: how humans affect how humans see the world, humaneness, and culture's effects on how humans see each other and the world.

I believe these to be major subjects when we think of humans and how they act, so as per proper scientific methods of analyzing things, I will be referring to people as humans as if I were not one. I am one, though, so no worries haha.

Humanity. This word has been used in many movies and dramatic plays to blame irony and fate and whatnot, but what does it really mean? The dictionary gives basic and bland answers, and is sometimes hard to understand, so I'll give my description of humanity: Humanity is basically humankind in general, humane actions or values, and/or just basic human behavior.

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Since this is about humans in general, and humaneness is going to be covered, I'll just talk about a bit of the third description. Humanity in the sense of the behavioral habits of humans is best studied in a psychology course, but this is just from my own observations about humanity as a whole.

Fooling yourself? Or do you just need a nice walk to cheer up?

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People all seem to either think half-full or -empty, with no real middle ground. Those who tend to think more positively may be fooling themselves, in my opinion, and those who think more negatively need to go on a nice walk to cheer up.

I'm saying that the world isn't good or bad, but just "meh." It is just there, but the people we come into contact with change our views of how we see the world.

If you grow up in the nice suburbs, away from war, famine, poverty, etc., then you're probably going to think the world is a pretty sweet place. The opposite is true for anyone living in a down-trodden area or time, so what is the world really without your personal opinion? You may say good or bad again due to people's influences due to the media.

Who cares about a kitten being saved or an old lady being helped across the street, or even the countless good deeds happening all around us everyday? Not the masses. The masses of people at home and work want to hear the bad news more than the good news. I'm not sure where or why this sick fascination with bad news comes from, but it is almost the only thing on the news channels.

"I'm glad it wasn't me" puffs us up with feelings of superiority

I think maybe we all need the feeling of "I'm glad that wasn't me" to make our lives feel better than those who are doing worse. I truly think this is a part of humanity: seeking out those littler than us to make ourselves feel better, which is why bullying is to hard to combat. We all bully in this sense. It isn't wrong, but it is a sad fact that we can't help to change, and only becomes a true problem when people go out of their way to get this superior feeling.

What I mean by all of this is that the general populace seeks out bad news more than they seek out good news.

This puts a veil over the world and some can't see through or around this veil. If you strip away the media, your opinions, and the opinions of others and just look at the world in itself, you'll see too many different things to call it good, bad, or in the middle.

Good news and bad news meld together, and when you zoom out, you see the different countries. Then your mind gets its opinions again from past experiences of the U.S. or wherever you come from.

When you zoom out for a wider view, prejudice fades

Communism, U.S.S.R., Mexico are all places I've grown up feeling a sense of unease from, due to the influences of my society and cultural history.

Take all that away and zoom out further to see only the seven continents. You don't really have any prejudices from this far away, but you still recognize some features that play at the edges of your mind.

Zoom out even more until the clouds obscure half the planet. Go to Google and look at pictures of Earth from space, and tell me then that what you think of this planet. Half-full or half-empty? Good or Bad? The thing is, you just can't.

If you zoom in too far, you begin to lose the truth in all of the opinions rightly or wrongly placed upon you by others. Zoom out too far and you can't point out Earth from the Milky Way Galaxy, so where do you look from?

Look from what feels right to you, but remember that humanity is what makes everything seem good or bad in the long run.

The man who bought a horse for his daughter's birthday

Now that I've covered the aspects of human behavior and somewhat of the human populace in general, the last subject of humanity is humaneness. The humane society, humane death, humane this, and humane that. In this sense it means good, painless, fair, etc.. Who, then, decides what is humane and what is not?

We can all agree that keeping a pet or person fed and taken care of is humane, but why should this word exist if humane is just what we should do in general? Who says what is humane but our culture?

I once heard of a story about a man selling his family's favorite and oldest horse because they needed the money, and a man came up to buy it from him. The stranger said he was buying it for his daughter's birthday, and the seller figured his good horse would be put into a nice home.

Once the man bought the horse, he pulled out a club from his car and killed it dead in the driveway. In his culture, horses were a delicacy for very special occasions.

"Humaneness is in the eye of the beholder; ask Mr. Rowe's goat

Who, then, is the one in the right? Each had his own ideals of what a horse should be used for and why, and both grew up with these ideas, so who is wrong and who is right?

This is where the grey area comes in. Both are wrong and both are right, or is neither wrong and neither right? Perhaps both? It is just too unfair to judge in this situation where cultures clash like this.

Another example is one I got from Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.

I must warn you this has to do with animal castration methods, so skip if this unsettles you. Mr. Rowe was taking on a one-day job, as usual, but this time it was castrating goats.

He checked with the Humane Society beforehand to see what they suggested, and they said a rubber band tied tightly around the testicles would be the most painless way, as the blood flow would be stopped, kill the extremities, and they would fall off in two weeks.

Slice 'n' dice versus the rubber-band technique

Seems simple and fair, right? Well, the man who does castrations for a living just sliced them right out with a knife and slapped them on the arse. May seem cruel, but wait until you hear of the differences.

The rubber band goat could walk afterwards, but for the next two weeks would walk funny and slow, and would sit down as much as possible, pulling at the band, whereas the one who had the slice and dice procedure couldn't walk for a few minutes, but when the bleeding stopped, could prance and run around as if nothing had happened. Who, then,  was in more pain and discomfort, the exact thing humanity is supposed to prevent?

This is an example of how cultures, again, dictate what humane methods should be used where and how, and that is an example of how our opinions pushed unto us by our society make us see things in different ways. Which was right and wrong?

Are gossiping, belittling and cultural differences are unavoidable?

What is good and what is bad? I believe humanity, in the sense of humankind in general is overrated and silly. It causes wars and other terrible things such as cultural strife and bullying, but it is in all of us from the get-go, so is is a bad thing? Is this bad asset detrimental to society, or what forms it?

We will never know, and I doubt we will ever change, since gossiping, belittling, and cultural differences are all a part of humanity and the human race as a whole, but I do know that, with proper self-checks and looks at the world in different lights from time to time, we, as individuals, can learn to see the world as more of a grey area, riddled with black and white spots, and try to stay in the good as much as possible, and maybe then we can start to change society around to actually BE something of a good and open nature.

I hope I didn't talk your ears off, hit a wrong nerve, or anything else, but this is how I see the world, and I know it may be hard to do, but try and see the world for what it is, and not what others want you to see, and then complain that I'm all crazy and whatnot.

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