We talk about losing faith in humanity, because we see and do terrible things. But think of what that means. What are we comparing humanity to, in order to be disappointed? Are we comparing it to the rest of the animal kingdom? For those of us that do, humanity will almost always be morally wanting, although creatively fascinating. But what else are we referring to? We are not referring to another race, not from this planet or another one, we are not referring to benevolent all-powerful aliens that we know to be better creatures, and if so, why would we be using the word ‘humanity’? The words get conflated, the meaning behind the disappointment obscured, we use ‘human’ to mean ‘humane’ and we use humanity not to represent the sum total of the homo sapiens gene pool, which is, really, all we are – but to represent what we think we should be,...
