In a way, yes. It's patchy and not absolute. For instance, in my part of the world, life is very good - surrounded by nature, peace, clean air, and beauty. But on a world scale, the problems of starvation and disease from over-population, pollution, wars, and global warming -- it would not be unreasonable to describe humanity as a cancer on the surface of the planet. Have a look at Guy McPherson's major essay on his website: Nature Bats Last.
I wonder .... I agree with most of HF .... But if suggest it may have always been this way, just somewhat underreported in the past ..... Being a despot if you could was probably the norm ... Even the most noble king was probably a jerk by today's standards ... One thing I do believe is that problems aren't solved my leaving them festering in the dark ... Maybe what you are seeing is the sites and pustules of humanity exposed to the air to heal ... Blame the wine :)
I know about that wine.. It makes you feel younger but than it makes you feel older. Gotta hand it to Sangria tho. Tasty while it lasted. I'm just blabbering idiocies to keep myself busy. I should read Neitsche!
I agree with you about the frequency of despots - the old saying, "power corrupts." It is too easy to become a spoilt brat if everyone around must obey. However, I don't believe that all of humanity was always dystopic. If we look at anthropological studies of hunter-gatherer cultures, they vary enormously depending on how easy it was to earn a living. In places of high density, like New Zealand, they quickly hunted all the meat (large flightless birds) to extinction, nearly starved to death, and developed elaborate rules for cannibalism. In places like the Amazon jungles, they developed attitudes and lifestyles of peace. Our Australian Aboriginals developed strict laws for sharing everything and a means of maintaining the ecology (after severely changing it and nearly destroying it in the first 5,000 years.)
Dystopia has two senses: one is dysfunctional government and society; the other the intrinsic state of unhappiness.
Life must always contain a measure of discomfort - it is the prick that goads us to grow food, build shelter, and meet our most basic needs. But we become neurotic and dysfunctional when our basic drives become distorted in the forms of greed, anger and ignorance. All our dystopia derives from the collective social magnification of these three.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at December 15, 2016 1:46 PM MST
If I felt that way, I probably wouldn't care as much as I do about the welfare of other people. Why would I want to help people if I view them as a disease?
Unless you mean like if people are equivalent to cells going crazy and causing cancer. You don't want to destroy all the cells, just stop them from going crazy so that they can function normally and live happily ever after or something.
This post was edited by Patchouli at December 14, 2016 3:26 AM MST
Benedict Arnold 