Humans are like a plague on the planet. "Homo rapiens is only one of very many species, and not obviously worth preserving. Later or sooner, it will become extinct. When it is gone the Earth will recover. [Although humans may] think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals." (John Gray from Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals).
"The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge – not even in the long run." (John Gray from the essay ‘Joseph Conrad, Our Contemporary’ in Heresies).
Just accept that progress is a myth, freedom a fantasy, selfhood a delusion, morality a kind of sickness, justice a mere matter of custom and illusion our natural condition. In believing itself infinitely superior to its fellow creatures, humanity overreaches itself and risks bringing itself to nothing. The religions and ideologies of man perpetuate that delusion of progress that there is such a thing called salvation, either in this life or in the next. This delusion may include being born again for some, while for others it is finding paradise by committing suicidal mass murder, while for a vast number in the developed world it takes the form of secular humanism of today where humans have embraced this ridiculous belief in the end of history and the triumph of liberal democracy and free markets. For humans are not God, and cannot socially engineer societies based on ideals that reject reality of biology and culture.
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