Are humans as a species slowly going insane and heading for collapse?

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: BomSquad

In order for a species to evolve, any species, it requires stressors. An organism, a species, will never grow/evolve if stressors are not applied to it.

We are becoming stagnant.

Best answer so far.
"Wiser but weaker"

My initial response to your query was deleted for trolling. I would like to clarify that trolling was not my intent. My brevity of response was not mean to be disrespectful to you. I apologize if it came across that way.

Many of the examples of the insanity you mentioned are not widespread in my opinion but are more focused to a single-mindedness. You could call it a social or political ideology if you wanted to. People have a tendency to use like-minded statements and actions to justify their own. Its a form of confirmation bias. When a group of like-minded people start to act and think alike, they ultimately receive a title of some kind. Often, these titles are of a political nature when these like-minded actionaries start to evoke a political voice. This group-think is often dangerous in that the individuals do not feel a sense of responsibility for the actions of the group. It was the groups fault, not their own.

I do believe that, as a whole, society is becoming less intelligent as time passes. Make things idiot-proof and all you do is make a better idiot. We have warning-labeled natural selection right out of the picture. Along with lower intellect comes the acts of the seemingly less evolved among us. The shallow end of the gene pool, if you will. It is not unnatural for the more intelligent among us to view their nonsensical activities as insanity.

I believe stupidity is running amok. So I guess my question is, a chemical imbalance or physical malformity notwithstanding, when does stupid behavior become insanity? And, would that at least partially explain your observations?

It is only in highly populated areas that people go insane. Here in the UP, people just go crazy when the population jumps up one percent, then they wind up getting killed on snowmobiles or jump into Lake Superior during storms and get sucked out into the lake and drown. Nature up here regulates our population, people show off to try to impress others when they get into a crowd and they seem to drink more beer when they get together too. With the advent of the new more stringent drunk driving laws, I can see a rise in population. I thought they were trying to reduce the population in the country, that doesn't make any sense.

a reply to: BomSquad

Today's society which is so far from the rural village life or the hunter gatherer lifestyle of more down to nature human's is enough to send most people a little doolally tap and of that there is no doubt at all.

Media - advertising, crime and violence on TV, Sex on TV, News about far away problem's in an ever smaller world and the internet, magazine's and newspapers and of course POLITICS all conspire to swamp the simple mind of the individual beneath an overwhelming amount of information that many find it hard to struggle to assimilate and even those that do assimilate it often do not have any use for the bulk of it which is totally extraneous to there own personal situation.

Most people are wage slaves, slavery was never abolished it was refined into a barter system were the poor can never escape the trap they find themselves in and in order to feed there family's are then forced to work to survive, the whip has been replaced with starvation since to feed there own family with a small plot of land and a few animal's back in the village era - unless they were selling there produce - they would have actually grown just enough to eat and not been wasteful as we are today in our modern consumer age.

Would I personally want to go back to living in a wattle and daub house or a round house half dug into the moorland - well no of course I would not.

But got to say it the human race going mad, I think they always have been to be fair.

a reply to: BomSquad

No. Because the vast majority of us aren't insane, and will never be so.

Barring the unforeseen, such as a global cataclysm of some sort, the human race will, save for minor, or not so minor, hick ups, go on livin', and dyin'.

a reply to: seagull

I think the observation of the op is not that the majority of us are insane but rather the rate of insanity is increasing.

Also, I could make the argument that the difference between insane and crazy is that the crazy guy knows he is crazy. The insane guy doesn't know he is insane. He thinks he is normal and everyone else is insane.

a reply to: BomSquad

My theory... Hear me out, with an open mind.

The Bible never mentions when humans were created, it only says "in the beginning." I think humans were here when dinosaurs were here and they were killed off with the dinosaurs. Why? Because they were getting to the point of evil that we've slowly been moving towards since the 60's when Madalyn Murray O'Hair ( or O'Hara) fought so hard to start removing God from schools and the public. Then human civilization was started again and we've all heard about the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah. Same state we've been moving towards since the 60's as referenced above. God destroyed most of humanity with a flood. Now fast forward to 2019. Look at us. There are regular Sodom and Gomorrah cities all over the US and other countries, God has been removed, prayer has been removed, people are sued for Nativity scenes, our biggest fight at the current moment is over the rights to kill unborn children if you so wish. It was said in the Bible after the flood that God wouldn't destroy humanity with natural disasters again. So here we are, all fighting each other, fighting countries, countries infighting, etc. etc.

So in my opinion, yes, humans are slowly going insane and before it's all over, the sane and the insane will fight it out until the other side is finished off. Even Nostradamus calls it in his quatrains from the 16th century. Muslims will cause a great war and the eagle from the west, bear from the east, will join forces to defeat them and then God will come down and defeat Satan for the final time, locking him deep in the pits of hell and a golden age of peace will reign for a thousand years.

Is there truth to that? You be the judge.

Edit to add: From 1979 - Fast Forward to 1:03:08

a reply to: Vroomfondel

I think in terms of social human interaction a person is considered crazy now for almost anything. There is a pill for that. Which brings in drug use both prescribed and street drugs.

Back in the day if you had ADD you may have had the function of not loosing yourself in a task enough to forget to watch for predators for example. Or a shaman may have been psychologically unstable.

If a person has a function in society or society finds a function the classification of normal becomes arbitrary.

a reply to: luthier

That is a good point but I think there has to be a more rigid baseline for measurement or it all becomes so subjective it ends up meaningless. I hate to think what society will become with things like intellect and insanity on a sliding scale. Sliding is generally noted as a downward action...

a reply to: BomSquad

The Bible said society's going to keep getting worse until the world needs to be destroyed again by God.

Many Christians constantly complain about the deterioration of society, when they should be happy to see prophecy fulfilled.

a reply to: BomSquad

This seems super fishy to me..


First off it Oozes political under tones. .. which is usually a sign it is garbage.

Secondly I know there is a semi famous mouse addiction experiment where instead of doing the 2 waterbottles, one with heroin in a bare , isolated cage, they did it in a rat heaven..


In the bare isolated cage the rat almost instantly OD’s..

In rat heaven they recreationally use but none OD..

Well you would think this guys experiment would totally kill the other one..

What about all those with rat pets??


There is no one year and they all kill each other thing that I know of..

a reply to: carewemust

That might be good from an "I told you so" point of view. But I don't think a lot of people are eager to see that particular prophecy fulfilled. I'm not anyway.

a reply to: carewemust

Then why hasn’t it??

Is slavery legal and sanctioned across the world?? Nope..

Violent crime rates are at their lowest ever..

Very little relative wars

Countless diseases conquered..

Just insanely less rapes..


Society has only progessed

a reply to: Vroomfondel

I agree. Indigenous people in south America would appear insane in another environment. So does sanity just mean "good wage slave who doesnt require maintenance to be obediant"?

I don't know that IQ exists the way it is presented. In nature there were many types of personalities needed for survival. Musicians, artists, hunters etc..they all had a survival purpose within the tribe. Now we want everyone to squeeze through the same shape hole and some people just are the wrong shape. This creates unresolvable stress.

In other words human social structures are far more complex than mice.

Self edit

originally posted by: Vroomfondel
a reply to: carewemust

That might be good from an "I told you so" point of view. But I don't think a lot of people are eager to see that particular prophecy fulfilled. I'm not anyway.

That entire concept is silly..

Per capita human suffering has only fallen..


What percentage was lost every winter in cave man days??

Imagine life pre-dental surgery lol..

Life pre global communication..


I really find that whole “the kings divine right to rule” BS off puting..


Science has fighters out the more we mix and evolve the stronger the species gets..


It wasn’t stringer in the ancient past.

a reply to: JustJohnny

Overall there is more good news about Society than bad news. It just that bad news is repeated with a huge megaphone.

I have 11 mice at this time, nowhere near the colony in the Utopia study but still quite a circus. They all have distinct personalities and engage differently in their often complex social interactions. I rarely have to intervene except to clean and provide food/water/stuff to gnaw on- they are happy to be left alone and don't like to have their stuff messed with. Maybe that's what humans need (or, already have): someone to jump in and clean up our mess, separate those that want to rip each other up, and toss us some pellets to chew on. Could it be God, Aliens, the Programmer?

a reply to: LSU2018

I will just add.....the further humans deviate from basic Judaeo/Christian values the deeper the psychosis. This has nothing to do with not believing in God either, some atheists, have a good moral code because they just understand what is right and wrong based on the core human conscious.
People mistakenly think they can be a King or Queen ideologically in deciding and formulating their own moral code; and still stay sane and be happy in the long term....this is a lie.

A very popular TV character recently said, "I know what is good", after she descended into madness and committed genocide.

Humans have a very hard time setting a code or morality based on their short lifespans, it's better to come from someone that has eternal wisdom. How often do teenagers do stupid things, that there parents tell them not to do, but they think they are smarter or can create their own personal freedoms to do it without a mental or emotional backlash. And parents only have 20 to 30 years extra wisdom, imagine being advised by a parent that had trillions of years of wisdom.

originally posted by: Blue_Jay33
a reply to: LSU2018

I will just add.....the further humans deviate from basic Judaeo/Christian values the deeper the psychosis.

Funny, I think it is just the opposite. Maybe Christianity is a type of sickness.

Friedrich Nietzsche had some interesting criticisms of Christianity. He said Christianity was born in response to Roman oppression. It took hold in the minds of timid slaves who did not have the courage or strength to get hold of what they really wanted. The slaves could not admit to their own failings. So they clung to a philosophy that made virtue of cowardice. Everything the Christians wanted and wished they had in their lives for fulfillment was what was considered to be a sin. A position in the world, prestige, sex, intellectual mastery, personal wealth were too difficult or beyond their reach. The Christian slaves created a hypocritical creed denouncing what they wanted, too weak to fight for, while praising what they did not want, but did have in abundance, as being worth having. So in the Christian value system sexlessness turned into 'purity', weakness became "goodness," submission to authority became "obedience," and in Nietzsche's words, "not-being-able-take-revenge" turned into "forgiveness."

Slavery is not morally good no matter what the Bible says.

“Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (1 Peter 2:18)

Not everyone likes to kneel to authority: