Giving credit to the entirety of the human species based on what specific individuals do.

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And it isn't even something like "Wow, I never knew a human could do THAT!" it's just some awesome thing everyone knew someone COULD do since like ever.

Plus it isn't said like "Look, these are examples of why humans are good, (insert what persons here did)" unless someone brings up examples of specific people as proof humanity is evil, I see it more often as "Look! A human did something cool! ALL HUMANS ROCK!"

Tnu1138

That my friend is the beauty of individualism.

Vorpy

I can cut a little girls head off and fuck it at the mall, and I know some people watching me will think every single human being on earth is capable of this, and will lose faith in them. Even the little girl I beheaded is capable of doing the same thing as me, apparently.

TheMightyAnonym

Every human being IS capable of doing that, but it is against their reason to do so.

In any case, let us look at humanity as a whole:

• Wars.
• Stupid.
• Prone to mass hysteria.
• A bunch of other cliched problems that are always listed in lists like this list that is a cliched list.
• Humanity has some semblance of government, which is conflicted and often corrupt.
• Some meager accomplishments, but ultimately we squander our potential to a mind boggling degree. (so basically we are dumb and lazy)
• Self absorbed.
• Horrible at co-operating.
• Precious few manage to dissent from the above, and even fewer actually take even that very far.

At least that's the negative view. Time for positives!

• We are easily manipulated convinced to help if a story is moving enough. (otherwise we don't care)
• We have made oh so many wonderful accomplishments! (compared to what? Dirt?)
• We know how to party. (especially with the help of substance abuse...)
  
• We have low-fat cookies.
• We kill lesser beasts to produce delicious meat products like bacon.
• We are organized.
  
• We have My Little Pony.

Conclusion: Humanity is the best thing ever because it has My Little Pony and Bacon. Otherwise, we kinda suck, yeah.

Vorpy

I am happy and content. Humanity is not all for lost. the moment I am not happy is the moment they are failing their mission in appeasing my every whim.

RedEyedAbyss

"In any case, let us look at humanity as a whole:"

Most of those can be traced to animal instinct, with the rest being relative to some imaginary ideal figure. Though it's baffling that people only attribute negative things to human nature. Cooperation is a huge part of survival in the wild.

Khwarizmi

Humanity is human individuals.  That's all we are: the class of beings termed "human".

I'm not personally taking credit for the discovery of Pluto, or the ascent of Mt. Everest, or Bell's theorem, any more than I'm accepting the blame for the Holocaust.  But humans, and therefore humanity, did those things.

And it's not that all humans rock, it's that the human species - the basic pattern, the general human design, if you like - is capable of awesome things.  And horrible things.  But impressive things, as has been proven time and time again.

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But pretty much most adults, or even teenagers, know it is possible for them to do impressive things, sometimes it is even quite common in the news or something, so it isn't exactly something unknown. Sometimes it isn't even something new. Just something rather brave and ridiculously dangerous. So it isn't exactly an improvement in any sense to our species.

For some reason, a lot of people also tend to consider this rather annoying when the category is something different, like being an American, or a black person, or whatever.

"Conclusion: Humanity is the best thing ever because it has My Little Pony and Bacon."

I prefer beef.

RedEyedAbyss

More environmental impact, am I right?

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Is that a response to my preference for beef, because I don't really care about the environmental consequences there.

RedEyedAbyss

Eh, I'm not too fond of the taste of beef. It's okay once in a while, but there are tastier meat out there.

Khwarizmi

>For some reason, a lot of people also tend to consider this rather annoying when the category is something different, like being an American, or a black person, or whatever.

Because that encourages the us-vs-them mentality, which is regarded as provocative and sparks fights and rivalries.

Of course, it's also a pretty reliable way of offending liberal/egalitarian sensibilities, due to the implicit disparaging of other human groups who may have made similar achievements.

But really, since humans are a species, saying "humans are X" is more comparable to saying "crocodiles are X" or "spruce firs are X" than "Americans are X".

Noimporta

There's also the fact that, oftentimes, such feats are not really attributable to a single human being.

You can't really say "Neil Amstrong reached the moon", all the scientific, engineering, economical, social, political, etc. background involves thousands of years of history and possibly millions of individuals.

Khwarizmi

Standing on the shoulders of giants, in other words.

RedEyedAbyss

To think, that quote was actually a veiled jab at Robert Hooke.

Thorn14

I hate my little pony, it killed /co/.

Khwarizmi

^^ Older Than They Think.

^ /co/'s not dead, and MLP:FIM won't be popular forever.

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"You can't really say "Neil Amstrong reached the moon", all the scientific, engineering, economical, social, political, etc. background involves thousands of years of history and possibly millions of individuals."

If that's who I think it is (first guy on the moon) then that is an achievement most people who knew about the project thought was impossible at the time IIRC, so it is indeed something that can be regarded as an improvement to known human capabilities.

I don't think people are really thinking of that when saying these sorts of things though, since they don't usually credit the combined efforts of a large amount of humans for their microwave or something.

Gelzo

^^^I'm sure people said the same thing about "Homosuck". I think it's a silly opinion to have.

^^Cartoons can retain popularity for a long time. There's a reason Hey Arnold threads can still be found on /co/.

Khwarizmi

They did.

And last I checked, Hey Arnold's enduring popularity hasn't been sufficient to kill /co/ yet.

snowbull

The only ting /co/ has to fear is itself.

GLORIOUSLeader

And the only thing we have to fear is /co/ itself. 

Gelzo

Now that we're on this topic, I don't think the departure of people who can't tolerate the existence of threads about a popular cartoon/comic they dislike is necessarily detrimental for a board.