(The following is a guest post by an anonymous guest)
There are several times pretty much every day when I think there’s really not much to be said for the human race and that, in the grand scheme of the universe, or even just this planet, its disappearance would be no great loss, perhaps even a good thing. These thoughts usually occur while listening to talk radio, or while pausing a few seconds on some progam while channel surfing the TV, or after a day at the courthouse.
Where was I going with this? Actually, I had just been browsing this website: http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/ (which doesn’t seem to be there any more, sorry about that) and realized there are hundreds of thousands of people who are capable of wrecking websites and flooding the internet with spam, viruses and spyware, but only a tiny percentage who engage in such pursuits. This struck me as, perhaps, hope for the human race.
But it probably isn’t material evidence about the state of humanity. If you spend any time looking at sites like that one I mentioned about that isn’t there any more, plus security sites like Symantec, CERT, or McAfee, you can only conclude that on the internet you’re in the same position as a homeowner, traveller or citizen: you can do a few things to try to protect yourself from criminals and the government but, what it really comes down to is, safety only comes from being overlooked (or maybe anonymous).
Still, as a whole, maybe the great majority of the human race is worthy and honorable, though ripe for plucking by those who aren’t. On the other hand, watch about 60 seconds of Jerry Springer or any of those daytime TV court shows, and then ask yourself what you’d get rid of first if you were cleaning up the universe. Same question if you watch what real judges and juries are dealing with, and how they deal with it.