I found the title link via curi.us.  Which is indeed, as the title implies, a curious blog.  While reading it I had that vaguely schizophrenic feeling as though I couldn't be entirely certain I wasn't hallucinating.

 

Anyhow, regarding the title link, I can't for the life of me fathom why people seem to think humanity is some sort of disease.  Is it fashionable?  Is it the creed for some secret society?  Perhaps, there's some sort of gratification of which I am unaware?

 

The gist of the article is that humans fail miserably as parents. 

 

 

I'm guessing this lady hasn't spent a lot of time around animals.  I've seen cats eat their kittens.  I've seen sows eat their piglets and wallow them to death.  I've seen cows kick their calves to death.  Horses wean their foals by kicking them in the face when they try to suckle (goats and sheep and cattle tend to do the same thing). 

 

People like her seem to forget that people actually are animals.  Like it or not, we are biological machines just like any other critter.  We are a bag of chemicals, slaves to little bits of protein that float around telling us what to do.  The difference is that we have a few genetic alterations as compared to our animal relatives resulting in wildly divergent behavior as compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.

 

People invest more of their lives in rearing children than any other species.  We spend (though we don't necessarily have to) at least 18 years raising and grooming our children.  In fact, the average age a person leaves home is 26.  You can find the statistics on the Casey Family page but I'm too lazy to look them up.  Statistically, about one third of a parent's life is consumed by a single child.  We do pretty well on that score.  Additionally, humans don't generally wean our children by elbowing them in the face.  I won't rule it out, but I haven't heard of humans eating their own offspring. 

 

The score is about equal so far.  Then again, when people do evil things to children other people punish them.  We recognize that it's wrong to treat children cruelly and make a group effort to limit such cruelty.  Animals don't do that.  We take in other people's children when it's necessary.  It happens in the animal world, but it's pretty rare.  I've raised a number of bums because it's nearly impossible to get animals to accept babies that aren't theirs.

 

For all the appalling things people do to their kids, I think we measure up pretty well in general.  In fact, I would indeed place us well above other animals though as I said we too are just a differently shaped bag of chemicals.

 

The piety is what gets me.  Obviously humanity haters don't include themselves with the herd or they would take steps to remove themselves from the catastrophe (and spare the rest of us their idiot moaning).  It seems that their recognition of "reality" makes them enlightened or possibly even transcendant.

 

The fact that we are animals means we will behave as such.  Humans will always do monstrous things to one another.  The thing that makes us better is that we strive for virtue in a way that I believe is beyond the ability of animals.

 

(I'm not sure where to post this, so it's going in politics).