Challenge: Less Misanthrophy in fiction

The trope "Humans are Bastards" seem to be all too common in fiction, with many works of fiction talking about how "inferior and violent" we are compared to "the aliens" like District 9 an Avatar.

What could make the reverse happen in fiction? Where humans are not seen as inherently malicious, at best they are like Star Trek or just as capable of good the very worse they could be seen as stupid or shortsighted, but it is because humans in general are flawed, and they have the power to come around in the end.

For me, I would have the media be more fair, and not only report on "bad news" but also on good news as well. It seems like the media prides itself on reporting the worst of humanity.....

NOTE: This is not the place to state if you yourself are misanthrophic or rant about "how humans suck/are stupid" but rather, what could reinforce a more positive view of humanity in fiction.
 

NothingNow

Banned
You'll need to fundamentally alter human psychology I think.
So this requires going a lot further back than a hundred thirteen years.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
The trope "Humans are Bastards" seem to be all too common in fiction, with many works of fiction talking about how "inferior and violent" we are compared to "the aliens" like District 9 an Avatar.

What could make the reverse happen in fiction? Where humans are not seen as inherently malicious, at best they are like Star Trek or just as capable of good the very worse they could be seen as stupid or shortsighted, but it is because humans in general are flawed, and they have the power to come around in the end.

For me, I would have the media be more fair, and not only report on "bad news" but also on good news as well. It seems like the media prides itself on reporting the worst of humanity.....

NOTE: This is not the place to state if you yourself are misanthrophic or rant about "how humans suck/are stupid" but rather, what could reinforce a more positive view of humanity in fiction.

The problem is that humans are inherently malicious.
 
You'll need to fundamentally alter human psychology I think.
So this requires going a lot further back than a hundred thirteen years.

Poppycock.

What I am about to say could sound inflammatory. I am not assigning any moral value to these statements, I am merely attempting to explain them sociologically.

I think this is a uniquely Western post-WWII thing, and comes from the same place as white guilt. White guilt is too specific a term, so I'd call it something more like "privilege shame", and it's the result of a lot of factors. The biggest one is how phenomenally taboo racism has become, and in fiction that gets projected onto humanity as a whole.

We've seen too many times where the powerful took pride in who they are, and did horrible things to people they saw as different. The Nazis. The treatment of Native Americans. So in modern society, among the left-wing community (the community responsible for most media), a certain shame has become attached to being a majority.

If you look at fiction from the 1950's, the aliens are always always always evil, with proud and noble humanity standing against them. Aliens have long been how we work out our perceptions of foreigners, so the level of misanthropy in fiction will be inversely proportional to the xenophobia of the society that produces it.
 
The problem is that humans are inherently malicious.

If you ask Hobbes, perhaps. And again, this is not the place to rant about how misanthrophic you are--I will admit, through I don't believe humans are inherently malicious, I do believe in the humans are idiot/stupid argument but I try to believe that humans are neutral and can even do good, so no, I'm not that misanthrophic, and plus, it has been argued that other animal species can equally screw up our world for others if they achieve sentience.


I think a better POD is that most religions do not invent the concept of original sin and how most of us are flawed and go to hell no matter what you do, but rather tell you to live the life to the best you can.
 
The problem is that humans are inherently malicious.


Exactly. In many ways, I find myself agreeing with Thomas Hobbes' view of human nature. It is that, combined with our history of war, and the brutality of war, the way 'civilians' are treated in war, all have added up to why fiction is often as negative as it is. hell, the concept of civilians during war is a relatively new concept, and that on it's own should give you hints of human psychology.

So, for humanity to not show up as bastards so often in works of literature, both fiction and non-fiction, you'd have to fundamentally change human psychology, our behavior, and thus our history. However, were one to go back far enough and change those things that make us the humans we are, we may not have survived long enough to get to where we are today.

edit, I'll agree withDanielXie in that if you change a number of things in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the concept of original sin being one of many problems, you will have helped humanity significantly.
 
The problem is that humans are inherently malicious.

Maybe you are, but I've never seen any sentence that begins "humans are inherently" that wasn't total horseshit.

If you ask Hobbes, perhaps. And again, this is not the place to rant about how misanthrophic you are--I will admit, through I don't believe humans are inherently malicious, I do believe in the humans are idiot/stupid argument but I try to believe that humans are neutral and can even do good, so no, I'm not that misanthrophic, and plus, it has been argued that other animal species can equally screw up our world for others if they achieve sentience.


I think a better POD is that most religions do not invent the concept of original sin and how most of us are flawed and go to hell no matter what you do, but rather tell you to live the life to the best you can.

Reread my post. Misanthropy in fiction, how the OP describes it, is a very recent phenomenon.
 
@DStecks

Actually there are quite a few right wing worldviews that point to Humans are Bastards--Objectivism and Hobbes worldview come to mind.
 
The trope "Humans are Bastards" seem to be all too common in fiction, with many works of fiction talking about how "inferior and violent" we are compared to "the aliens" like District 9 an Avatar.

What could make the reverse happen in fiction? Where humans are not seen as inherently malicious, at best they are like Star Trek or just as capable of good the very worse they could be seen as stupid or shortsighted, but it is because humans in general are flawed, and they have the power to come around in the end.

For me, I would have the media be more fair, and not only report on "bad news" but also on good news as well. It seems like the media prides itself on reporting the worst of humanity.....

NOTE: This is not the place to state if you yourself are misanthrophic or rant about "how humans suck/are stupid" but rather, what could reinforce a more positive view of humanity in fiction.

Well, one thing that might help is butterflying the Holocaust & and other such mass genocides.....and maybe less racism & colonialism, and problems in general; maybe segregation ends earlier in the U.S.; maybe Israel's birth occurs under far better circumstances than it did IOTL.

Conversely, more racism, more genocides, etc. would almost certainly lead to MORE such fiction, and not less.
 
There are already plenty of idealistic views of humanity in sci fi and other fiction.

To get more, have the earliest alien stories feature aliens as more evil than they were portrayed (though they were already portrayed pretty evilly--original War of the Worlds, for example).

Also weaken the environmentalist movement (a big reason for seeing humanity as bad), and have stories with literal demons (from Hell) as the antagonists remain more common.

In doing so, you'd butterfly away the evil of Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot. There might be alternate evil warlords but it's unlikely they'll be as bad as those three.

Speaking of Avatar, the 'bad humanity, good aliens' trope might be related to the 'noble savage' idea.
 
The problem is that humans are inherently malicious.

I am not inherently malicious. I am also human.

Therefore your absolute statement is absolutely incorrect.

Anyway, weaken environmentalism, or just have it be far more self-centered. I.e. not "save the planet from us", but rather, "Save the planet for us."

Also, a lot of Sci-Fi authors use their works as a way to rant about whatever they personally dislike about modern society (whether consciously or not), so portraying modern society and therefore humans as bad works well with their views.
 
The problem is that humans are inherently malicious.

Thats a rather bold statement. Frankly most people are basically decent if self centered, to say we are all malicious is ridiculous, that would mean we are all actively trying to make the world a worse place for no good reason.

Frankly this comes across as sarcasm without the winkie smiley face.
 
The trope "Humans are Bastards" seem to be all too common in fiction, with many works of fiction talking about how "inferior and violent" we are compared to "the aliens" like District 9 an Avatar.

Maybe have people realize that thinking we have no basis in thinking we are any better or worse than any aliens that might be out there. There is no reason to assume we are anything but the middle of the pack morally.
 
@DStecks

Actually there are quite a few right wing worldviews that point to Humans are Bastards--Objectivism and Hobbes worldview come to mind.

IIRC, Objectivism defends the right of the "the civilized peoples" to take over and dismantle the less advanced civilizations.
 
There's been a great deal of 'we are flawed, this bunch of foreigners are superior, here is why' stuff going on in literature for a very long time-Atlantis, for example, and Gulliver's Travels (arguably.)
 
Maybe you are, but I've never seen any sentence that begins "humans are inherently" that wasn't total horseshit.

Humans are inherently carbon-based.:D

If you look at fiction from the 1950's, the aliens are always always always evil, with proud and noble humanity standing against them. Aliens have long been how we work out our perceptions of foreigners, so the level of misanthropy in fiction will be inversely proportional to the xenophobia of the society that produces it.

First off I think you're completely wrong about the 1950s, but if you're wrong it doesn't disprove your point. The 1950s were when this attitude of 'humans are bastards' really came to dominate sci fi, propelled by a host of new authors who were, not unsurprisingly, returning GIs and/or Jewish. Yeah, they were in a dark place. It came across in the work. There was obviously misanthropy before this, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that this thread wouldn't have been made if there had been no WWII (and not just because of butterflies.)

Many of the major cultural touchstones that came after continued to fuel this theme, and perhaps a world without WWII but with a cold war, nuclear paranoia, environmental endgame, civil strife, and political nihilism would still see a certain degree of misanthropy. But I'm sure a smart AH-er can knock over the correct domino that allows a non-existent WWII to butterfly a lot of the rest of that away.
 

OS fan

Banned
The problem with this idea: People who aren't misanthropists, enjoy life and have many friends usually won't retreat from society to write a book or sculpt a statue. They will rather found a family, do business, have a career.

Also, for most of the past, works of art were bought, if not commissioned by the winners in society. Artists who decided to heap nothing but scorn on humans would not sell their works and starve.
 
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