The attitude you're flirting with here, Ian, my brother, is cynicism. What you list in this rant are truths, relatively; I don't deny it. We are all a bunch of dumb house apes who can't get out of our own way very effectively.

Abysmal acts of rapine and callous slaughter are worldwide. People committing these acts always manage somehow to excuse them, to themselves, which is even more appalling.

You are not yet out of high school, though, so it's very encouraging to find you already in this place, already forming these impressions. Mark Twain wrote The Damned Human Race and Letters From the Earth much later in life.

So in that sense, congratulations! The problem becomes, next, what to do with this perception, now that you're making it.

Firstly, please retain the idea that no one is exempt. The problem can be projected onto some group of Other People. But it isn't just the yahoos. We are, actually, every one of us, yahoos. The problem you have your finger on is indeed universal to the species, and it's the wrong path to take to just ascribe it to some group of people not your kin. Some people build better-dead lists, and dream red dreams about improving the world by eliminating the ones they deem to be the problem. That's part of the problem, and it's one of the most common ways people excuse their wretched behavior.

Wallowing in depression about it all is really not very usual. You won't do that, anyway, so I'll skip it.

Much more usual is cynicism. Cynicism is really a defense mechanism designed to deal with the problem you have seen. Think about that and you'll see that it's the truth. Every example of this crap you see, you get to sneer at, which places you above it, sneering. Plus, you get to feel that you were right: you coulda known, you could have predicted it, given what you know about the proclivities of the species. In short, it makes you comforted in the face of the lifelong barrage of grotesque acts people will commit.

It's okay to be a cynic for a while, I think, but you may as well know that there is a way out. The path beyond cynicism and existential despair is love.

Yes, we're slimeballs. All of us are wretches, but! These wretches, these yahoos, are all you. They're all you; you are the same as they. So you have to love them, anyway. Try to help us get it that we are making horrible mistakes, but continue to love us all the same.