If you are losing faith in humanity, you are at a huge disadvantage, because our human civilization grew from our propensity to cooperate with each other. Reluctance to work with others, signals a reveasal of fortune. Therefore, if you could spot the early signs of loss of faith in humanity, and do something about it, you could significantly increase your chances for success and happiness in your personal and professional life.
How Prevalent is this Losing Faith in Humanity?
I arrived at an answer by an indirect route. Typically, I was unaware there was such a thing as loss of faith in humanity. At least I did not think it mattered much. Here is an extract from my soon to be published book to illustrate this:
A Quote About Losing Faith in Humanity
“When I was in my mid-twenties and struggling with my faith in God, I asked a wise old priest if faith in God became easier as one grew older. I was hoping for a positive answer, to give me hope, and some glimmer of light through the fog that I had drifted into, during my struggles with my belief in God.
The answer that came from Father Patrick Whooley MSC, an Irish missionary with a PhD in theology, was nothing resembling my wildest expectations. He said, as you grow older, faith in God will be the least of your problems. That was good news. I was relieved to hear that. He didn’t stop there, though. He went on to say that it is your faith in humanity that will be tested and cause you the most misery. ‘Life will test your faith in humanity,’ he concluded, introducing me to the struggle that older people have with society.
I did not expect that one. It was not my problem at the time, so I stored it at the back of my mind for future reference when I am older. I am now older, and he was spot on. How I wish he had been wrong.” Taken from, Gatekeepers Only Delay Pleasure they Cannot Stop It
Losing Faith in Humanity Sneaks Up On You
Unfortunately, loss of faith in humanity sneaks up on you slowly over time. You start to notice incidents that question your faith in humanity. Each incident erodes that faith in its own way. Over time, they take their toll and before you know it, your faith in humanity is all but washed away.
Blows that Lead to Losing Faith in Humanity
It starts withthe behaviour of the following people that give you shocks:
- Politician who becomes a hired gun to big money lobbyists and short changes his electorate
- Banking executive who gets a bonus while his actions cause his clients to lose their homes
- Central banker’s fiat currency that loses value through inflation making retirement unaffordable
- Police who selectively and fatally wound minority suspects
- Church leader who profess higher virtues but is complacent in child abuse cases
- Financial advisor who turns out to be Ponzi schemer
- Famous actor caught in shameful scandal
- Pop star implicated in child abuse
- Sporting hero involved in morally questionable activities
- Media executive in sexual harassment
- Pharmaceutical executive who turns a blind eye to side effects under pressure to return profits
- Head of State who declares an unnecessary war, casualties rise, bodies pile up, cities turn to ruble, and he gets away with it.
The Genesis of Losing Faith in Humanity
If you can’t trust these folk to do the right thing, who are you supposed to trust? You would be surprised how many people walk around with a certain degree of loss of faith in humanity as a result of similar experiences. Lurking in the background, out of sight, out of focus, it seems harmless, but it touches critical aspects of their progress and happiness. What they do not know is how much life this loss of faith in humanity is draining out of them. It puts the brakes on their performance and slows them down. It diminishes their experience of happiness.
Why Negative Reporting Sells
Look at social media commentary and people’s attitude towards political and business leaders, celebrities, racial groups, and religious groups. There is a level of anger and viciousness that reveal a deep disappointment with humanity. Journalists and their editors know that negative reporting sells because they know that they are feeding an audience that has lost faith in humanity. The negative stories confirm the worldview of those who have lossed faith in humanity and that audience buys into negative reporting. It sells a worldview of people as selfish, cruel, morally bankrupt, or just wild animals.
Negating One of the 12 Categories of Pleasure
Loss of faith in humanity is the consequence of socially inflicted suffering and that in turn is the consequence of loss of social pleasure. Social pleasure is one of the key 12 categories of pleasure that set you up for success. Losing faith in humanity, usually comes long after losing social pleasure. When society becomes a source of pain and suffering, we usually lose faith in humanity. The disconnection that follows translates into big losses over a life time.
Loss of Faith a Matter of Degree
Loss of faith in humanity is a matter of degree rather than a binary yes or no. All adults lose some faith in humanity at some stage of their lives. At any given time during the ebb and flow of faith in human nature, we sink to the low end or rise to the high end and every place in between. Among the people who lose faith in humanity are those who experience not just the absence of communal pleasure but who have endured extreme suffering that was socially inflicted. It is quite difficult to tell them to their face, not to lose faith in humanity after what they have been through.
Signs of Losing Faith in Humanity
You need to pick up the signs of losing faith in humanity so that you can address them. Signs of losing faith in humanity include cynicism towards society, difficulty in trusting others, disappointment with people, anger at society, frustration with lies, anger at other people’s deceptive ways, outrage when held hostage by social manipulators, discouraged by corruption and diminished hope that about the situation ever improving and a worry that the good guys won’t win and a fear that evil will defeat goodness.
When you notice combination of four and above of these in you, know that you are at risk. You need to do something to restore faith in humanity.
Reduced trust is a Sign of Losing Faith in Humanity
When you have been let down too many times by others it becomes difficult to trust people. Since so much of social living requires some level of trust it becomes difficult to collaborate with others. And since the achievement of many things in life require cooperation, this becomes a handicap. Too much mistrust and society would become dysfunctional and social institutions would falter. Those outside the trust circle lose out.
Cynicism is a Sign of Losing Faith in Humanity
An increased urge to criticize and find fault. Every good development from society is approached with suspicion and doubt. You never give it the benefit of the doubt. You rule it out right away. That is how you miss out on opportunities.
Criticism is a Sign of Losing Faith in Humanity
Being critical is a good trait for a scientific age. However, an over critical attitude can discourage innovative ideas. New ideas a born incomplete and not fully developed. It is easy to squash them. When you are anticipating suffering, you can attack new ideas. This is another form of loss.
Stealing and cheating is a Sign of Losing Faith in Humanity
Stealing and cheating is often a sign that you have lost faith in humanity. This is true of all kinds of theft, robbery, corruption, extortion, and Ponzi scheming, they are all symptoms of loss of faith in humanity. It may even mean that you are paying back to society some harm you believe was done to you. It may mean that you believe you are playing the game the way it is truly played or was played against you.
To steal and cheat, you must stop feeling the pain and suffering of your victims. You stop caring about the impact of your actions on them. Whether you are a street mugger or a financial market scammer, for you the human race is just a bunch of suckers waiting to be milked. Nobody who acts like that believes in humanity, or values it. All swindlers, con men, and financial advisors turned Ponzi schemers are intra-species predators. They do not care about the people they harm. They have lost faith in humanity.
Anti-authority is a Sign of Losing Faith in Humanity
A knee jerk reaction against authority, before even considering the issues, is a sign that one has lost faith in humanity. Those in authority affect so much of what society does and becomes. Losing faith in them leads to losing faith in society. Eroded faith is authority is sometimes deserved when those in authority fall short of their obligations. But when a few bad apples cause one to lose faith in all authority, you can withdraw and cease to be functional.
Pessimism is a Sign of Losing Faith in Humanity
When people lose social pleasure, and experience social suffering, they can become pessimistic about the future. They do not trust the human community to create a better future. If the outlook is dim enough, some couples choose not to have children. They are reluctant to bring children into such a world. This could be one of the contributing factors, among others, in developed countries experiencing a crisis of record low birth rate.
Social Witdrawal is a Sign of Losing Faith in Humanity
There are many reasons for withdrawing from social life. It could include illness or shame caused by lack of financial resources or failure and a fall from grace. But sometimes it is due to a view that society is at best apathetic and at worst cruel. Avoiding it is the same as avoiding suffering because as Jean Paul Sartre put it, “Hell is other people.” Solitude, which is a quiet time spent alone, is okay. Withdrawing from society because you do not fit in and then experiencing loneliness, is not good.
Apathy is a Sign of Losing Faith in Humanity
When you develop apathy towards others, not caring about society any more whereas you previously did, that is a concerning development. Something happened to shut you down. There are so many things in society that can hurt you, discourage you and make you feel sad. When you are overwhelmed with sadness you can start blocking and creating boundaries. You could build an apathetic wall between you and the rest of society to protect yourself from being overwhelmed with sadness. That wall also cuts you off and excludes you.
Reluctance to Delegate is a Sign of Losing Faith in Humanity
Reluctance to delegate comes from the expectation of deep disappointment with others. When you expect other to disappoint you, delegating work to them is tantamount to allowing them to do that to you. Why would you set yourself up to be disappointed? So, you avoid asking for help. That is not a good thing because it will slow your progress tremendously.
Delegating and working with others leads to conflict due to differing self-interest, trying to harmonize those interests is quite a difficult and frustrating job. Different perspectives add value but also increase the chances of misunderstanding each other. Being misunderstood is a pain for everyone. Losing faith in teams and voiding them and the frustration to goes with making teams work, will be more costly in the long run.
The Progressive Loss of Social Pleasure
Loss of Social Pleasure
Loss of faith in humanity follows on the heels of loss of social pleasure. Should the social experience of interacting with other people be unpleasurable for consecutive experiences, one tends to disengage. When interactions with others results in pain you begin to regard other people as a source of suffering. This reinforces the disengagement and leads to loneliness.
Social First Aid
The journey to losing faith in humanity moves from social pleasure to social emptiness and then to social pain. We are social beings and therefore, even that social emptiness, or loneliness is not harmless. Deep loneliness is social suffering that has been shown in studies to be as devastating as psychological and physical pain. There has been writings arguing that psychological pain deserves the urgency given to bleeding and physical pain. Social suffering needs the same sense of urgency.
Social Pain as Trauma
We also know from the experience of witnessing social suffering in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that it can damage a person without touching them physically. We have seen it in the ultimate loss of faith in humanity experienced by war veteran who were PSTD suffers. Even milder forms of loss of faith in humanity can do harm too. The draw back to the effective communication via social media and the internet, is that we are exposed to too much negative human experiences, so that one’s faith in the goodness of human nature begins to lose wane.
The Onset of Losing Faith in Humanity
Over time, faith in humanity begins to erode before it fades away. The social light goes out before a dark social winter rolls in. We now know from studies that social pain can be as damaging as psychological and physical pain. Loneliness has been known to be a silent killer that has taken many lives. Through just wasting away or active suicide. No one is immune to it. It takes its toll on everyone regardless of age, social status and financial standing.
The meaning of loss of Faith in Humanity
Loss of faith in humanity means that you do not place much hope in your fellow human beings. Instead of being the source of joy they are likely to be the source of suffering. You do not trust your fellow human beings, instead you count on them to do harm. As Jean Paul Sartre put the words in the mouth of one of his charaters his the play, “Hell is other people.”
Loss of Faith in Humanity Inflicts Pain
Loss of faith in humanity inflicts considerable suffering, not only on the one who loses it, but also on the society that is populated by too many such disengaged individuals. Some individuals have far more impact than others. For instance, when leaders, from all walks of life, experience loss of faith in humanity, the community as a whole suffers the consequences. They could abuse their powers and treat people harshly or divert resources away from the common good.
Ordinary individuals who have lost faith in humanity do not bother investing their time, effort and resources for the common good. A society in the grip of loss of faith in humanity is in decline.
The Degree of Loss of Faith in Humanity
Loss of faith in humanity ranges from mild to severe cases. A mild form sees us locking our doors at night and when we are away. In medium form we build walls around our homes and installing safes, and burglar alarms. The severe loss of faith in humanity sees us employing body guards and armed guards. The same is replicated in the virtual world of the internet and the web, where we employ cyber security.
It also ranges from complete to partial loss of faith in humanity. We can lose faith in the criminal element while we still trust the rest of society. The problem is that we do not know who the criminals are beforehand. Therefore, we tend to be cautious when approaching strangers.
Loss of Faith in Leaders
Others are a little more specific, they have lost faith in leaders. Genghis Khan was a prime example of someone who lost faith in leaders. he was on a mission to remove all leaders and have one leader on earth, him.
- Still others have lost faith in politicians and the government and do not like the state of their country, they either campaign for change or immigrate to live abroad. Many have left their distressed countries on risky boat rides across seas.
- Yet others lost faith in business people and bankers after the single event of the global financial crisis of 2008 in recent times where it is the working class who bore the brunt of the housing bubble when it burst. Those executives partly responsible for riding the bubble with cheap credit and lax lending practices got off not only Scott free but with bonuses. Many thought this was obscene and some lost faith in corporates.
- There are those who lost faith in religious leaders due scandals. Some scandals involve sexual abuses, financial dealings and false claims of healing and miracles and violence in the name of religion.
- Some have lost faith in law enforcement when they are taken over by the underworld, when they discriminate against minorities, abuse their position to commit sexual offences.
- Still others lost faith in their fair-weather friends who abandon and ignore them when they are faced with adversity. Some lost faith in their families when instead of love and care some members of the families have been the opposite. Some people have lost faith in humanity in general.
The Impact of Loss of Faith in Humanity
The immediate effects of losing faith in humanity lead to the following experiences:
- Low trust prevents you from collaborating with others
- Makes you reluctant to delegate
- Causes you impatient with investing in grooming talent
- Inclines you use people like things
- Encourages to treating people less than you want to be treated
- Leads to apathy towards the suffering of others
- Destruction of the common goods, land, air, water, plants
- Leaving no legacy for the next generation
- Using education to create an elite class
- Making justice secondary to laws
- Declaration and waging of wars
- Hostage-taking,
The consequences of losing faith in humanity are a huge setback on one’s survival and progress in life. Social pleasure is first among the primary human needs. It rearranges Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, taking first place ahead of physical needs of food, and nourishment.
Children Would not Survive Without Social
The role played by others in our survival from childhood onward is critical. A new born human baby would not last long without caring adults looking out for it. Crying only helps when there are caring adults to respond. Even before birth, other people are essential to your conception and existence. Later in life, the role played by others in our success is still significant and difficult to exaggerate. Therefore, social pleasure is the mother of all pleasures.
Blocking Contributions
Losing faith in humanity results in the withdrawal of your contribution from society thus impoverishing it and yourself in the process. It also means blocking the contribution of society that would otherwise benefit you. It can also result in using society as a trash bin where you throw all your rubbish – from spreading toxic ideas and beliefs, toxic financial instruments, bad diet, violence and detonating bombs, using legal instruments to circumvent justice and dumping CO2 emissions into the our common atmosphere. It means treating society as your enemy.
When your faith is restored, you can treat society and humanity as your friend and a source of immense pleasure. Therefore, restoring your faith in humanity, is a greater part of your life’s work. It will be well worth the effort.
Anticipating Social Suffering
One of the worst consequences of losing faith in humanity is developing a habit of anticipating suffering. When you have experienced suffering and frustration in your dealings with other people you may begin to anticipate suffering in your next interaction with people. Diminished social pleasure may lead to reluctance to engage with people. Social dealings may become shallow and superficial. Superficiality leads to loneliness. You have heard of the phrase being lonely in a crowd. Loneliness is a state of social dying.
We Must Restore Faith in Humanity
There is so much potential social value and pleasure we can generate in our interaction and relationships with each other. If your team consists of people who have lost faith in humanity, it will do a poor job at collaborating. That will set you all back. However, should it consists of people who have recovered from loss of faith in humanity, it will be stronger, because more than anyone, they appreciate the value of a team, an organization and a community.
It helps that they are not naïve about humanity and therefore they are not discouraged by its flaws. They know that the human community is not perfect, but neither are its flaws cast in stone. It is malleable enough for us to shape it into a community we can draw pleasure from.
The Good Samaritans
There are many people in the world who are kind, generous, and compassionate. They are the Good Samaritans who restore your faith in humanity through their actions. Even meeting one of them, is enough to restore your faith in humanity. If you choose to be like them, by being generous to others, you could see reflected in other people’s eyes your own kind image of yourself.
Your Own Kindness
If you see your kinder self-reflected back to you in enough grateful eyes, your faith in humanity can be restored. Good Samaritans can restore your faith in humanity, and so can you. What is more, you will be visible to others who are doing good for humanity. You will inspire them and they you in turn. Together we can restore our faith in humanity. It is essential for our progress and happiness.
Human life, like all life on planet earth, is precious. It is still a rarity in our part of the visible universe. As Carl Sagan was fond of saying, we are a young species, full of hope and promise. I believe that places us in context. We have just climbed down from the trees and stood up right. We have taken a few courageous steps and developed the first tools of science. What we are still to achieve and become must be a source of intrigue and excitement. The possibilities are astounding.
Conclusion
Loss of faith in humanity is the conclusion that people are a hopeless species. Such a conclusion is usually arrived at after witnessing acts of human cruelty and stupidity, akin to defecating upstream into our own water supply. Stalling by throwing toxic garbage into the future gives some reprieve until time drags it back to the present. Knowing that the the future will always arrive on time makes it descouraging to watch some man made tragedies unfold.
The real virtue is not to give up on humanity. Cooperation is our greatest strength. We must heal our loss of faith in humanity to enjoy the good life. There is an opportunity to live collaboratively, engendering a vibrant and strong faith in humanity. It is possible to contribute and draw a mirad of social pleasures from each other.