Thank you for all the responses, everyone.
There is something I have to clarify, though. There's a difference between being a cynic and a realist, and I consider myself a realist as well. It's normal to feel like the world is a cruel place, that human stupidity has no limits and that nothing can surprise you. It's fine to consistently provide constructive criticism to our societal issues, and even fine to focus more on the negative things in the world than the positive...as long as the positive things are acknowledged.
A realist still shares the same opinions as the cynic on the world's disgusting issues but when something good comes along and stares them in the face, the realist acknowledges it while the cynic's hateful nature still interprets it as a negative, or sees cons more than the pros even when the pros far outweigh the cons.
And that's precisely my point. It seems everyone in a cynic these days or has been/is being raised to live by misanthropic values. The belief that no matter what we do, we are unjust and create more injustice. I guess I should have titled this thread "Are We Too Misanthropic These Days?", because it was the more accurate word. And that's what bothers me. That we have essentially been taught and conditioned to hate ourselves and the human race by extension.
I brought up how there was a boy with cancer and had a fundraiser drive going for him that was really successful. A lot of people's responses to that was to tell him to "check his privilege". "Why aren't you doing this for the dying little girls, or the POC children with cancer? I have a feeling you wouldn't care so much then." "This shows everything that's wrong with society!"
How much of a cynic do we have to be for our first initial gut-reaction to us bringing joy to life of a child battling cancer is to still interpret it as "everything that's wrong with society"? If that doesn't show how misanthropic we've become, I don't know what does.
Nothing is ever good enough, everything is a conspiracy theory. I briefly touched on that in the opening post but haven't gone in-depth with it. When Osama Bin Laden was killed, there was confirmation by DNA, eyewitnesses and his own wife. Conspiracy theorists ran wild demanding an image of the body. Now regardless of what you believed, ask yourself the following question: Would most of those same people have been satisfied if they showed the body? After all, faking a dead body isn't that hard, especially when solely viewed through a camera. People can photoshop a dead body off their laptop. Look at how some perceived the images of the moon landing. Where do we draw the line?
Just on page 1 of this thread, someone brought up how sad it was that there are millions of diseases that don't get the same notice as ALS does, the irony being that for so long, ALS was one of those millions of diseases that went unnoticed compared to others. If anything, this viral marketing campaign is proof that unknown conditions can get off the ground and reach mainstream ears, just like ALS did. A year ago, we would have been complaining how ALS doesn't get the same attention as Cancer or AIDS because it doesn't affect as many people. Again, where do we draw the line?
I guess to add some perspective to some on a site like this, we are gradually turning into these guys:
[YT]G-rl0tfQO9E[/YT]
[YT]IM1-DQ2Wo_w[/YT]
Half serious and half joking about that.
