Spiders are the worst. I don’t know if it’s because of their beady eyes, their skittery little legs, the fact that they never look relaxed, or because whenever they are on the ceiling they look like little demons waiting to pounce. Anyhow, they make me terribly uneasy. Nevertheless, when we happen to habitate the same space, we respect each other's respective rights to exist and go about our lives as we see fit. Spiders are like any other creature on this earth; we’re all just trying to find our place in this infinitely indifferent world, find a purpose and live our lives. We find a home, find a family, find friends and make peace with our piece of existence. I suppose spiders aren’t that bad; they have their faults, but don’t we all? And aren’t we more than our worst qualities?

It is terribly easy to look at the world and decide that humanity is the worst thing since unsliced bread. It’s difficult to watch the news and not be depressed. The past one hundred years have had two world wars, not a small amount of genocide, shady coups, hatred, intolerance, murder, and at this point, it feels like we could just take a knee, wait for the apocalypse, and embrace the sweet release of the end of all things. But stick around, hear me out, and I will show you that while humans are capable of great acts of hate, we are equally prone to wonderful acts of love. And even though it feels like the four horsemen are using the earth as a stable, things are better than they’ve ever been and are continuing to get better every day.

The Holocaust will always be the epitome of atrocity on an industrial scale. Not only were 9 million women, men, and children killed via torturous and brutal genocide, but the idea of total warfare brought the death toll of soldiers and civilians alike to 56 million women, men, children, civilians and soldiers. It’s hard to find redemption in humanity after seeing such depth of evil and cruelty. Difficult. But not impossible. The Yad Vashem Museum is one of the world’s leading authorities on the holocaust. Through various means, they have collected the names of 25,685 people from around the world who collectively saved the lives of over two million Jewish men, women and children during World War II. Most of these people risked their lives, their families, their livelihoods saving people when it would have been so easy to look the other way and pretend that because it wasn’t happening to them, it wasn’t happening at all. I start with this for a reason. World War II was without a doubt the darkest time in the past century, and perhaps the whole of human history. Even at our darkest, we were not consumed. Twenty-five thousand may seem small in light of the circumstances, but that is so much more than zero. People laid down their lives for their friends, for strangers. That’s worth something.

While I’m on the subject of war, especially WWII, it may be worth noting that despite our apparent tendency towards the contrary, humans hate killing. During WWII U.S. Army Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall conducted a study with his subordinates that found that out of one hundred soldiers, fifteen to twenty would fire at an enemy. Under any circumstance regardless of risk, reward or danger to life, up to eighty-five percent of soldiers under his command would not fire at an enemy. Continuing this study with historians and statisticians, Marshall looked at 400 infantry companies and found that the exact same statistic was true for all of them. Eighty-five percent of soldiers would risk death before they tried to kill an enemy soldier. In 1986 the British continued this study by simulating over one hundred battles of the past two centuries and found that the actual death tolls were far lower than that of the simulations. People do not want to kill, they never have. This should be obvious. Sanctity of life is a core human value across times, nations, and religions.

The Middle East has been in turmoil ever since the first culture discovered the concept of “mine.” Jews, Christians, and Muslims have fought, argued, and killed each other in the region over land, money, and which version of God is the most loving and peaceful. Militants and corrupt politicians have made it an incredibly hostile land for all, and New Year's Eve 2001 continued that grand tradition . Twenty-one Christian Egyptians died in an attack on the Saint’s Church of Alexandria. Hostilities towards non-Muslim peoples in Egypt have been on the rise for a while, and as tension increased so did violence. There are a lot of Islamophobic people in America and around the world who would say that Islam is a violent religion. There are a lot of smug cynics out there who point to the idea that humans are naturally evil and violent, and religion is just another reason to give in to these desires. January 6, 2011, was the Coptic Christmas Eve mass in Cairo, and threats of violence were things that happened. As a show of solidarity, a large collective of Egyptian Muslims acted as “human shields” surrounding the mass and offering themselves to any bullets, fire, or bombs directed at their Christian friends. They declared that “Egypt was for all people.” Mohamed El-Sawy started a slogan of “We either live together, or we die together.” People laying down their lives for people. According to Jesus, this is the greatest love that can be shown. Take a moment and think about this. That has never happened in history. We are told every day that the middle east is getting more and more unstable and violent, but the truth is that for the first time in a long time Muslims, Jews, and Christians are looking at each other as brothers and sisters, and it is the minority--the people with guns, money, or power that is trying to destroy this.

What if this has always been the case? What if people aren’t simply getting better, but the world we live in is finally allowing us to give into who we truly are? We can finally talk to people from across the globe, so politicians are having a hell of a time convincing us that the people across the water are soulless-child-eating-monsters and that we have to kill them to protect ourselves. They still try, and a lot of people still follow suit, but you have to be willfully ignorant to do so. We have Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; we can see an enemy soldier's last meal as left for war, we can see their family, their children's birthday pictures. For the first time in human history, we can be human to one another. Previously, every atrocity followed this format: people in power want something from another group of people, so they convince masses that in order to protect their families and their homes they have to kill this group of faceless inhuman monsters. People went along with it because we want the people we love safe and we are scared of what we do not know. But we are at the point where “the monsters” are people we play video games with on the weekends, people we Skype with when we’re bored, people we get parenting tips from. In a sense, they are undeniably people. And people will always fight for people.

People will always die for people. September 11, 2001, fire-fighters and random people died trying to save people, the Syrian refugees have been met with both hostility from politicians and jerks as well as an incredible kindness from strangers, a teacher stopped a school shooting with a hug, a man took his mugger out to dinner. There have been multiple psychological studies that have shown children as young as eighteen months showing altruistic behavior regardless of rewards. Tangentially, we have seen the same in chimps, suggesting that we may have had an altruistic nature since before we were human. At the same time, studies looking at trauma and behavior have all but conclusively shown that hate, more often than not, is learned behavior. So maybe we can be evil, and perhaps we live in a world that nurtures that, but that is definitely not all that we are. We are more than our faults.

Regardless of humanity’s precise nature, the world is still charging headlong towards Armageddon right? Wrong. Statistics show that humanity is doing better than ever. Acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community has never been higher. World poverty is lower than it has ever been. A greater percentage of the population have more basic human rights than ever before. Civil rights, feminism, equality: it’s all winning. Basic human decency is winning. Humanity is winning. That is not to say we can stop fighting; we can never stop fighting injustice. Global warming is still a huge threat, but that’s because the five people in charge of burning black death into our sky have too much money and power, but we can fix it. The masses have always underestimated their power, but it turns out that more often than not, it is the majority that fights for what is good against the vast minority of the ruling class. But don’t lose heart, don’t give up, we are getting there. Keep fighting every for every inch of justice you can, and understand that it is not you against the world. For the first time, we are all in this together.

Understand that I have no delusions about humanity's moral problems. The Holocaust happened and most people did nothing. Women have been treated like shit in almost every culture. People steal, murder, and rape on a daily basis. Humans have evil in them. They know what it is and how to do it. We have the knowledge of evil. We have the knowledge of good too. That is all I want to get across. We fell from God’s purpose. We ate the fruit, and we gained the capacity for evil, and we got kicked out of the Garden because you cannot be evil and immortal and in paradise. But the fruit of knowledge of good and evil was a double edged sword. God didn’t send us out into darkness. Where we knew evil we understood good. We are morally complex. God created us as creatures of love, we will never be able to escape that as much as we try to deny it. To say that we are fallen and therefore sinful and only evil is to deny that we were created by an infinitely good God. It is in a sense to put the power of sin above that of the Lord’s. We will always have a piece of the Creator in us because that’s what was put there. God saw something worth saving. Who are we to say that He was wrong? To say we have better judgment than God is blasphemously wrong and arrogant. But I understand.

It’s easy to say that people are just evil, and any good that comes from us is directly divine intervention. At least there is order in that. The world is predictable, save acts of God. It makes sense; unspeakable horrors are just what happen and people who do something about them are interjections. We want the monster under our bed to know that we knew it was there all along. Even if the world doesn’t feel safe, it makes sense, and that is far less terrifying than the truth. That any given situation can turn for good or ill. That humanity is this unpredictable chaotic force that can fly in any given direction, and when that direction is detrimental to life and love, I have a responsibility to do something about it because that is what is inside of me. A deep dark desire to do what benefits me regardless of the consequences, and the unshakeable knowledge to do what I know is the right despite what it costs me: life, liberty, or happiness.

Humans are the worst. I don’t know if it’s their cynicism, their arrogance, the fact that they are always talking about things in terms of war, or how whenever I’m around them I feel like they’re plotting some nefarious activity. Whatever it is they make me terribly uneasy. Nevertheless, when we happen to habitate the same space I try to see them for who they are. How they have gone about this life, the decisions they've made, or have been forced to make. More often than not what I find is too complex to make any generalizations. There is hurt, pain, love lost, love gained, joy, laughter. They’re like any other creature on this earth. Everyone’s simply trying to make peace with their piece of existence. Trying to care in a world that seems to grow more cynical and indifferent with every bit of news they hear. We just try to find a purpose, find a life, love someone, meet people, make friends, and pray that we aren’t alone in this world. And we’re not, none of us are. I suppose people aren’t so bad; they have their faults, but don’t we all? And aren’t we more than our worst qualities?