Western culture tends to push the narrative that everyone is a unique snowflake, each with his/her/zer own worth, value, and abilities.  Western culture is wrong.  Science has determined that the vast majority of people are utterly useless.  They’ll spend most of their lives simply eating and being a burden on society and the overtaxed distribution systems we’ve established to keep them alive.  Think about the last time you attended a family reunion.  How many of those people have contributed to society in any meaningful way?  Odds are you have only one family member who has accomplished anything of note.  In all likelihood, it’s not even you (but considering you’re smart enough to read this, it may be).  In your whole family, from your great-grandparents on down, including your great aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins (irrespective of how many times removed), no one has done anything worth mentioning.  Feel free to dig around.  If you find something, let us know.  We won’t hold our breath, though.
Social Anthropologists at the University of Alabama have decided to delve into the issue.  The school’s thriving Anthropology department has no shortage of graduate students who wish to know the real reason behind the tendency of most people to be utterly useless.  The irony is palpable.
The hardest part of the question, they say, is thinking about what constitutes a ‘meaningful contribution’ to humanity.  Does becoming a physician count?  What about becoming a politician?  In fact, is there any ‘job’ that immediately guarantees your contribution to the betterment of mankind or the planet?
The short answer is ‘no.’ Â Most people don’t think about what it is that physicians do. Â They tend to keep people alive that nature would have selected as too weak to breed. Â Politicians don’t do anything useful at all. Â In fact, given Congress’ approval rating, you’d have the same or better results if drunk monkeys were mashing ‘yes’ or ‘no’ buttons randomly to decide how we handle issues.
You’d be surprised to know that the vast majority of things people do just don’t matter.  The life saved by a doctor could be the life of a person who will go on to do something great like exploring a new planet or convincing idiots not to breed.  Odds are, though, that the life he saves will go on to collect some kind of government benefit and eat massive amounts of pizza and Cheetos® in his underwear while masturbating to twisted Internet porn and slowly dying.  One graduate student who wished to remain nameless said, “We knew most people were superfluous, we just didn’t realize how bad the problem was.  We don’t really know what to do with the information because we need the idiots to find the outliers.”
The argument boils down to is this. Â In order for society and humanity to survive, we need to keep allowing for the vast swath of the population who contributes absolutely nothing to the planet to continue having babies in the hopes that one of them won’t be a waste of skin and oxygen. Â That fact doesn’t make us any more happy with the reality of the situation.
A group of baboons is also a congress.
Now think about the prefixes pro- and con-
Progress and congress.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm
Lol
Most people work and pay bills and these bills made it possible to invent many few things or to help many people. A genius is an awesome bonus, but it does not make all other people useless. What is the difference between a physician and a genius scientist? A physician made a number of people happier and healthier. A genius made a greater number of people happier and healthier and his medication continued to produce the effect even after his death. The end result is in numbers. Politicians seem useless and often annoying, but what we would have without them? A tribal society?
You are so right about politicians.
you have a good name sir !
Politicians are worse than worthless, why because they are driven by greed and the fossil fuel industry, they are unable to think of long term consequences and only think of short term profits, our planet will be very difficult to live on in the next 50 to 70 years once climate change gets out of control but the human race is too stupid to save itself. The worthless population of sheep that pass for humans consistently vote for political parties that screw over the population but they are too dumb to realize it, likewise they are too selfish to vote for politicians who will invest in renewable energy, why because their power bills will go up in the short term despite the fact these worthless stains won’t be able to afford anything at all once our climate becomes real and earth turns into hell which is going to happen considering 99% of scientist are warning us this will happen. The tragedy of it all is that only the worthless human race is the cause of all this, we are going down but we are taking all of Earths life with us as we turn thus beautiful planet into a barren wasteland. To finish off, we need a plague, something that will kill of at least 7billion worthless humans.
COVID genocide.
this was written like they want me to read this rise up and become the dictator this world needs but alas
I think you’re a genius.
*IF* you’re a woman (a thing I have not actually evidenced yet), I propose marriage.
No one is utterly useless, even politicians. At the very least, you are just a number. Scientists are no more useful than politicians with this perspective. People just don’t value themselves like they should.
authors name for the useful record?
nevermind i see it now. keep up the useless work 🙂
Most people (creatures) ARE useless. Stop dying it. This is spot on. I could not have said it better myself.
I just want to say great job at uselessly consuming more internet space with a degrading article lmao. Just because not everyone invents the wheel or colonizes the first planet does not mean that the billions of positive interactions transacted globally and daily is meaningless. While I can understand your sentiment here, you are spreading a destructive message and generalizing all the smaller but collectively large positive acts and simply labeling them as “Meaningless”. Point being is that there are so many micro-interactions that actually do a lot. Measuring meaning in life by only the large things is like judging an entire iceberg by its tip. Again I definitely hear what you are trying to say but your cynicism does not help to create a more meaningful world. It was hilarious though.
It should be obvious that “useful” depends on the point of view of someone considering something. Even if something improved the odds of humanity’s longterm survival, it’s “useful” only because most of us want to keep living. Anything can matter to someone, but there doesn’t seem to be a reason anything has to matter. So we’re back to square one–whether humans matter or not being a matter of perspective, not science.
And your brag-worthy contribution to humanity is…?
This isn’t a western civilization problem, it’s a “anti-western communist ideology invading western civilization and contribution largely to the systemic and cultural decay of a hard working prosperous people in order to then blame western civilization in a bold attempt to seize complete power if ever it is torn down/abolished.” Problem. Hence why the author of this article opens the article with a mouth foaming attack on western civilization. What a desperate shittier… Lmfao!
“The end result is in numbers. Politicians seem useless and often annoying, but what we would have without them? A tribal society?”
Human society IS tribal. What are countries, but tribes, really big ones, that frequently go to war with little or no cause with the other clusters of frightened, tailless primates in their vicinity. Even “advanced” cultures are tribal, their reclusive, bubble-dwelling, inhabitants loathe to interact with anyone with whom they are not in full agreement on everything. Recent American political history bears this out. We are traveling backwards down a primrose path straight to a cliff’s edge.
Woe to us.
I agree with you, thanks for article, we are all going to die anyway, but it doesnt mean we cant leave our mark here, for me that’s what a sense of life should be, not religion bullshit.
I mean pick an artist like michael jackson, or just people that create stories like masashi kishimoto, they doesnt contribute to society in a scientific way, but they did leave their mark here you know, I wanna be an artist like them, doesnt matter if I fail because at least I tried, not like these NPCs that only care about work and family and shit, I think the mark we leave here is more impirtante than anything like your job, your family, your properties, it doesnt matter give it tree generations and nobody will remember it. I know I will be dead in the future so if they remember my art or not doesnt matter, but I wanna be more than just a live, I wanna keep my soul in it even after I die.