What happened in your childhood to make you believe people are good?

One recurring theme in the articles, essays and memes involving in which well meaning people talk about the horrors of "class warfare" is that they seem to believe that there is a certain nobility in the impoverished and that their predicament exists only due to the selfishness of the wealthy. I am not here to argue that the wealthy are not selfish, they are. The thing is that everyone is selfish. The poor and downtrodden would, if given the opportunity, take all they could regardless of the effects it would have on their fellow man. It is in humanity's nature to want to be on top. People are not good. They are not bad either they just are people.

And the fact is that people are doing rather well as a species right now. In the past 60 years the human population has grown by over 200 percent. Any time a species population grows at that rate there will be a strain on the resources that species needs to survive. Except humanity has found a way to keep feeding and sheltering itself despite the obscene population growth rate.

Poverty is a result of overpopulation. Now someone is going to say there was poverty 60 years ago. This is true but the fact is that if humanity has been able to see it's population grow by over 200 percent and at the same time develop technology which makes human workers irrelevant imagine how well the majority of the world would be living if the human population had only grown by 50 percent between 1953 and 2013. The same resources that are being used by 7 billion people would only be used by 4.5 billion people.

Yes the lives of the wealthy would remain the same. There will always be people who have more than others, a lot more than some people in many instances. However the basket of goods that is allocated to the poorest of humanity would be spread out amongst fewer people. If you want to talk about selfishness the most selfish thing a person can do is bringing new life into the world. I have no problem with selfish acts I just want people to admit that reproduction is selfish. It should be noted that birth rates are much smaller amongst those who can most afford their offspring. Now one could ask can they afford offspring because they don't have them. But is that a relevant question? The real question is why do people continue to claim that not having children is selfish when the opposite is true?

Now I am going to place a lot of the blame on population growth in the world at the feet of one organization in particular. That organization being the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church's, or any religion for that matter, stance on contraception and abortion has been a major contributing factor to the worlds overpopulation. Do these organizations really believe in the sanctity of human life or do they just want to boost their own numbers and therefore increase their power.

The moral of the story is that humans are inherently selfish, yes there are superficial exceptions however I would bet that if one digs deep enough into the reasons behind most apparently altruistic acts there is a selfish reason behind them. Whether it is to alleviate guilt for having a good life while others suffer or to give oneself a sense of superiority over the rest of humanity.  The charitable acts performed by members of the Catholic Church could be seen as altruistic or is it more likely that they are done to increase the organizations influence?

There is no intrinsic value in any individual human life. Those among us who are well meaning seem to believe that there is in all life. The fact is that for all the poverty in the world the human species is still growing at record numbers even when there is no practical reason for the growth.

The point of this essay is that people need to just enjoy the lives they have and not worry about the plight of others. If you were hurting they wouldn't worry about you. You shouldn't feel bad because someone with four kids is working a job that pays them 8 dollars an hour, they should feel bad for bringing four lives into the world when the only means to support them is a job that pays 8 dollars an hour. You shouldn't feel bad because someone who has a low income job and is now losing the home they bought that was well out of their price range because mortgage rates were so low. It was the purchasers own selfishness that lead them to want something they couldn't afford. 

Life is pretty damn good for most of us in the United States, if you don't believe that just take a look at what life was like for people 60 years ago. Long hours in manufacturing jobs, segregation, no consequence free sex, small black and white televisions, only three networks and no internet. What a horrible time to be alive. So look kick back put on a football game, open a beer (think of all the options you have compared to 1953) and say damn I have it pretty fucking good. Suck it rest of the world America Rocks!