May 7, 2026
11:11 PM
Humanity Isn't A Virus
Anyone who tells you it is is trying to sell you something.
I tend not to be overly concerned with labeling my political beliefs in a particular way, especially in a world where publicly identifying as a Leftist online will get you everything from death threats and accusations of eating babies to absurd purity tests about which books by dead Russian men you have or haven't read.
But I do know that above all things I believe that a better world is possible and worth fighting for.
I remember when Covid-19 first hit and people around the world were under lockdown protocols. It became fairly common for people to share photos of streets empty of cars and people, but full of various wildlife who felt free to wander more freely without the noise and bustle of these usually populated areas.
And while I thought the images of the animals reclaiming the land in some sense were really interesting, I also recall a fairly common refrain I heard at the time that never really sat right with me:
"Humanity is the real virus."
So, here's my dirty little secret, just for you: I love humanity.
I love humans. I think we are an incredible, resilient species that has done incredible things in the past and is capable of doing many more great things in the future. And if that makes me a hopeless idealist or a "Bad Leftist™, then I am remarkably ok with that.
I am not merely fighting against something in my political ethic, I am fighting for a better world, which I would not bother doing if I didn't believe that one were possible. There are three pieces of media that run on a constant loop in my brain that sum up this ethos for me.
The first is this clip from the show Doctor Who:
The second is this iconic quote from Samwise Gamgee in LOTR:
And the last is this song from musical Newsies, particularly the last chorus:
And what the hell, here's a bonus clip from Everything, Everywhere, All At Once:
All these clips have something in common, something that resonates with me. Hope is not foolish, love is not wasteful, and humans are not some fundamentally wicked species the way I was taught growing up under the crushing influence of American Evangelicalism. Of course some humans are selfish and cruel. They pollute the earth, they hurt others, they plunder and rape and kill.
But that is not representative of all humanity any more than a rotten fruit is representative of the entire tree. In my life personally, for every awful thing that I've experienced from another human, I have experienced a thousand more incredible things. Kindness from strangers, sacrifices given with nothing expected in return, communities coming together. Even in the wake of the horrors that have been Trump's second term, I've seen goodness bloom from tragedy and people taking care of each other. People taking the risk or caring for others because the reward is greater than they could have ever imagined. That is the world and the people I fight for.
A better world is possible and it is worth fighting for. There are those who'd like to chalk their selfish choices up to "human nature" to free themselves from the burden of taking responsibility for their choices or experiencing the consequences of them. Truth be told I think it's actually harder to cut off your humanity than to embrace it. People like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and all their vampiric ilk like to peddle hopelessness and despair to make things easier for themselves. To still be able to look at themselves in the mirror every day.
But I for one, am not buying.
