"The Damned Human Race"

Jessica Gerlemann
Leigh Kolb
English Comp I
The Dying Fate of Human Kind Disintegrates
“The Damned Human Race” talks about the degrading grudgery of humankind and how we in the end become mammals on the lowest chain because we refuse to do what is right even though knowing knowledgably better. Nothing is more true. Langston Hughes qtd. “Hold fast to dreams because if dreams die, life is like a broken winged bird that cannot fly.” Also, we are compared to an Earl because much of the time humans kill other humans violently and unnecessarily. (Twain 526) Sometimes we are mean, intolerable, violent, unfair, racist and sexist or even indifferent and cold-hearted or lukewarm. These are just a few of the complaints of Twain in his brilliant logical satire.
With a bit of satire and logic, more points are made that since we have the free will to do right and wrong we do not bystandardly make mistakes. We therefore, are not innocent like animals and still do wrong anyhow, which makes us ruthless and inhumane. Considerably, we are the only ones that war against one another. Many times we are like a broken winged bird that cannot fly or extremely the opposite and spirited in the wrong direction. This often becomes true of the human race.
The man that sneers or the man that slays and then changes his clothes and preaches about world peace is a standing example. Hypocritical and sometimes even dangerous homicidal or suicidal becomes the saddest states of an adults life. There is a quote by (Unknown) that states “If your going to live life don’t try to live long because no one escapes.” If this isn’t true then living a life is a lie. For Example, a story covered by Afton Spriggs in North St. Louis covered a man being shot on his porch. “Authorities are looking for the gunman who shot and killed a man who was sitting on a porch in the 8600 block of Riverview. Police have not released the name of the victim. Officers told News 4 that the two men got into an argument and then the victim was shot once in the head and three times in the chest. The 29-year-old victim later died of his injuries.”
There are several domestic disputes for local officials and not much room is left for the adolescents to be the kids or teenagers they are and they are rawly exposed to the world to have to grow up all too soon. Awake! Pg 1-3 identifies 3 challenges for youths. For example, the first challenge is “Increased Isolation.” “Movies, TV shows and magazines have portrayed youths as constantly surrounded by a group of friends who grow with them throughout school years but the cases isn’t always as likely. Researchers Barbara Schneider and David Stevenson, analyzed interviews conducted with thousands of youths in the U.S. Their words were ‘relatively few students consistently had the same best friend or a small group of friends over time.’ Many youths ‘lack a sense of connection and have few close friends with whom they feel comfortable discussing problems or sharing ideas.’”(Pg 1-2) For Instance, the second example brings out the scrutiny of how each children, teens and young adults are “Pressured for Sex.” “Teens and even preteens are under tremendous pressure to experiment with sex. Nathan, a youth who lives in Australia says, ‘Most kids I knew at school began having sex between the ages of 12 and 15.’ A young woman named Binbay who lives in Mexico says that casual sex was very common among youths at her school.” This just comes to show how much the “Moral Sense” has faded according to Mark Twain in his “The Damned Human Race. (pg2-3) Not only is there moral decay, but there is an increase in family disputes. Challenge 3 is “Fractured Families” both shown by observation of the Awake pages 3-4 and the statistics of domestic crisis intervention by local officials on FBI.gov. “Youths in the United States have experienced rapid changes in family structure and a shifting set of values. ‘In the past few decades there have been several major demographic changes that directly affect the lives of teenagers,’ says the book The Ambitious Generation-America’s Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless. ‘The size of the average American family has been decreasing, so adolescents are likely to have fewer siblings.”
Domestic Crisis Intervention is a commonly done process by local officials on families. Introduction of the “Domestic Crisis Intervention Study Guide 2003” explains that much of the world would never have developed without the crisis of conflict and that much of judiciary decision is based on fight or flight. Or in many cases if one threatens or hurts another in a domestic crisis or family dispute. Domestic Violence are those situations I which the battery of a spouse has occurred of was viewed and a person has filed a complaint. Laws have been changed in most states making domestic abuse a crime against the state and no longer requiring a “complaint” by the victim. Domestic violence, like sexual harassment is frequently associated with a spouse abusing another spouse or sibling with the requirement of a complaint of an inside or other outside person.
FBI.gov states the two most wanted terrorists also becoming part of the degrading and fading world scene of the human race. This shows real evidence of our fading and disintegrating scene. World terrorism is just exactly the state where Twain compares us to the earl that unnecessarily and violently kills. The story on this website reveals exactly why these suspects are now the two most wanted. “Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso is sought for his role in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, in which 17 American sailors were killed.” “Husayn Muhammad al-Umari is wanted in connection with the 1982 bombing of Pan Am Flight 830, which resulted in the death of a teenage passenger and injury to 16 others. The flight, bound from Japan to Hawaii, carried 267 people.” (FBI.gov) Truly with assassinators, terrorists, fractured families and broken homes, homicidal and suicidal people the world is a mess but most of all it seems to fit the nature of survival of the fittest which is one concept. The final concept, is that all this worldly torture and devil-some fate can be avoided through divine intervention. Most of all what the world needs is love but through nature shows quite a spine of past violence which if not learning from other’s past mistakes throughout history especially in the concept of warring a lot less damage is done. Yet, we seem to be the most smartest and yet immoral and un-innocent when it comes to being a victim of a fool to our own actions.