What made you lose faith in humanity?

What restored my faith, oddly enough, was realizing faith was a useless concept to me. If you understand humanity well, it won’t surprise you. It will behave in a consistent manner.

Humans do shitty things. It works. That’s why they do them. So it shouldn’t be surprising when people kill each other, and it shouldn’t destroy your faith because you should never have had faith in the first place.

See above.
The key word is faith. Faith is a belief in something without any evidence that the belief is justified.
I do not have faith in humanity. I think I have a pretty objective notion of the nature of humanity. Some elements of that nature are inspiring, and others are pretty discouraging.
I could illustrate the point with countless combat anecdotes but you wouldn’t like them. But the truth is I have known guys who were ruthless killers (we are talking about soldiers) put themselves at great risk to help an injured child that they did not even know.
It is better, in my opinion, to understand humanity, rather than cling to some sort of imaginary standard. When a lion hunts a zebra, or sleeps all day, nobody is surprised. Why are they surprised when humans act like humans.

I have not. I think that most people are intrinsically good.

To me, terrorism in any form including kidnapping, torture, rape, beheading, destruction and killing by bombing is the greatest threat to the survival of humanity.

Studying philosophy did it for a while there. I came to the realization that, generally speaking, human nature sucks and will ruin the best laid plans just about every time. While that is still true, I have narrowed my view…kind of dialed it back from a focus on ‘human nature’ to just ‘people’. While human nature is still pretty awful, humans themselves are frequently good.

When I think of the world’s cities bursting at the seams with hairless apes that have multiplied out of control then I lose faith in humanity.

(I’ll get back to you with what restores my faith in humanity.)

What the Nazis did to the Jewish people.
How blacks were treated in the South of the U.S.

I was sick of humanity at ten. Not in a sudden childish ideal but a the slowly built layer upon layer kind.

I was ready to be a hermit, there was a person on Fluther that no longer is that reminded me of that me. So bitter it emanated from me. I thought I was enlightened and free from preconceptions of false hope and humanity. My emotions other then my quiet anger were boxed up and put on a shelf.

What restored normalcy to me. Tragedy, life, finding I did actually care about things, raging horomones.

It was a slow process. Nature, art, people, creativity, finally being open enough for people to squeeze in.

When I saw that person and their anger and deseparation. I realized just how far I had traveled. How much better I was. And the tiniest nudge that maybe I should help, but apparently I have some growing to do or just some self preservation because I shook that off.

Having been abused as a child, I never had faith in humanity to begin with, so there was nothing to lose. I developed a sixth-sense about people and their motivations through life experience.

That experience has taught me that as a species, humans are mostly decent and compassionate one-on-one. However, they are also inherently insecure and need a sense of belonging, and even superiority in order to feel good about themselves. That is what I believe to be at the root of tribalism, nationalism, religion, racism, and even sports team rivalries.

So individually, human kind is alright; but grouped together, they can be a volatile bunch.

Humanity.

I’ve never lost faith. Throughout history all setbacks were temporary. Goodness and progress prevailed.

My faith in humanity is restored when I see acts of kindness.