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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"We're here to devour each other alive."''
|'''Hobbes''', ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''}}
Frequently, characters will claim that it is in the nature of the human race to destroy itself. When the character is an alien but not a [[Proud Warrior Race Guy]], they'll look down on us as [[Humans Are Morons|primitive, violent, and socially unacceptable]].
According to the more pessimistic sociologists, this is [[Truth in Television]]. Even the non-heavy drinkers agree that we possess this tendency. The basic reason for this is that our technical
Part of this problem stems from our
The other part is cultural, stemming from the behaviors and values that we teach to successive generations. Because of this conditioned element, the exact degree to which we seek self-destruction waxes and wanes over long periods of time, but because our military prowess is now reaching [[Earthshattering Kaboom|earth-shattering levels]], it may soon be the case that even a slight lapse in reasoning may render the entire matter academic.
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But whether or not we're actually likely to drive ourselves to extinction is a matter of personal opinion.
A [[Sub
{{examples}}
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** To be fair, though, that's the view that they hold toward humanoid life in general.
* In ''[[Gundam Seed]]'', Rau Le Cruset believes this. He [[Omnicidal Maniac|decides to speed up the process.]]
* ''[[Dance in
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'': This may be one of the reasons most [[Our Homunculi Are Different|homunculi]] look down on humans, especially for Lust and Envy.
* ''[[End of Evangelion]]'', with the comment "[[Ape Shall Never Kill Ape|Humanity is the only creature capable of hating its own kind.]]"
* This is the philosophy on which the Mother System in ''[[Toward the Terra]]'' was designed. Believing that humans are destructive by nature, humanity themselves designed a system of artificial intelligences to control and govern them. When [[Anti-Villain|Keith Anyan]], the man engineered by the Mother System to lead humanity, finally shakes off this view and decides to give humans a chance to determine their own fates, it marks the ultimate victory of the series.
** A similar example in the old manga ''[http://www.anymanga.com/grey/ Grey]''. The never-ending war that's destroying the future world is secretly orchestrated by [[
* In ''[[Trigun]]'', Knives believes this about humans, since the humans he encounters are refugees from a ruined Earth.
* In the [[Nasuverse]], the [[
== Comic Books ==
* ''[[Watchmen (
* ''[[Silver Surfer]]'': A young Wendy Fletcher complained about this trope in the letter column. This led to a correspondence with Richard Pini, whom she later married, and they launched their own comic, ''[[Elf Quest]]'', which at first appeared to support [[Humans Are
* A two-issue story in ''[[JLA]]'' involved them meeting an alien who, upon observing humanity, concluded that we had a genetic imperative/common subconscious desire to drive ourselves to extinction.
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== Film ==
* In ''[[Terminator|Terminator 2: Judgment Day]]'', Arnie says this to John Connor.
{{quote|
'''T-800:''' [[Trope Namer|It is in your nature to destroy yourselves.]] }}
** This is also Skynet itself's most damning criticism of humanity and one of the reasons it turned against us in the first place. Its assessment of us, as a species, is similar to [[The Matrix|Agent Smith's]] below. No wonder how this mantra leaked down to this particular T-800. Our subversion of this trope is one of our greatest strengths, and most powerful weapons against the cruel, calculating Skynet.
* ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)|The Day the Earth Stood Still]]'': This is one of the reasons for Klaatu's visit in both the 1951 original version and its 2008 remake.
** In the original, Klaatu visited Earth because, now that we were developing space travel technology, we could potentially take our self-destructive tendencies off world and threaten galactic peace. The aliens want us to outgrow our childish ways and will gladly accept us as equals when we do, but until then, if we start trouble, [[Crush! Kill! Destroy!|unstoppable alien robots]] will be waiting to destroy us in retaliation.
** In the remake, Klaatu visits Earth because our self-destructive nature is endangering the ecosystem of the Earth. Life is so rare in the universe that the alien community considers the biosphere of a planet far more valuable than any single product of that ecosystem. And so as punishment he tries to wipe out all life on the planet himself in order to "restart" the ecosystem, but this time without those pesky humans getting in the way.
* In ''[[Transformers (
* ''[[I, Robot (
* ''[[The Matrix]]'': Agent Smith gives Morpheus the whole spiel:
{{quote|
* When [[The Fifth Element|Leeloo]] is in the middle of her [[Heroic BSOD]], she says of humanity: "Everything you make you use to destroy."
* In ''[[Aliens]]'', this tendency causes Ripley to ''unfavorably'' compare humanity to the rampaging monsters: "You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage."
== Literature ==
* In Octavia Butler's ''[[Xenogenesis]]'' trilogy of books, the alien Oankali say that humans combine two
* In the ''[[Berserker (Literature)|Berserker]]'' series of science fiction short stories by [[Fred Saberhagen]], the allies of humans, the telepathic Carmpan, a subtle and mysterious species incapable of direct aggression, state that it seems as if humanity has carried the burden of such a nature specifically in order to be able to fight off the robotic Berserkers who threaten all life in the galaxy.
* [[Spider Robinson]]'s short story ''Unnatural Causes''. Humanity's tendency to destroy itself has been engineered by the alien Krundai. They want us to slaughter ourselves so [[To Serve Man|they can eat us]].
* [[Larry Niven]]'s short story ''War Stories'', part of his "Draco Tavern" series, a ship full of alien explorers came across Earth and made recordings of several battles during [[World War II]]. The recordings made them rich, so they came back to Earth to film more "war stories", knowing that such a warlike species as ours would eventually nuke ourselves back to the stone age. When we didn't, the alien film producers were forced into bankruptcy.
* ''[[Worldwar
* Subverted by [[Isaac Asimov]]'s short story ''The Gentle Vultures''. The Hurrians are an advanced alien race who are used to encountering "competitive" hominids (ape descended), who tend to destroy themselves as soon as they get nuclear weapons. They, themselves, are "cooperative" hominids (monkey descended). Their [[First Contact]] protocols for competitive primates is to ''not'' make contact, but to instead let them inevitably destroy themselves and then help the survivors rebuild their civilization into a cooperative utopia with the violence bred out. The Hurrians discover [[Insignificant Little Blue Planet|Earth]] just in time for the end of [[World War II]], and since they detected the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bombings they thought humans would start using the big guns against each other very soon. Fifteen years later, they are still waiting.
* "An Alien Light" by Nancy Kress has a very similar premise to Asimov's story above. An alien race is puzzled that humanity didn't blow itself up before getting into space despite being competitive. The difference is that they must find an answer while humanity is blasting them into space dust.
* In [[Tanya Huff]]'s ''
* One of the main themes in ''[[Cloud Atlas]]''. The book's six protagonists each live in a different era, moving from colonial times to a [[Blade Runner]]-style [[Bad Future]] to [[After the End]] - and even then, people are still finding excuses to kill each other.
* This is a major theme in ''[[A Canticle for Leibowitz]]''. The book begins several hundred years [[After the End]], with the remnants of humanity just beginning to pick up the pieces after a nuclear holocaust that effectively destroyed civilization. By the end of the book, humans have reached and surpassed pre-apocalypse levels of technology, {{spoiler|which they proceed to use to launch ''another'', more powerful nuclear holocaust, which is implied to wipe out life on Earth entirely}}.
* Subverted in the short story "Letter to a Phoenix", whose theme is that humanity is doomed to wipe out every civilization it ever produces in nuclear war or worse...which prevents it from succumbing to the slow, permanent death of stagnation that kills all other sapient species in the universe. [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|"Only the mad destroy themselves. And only the phoenix lives forever."]]
* In [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''Competitors'', the aliens reveal that, in their experience, most humanoid races destroy themselves before expanding to other stars. As such, they have no fear of humans, even going as far as providing certain individuals with [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]]. If anything, they figure that this will only hasten our demise. The novel ends with one of the protagonists determined to prove them wrong.
* There is a short story that has one of the last few remaining humans believing this about humanity and a race of [[Bee People]], who destroyed each other in a vicious war. After meeting and almost killing the last of the insectsoids, he finds out that it was their "benevolent" saviors who orchestrated the conflict between the two violent races (although it's implied that said "orchestration" merely involved getting the two races to meet), resulting in the mutual destruction (the humans caused the insectoids' star to go nova, while the aliens nuked Earth).
* The prime reason why the Toralii in ''[[
* ''Forever Peace'' by Joe Haldeman (the [[Spiritual Successor]] to his earlier and more famous ''[[The Forever War]]'') starts at the assumption that this trope is entirely true, but a means to create perfect empathy has been discovered, potentially averting this trope entirely - but those in the know face the ethical problem of whether they can force others through the process, because very few people (especially those in power) would volunteer for it. {{spoiler|When they discover someone in power has been intentionally hiding the knowledge that a new scientific megaproject could annihilate the ''galaxy'' at least by birthing a new universe, the protagonists enact their plan to force empathy on others through a coordinated set of coups d'etat, concluding humanity's mutually-destructive impulses cannot be permitted to continue for the sake of other possible species out there as well as itself.}}
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== Live Action TV ==
* A major theme of ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]''. And although the Cylons initially hold it over the humans, they eventually show themselves to suffer from the same problem.
* In the ''[[
* In ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'', it is ''repeatedly'' and ''repeatedly'' shown what high technology can do to civilizations that aren't "ready" yet.
** One ascended Ancient used his knowledge to create a weapon that would defend them against the Goa'uld. That civilization ended up destroying itself, due to that weapon.
** The Tollans and Asgard refuse to share technology with Earth, for the same reason, although the Asgard do share shield and beam technology later, but no weapons (until very, very much later).
** Humanity then turned it around and did this to another civilization who were asking for Earth's modern
* Even-handed version in ''[[
** They later meet another group of aliens who pretty much prove this.
* In the ''[[Star Trek
{{quote|
* Two episodes of ''[[
** In the TOS episode "Counterweight", this is one of the Antheon alien's criticisms of humanity during its [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]].
** The revival episode "Heart's Desire" has an alien arrive on Earth during the [[Wild West]] era and take over the body of an old preacher. He then proceeds to give shady characters the power to turn matter into energy at will. They quickly turn on one another, before only one is left. The alien reveals himself and his goal: he has come to Earth to destroy potential enemies but has seen enough to realize that we won't last long enough to invent interstellar travel, and thus are no threat.
== Music ==
* The chorus of ''Blood Brothers'' by Papa Roach:
{{quote|
The salesmen of our blood
For the public's craving
Existence in the dark
It's in our nature to destroy ourselves
It's in our nature to kill ourselves
It's in our nature to kill each other
It's in our nature to kill, kill, kill! }}
** In fact, this is pretty much the whole point of the song.
* Bad Religion's "Individual" takes place [[Twenty Minutes in The Future|no more than 20 minutes in the future]]:
{{quote|
For the multitudes of [[War On Straw|thoughtless clones]]
have reached a critical mass[...]
Congregating in invisible circles
Half a part and half apart
All too aware of the insignificance
[[Author Filibuster|Pushing on with soul and heart]][...]
Procreation without gain or purpose
Languid wills and torpid minds
[[Crapsack World|Catapulted ever faster]] by the arrow of time }}
** The too-earnest songwriter [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|might consider shelving the thesaurus]], but [[Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped]].
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== Video Games ==
* ''[[
{{quote|
* ''[[Marathon
{{quote|
* ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'': During the end of the game, Shepard meets {{spoiler|the Catalyst, the Overlord of the Reapers, who justifies the mass genocide of the Galaxy as a means to prevent civilizations (human or alien) from creating powerful [[A Is]] who will end up destroying their creators and endangering the Universe.}}
{{quote|
* In ''[[Gears of War]]'', this trope is [[Hive Queen|Queen Myrrah's]] main justification for leading the Locust into a campaign of extermination against humanity.
== Webcomics ==
* ''[[Kid Radd]]''.
{{quote|
'''Radd''': Why?
'''GI Guy''': ''Because that's what video game characters do.'' }}
== Real Life ==
* In [[Real Life]] this trope tends to apply on a species level rather than an individual level as each individual tries to ensure ''its own'' survival at the expense of others and by extension the species as a whole. This is the essence of competition and while the survivors usually end up stronger there may come a time where there aren't enough survivors to perpetuate the whole.
** Otherwise known as the Tragedy of the Commons.
* This is a popular explanation of the [
** If you're curious about possible answers, there's a whole list of theories on the Fermi Paradox's wikipedia page
* Freud called it 'thanatos-eros' (literally "death-love") -- the contradictory impulses in each individual towards destruction and violence on the one hand and towards creation and nurturing on the other. [[Freud Was Right|Psychological and cultural research so far supports his theory]].
* The Medea Hypothesis proposes that life is naturally self-destructive, as it has come close to destroying itself several times (
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Cynicism Tropes]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:In Your Nature
|