Maybe it is because of the material I am working with in order to put together a course idea.

What I am noticing is that more I read in the dystopian genre, stories of the various travails of those caught in the crossfire of war, and various analyses of media and the social forces that surround spending habits for the wealthiest in the world (which includes all American middle-class), the more I am convinced that there is something deeply wrong with the human condition.

By this I mean that the tendency of humanity seems to go against the grain of what is evolutionarily expedient or efficient to maximize survival. People rather seem to to do the opposite reflecting back on what is good to maximize one’s own survival alone.

In theological terms, it is clear why depravity became such a central issue for so many theologians as an expression of the extremity of sin and source of these kinds of behaviors.

What is also clear is that in these situations there are a very few who do well beyond the call of what is evolutionarily efficient in order to assist those who are suffering the most. But it seems that the fat middle of the majority of those who suffer do not receive the benefit of such acts of selfless altruism. Because such benevolence exists, I am not quite convinced on pragmatic grounds that human nature is completely shattered in its ability to receive the good and dispense it to the needy. However, it is hard not to see that such persons are perhaps sadly not the majority in the world and the net effect of humanity is a gravity towards the depravity as such theologians have argued in the Reformed tradition.