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To sum up my opinion of humanity:
__Humans are bumblers.__
(and not just other humans, but me and you, too). Humans can't get it together.
By bumblers, I mean that we are not only incompetent, but we are also overconfident. Even when we think our conclusions or our plans have a high probability of being correct/successful, actually our conclusions have a high probability of being wrong and our plans have a high probability of failing (unless: our conclusions are the result of a mathematical proof; unless: we are doing something that humanity has developed a technique for over time).
One lucky thing is that often other people who have not had similar life experiences to you, and who are not in a similar situation to you now, can tell when you are being overconfident (and sometimes, can even tell what you are doing wrong).
Also, we are panicky bumblers. This means that we have a tendency to freak out at bad things and to respond in ways that only make things worse.
Oh, also, we are creatures of habit. Once we settle into a way of doing something, we tend to stick with it, even sometimes when doing so is irrational.
I heard once that there was some study that showed that about 20% of people would steal anything they could if they thought they wouldn't get caught, about 20% would never steal even if they were almost sure they wouldn't get caught, and about 60% would steal if the circumstances were good enough. I don't know if that's true or not because I've never seen such a study, but my guess is that on most ethical topics, a substantial minority of people would always do what they thought was the right thing, a substantial minority would usually do the wrong thing if they could get away with it, and a majority would be somewhere in the middle. In a functioning society, the people in the middle won't often face the situations that would cause them to break the rules, so a large majority of people will see themselves as good people, almost all of the time.
Therefore, I think the following maxim is right on:
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Don't assign to stupidity what might be due to ignorance. And try not to assume your opponent is the ignorant one -- until you can show it isn't you." - M. L. Plano
For a given skill, everyone has a different pace for learning that skill, and for a given person, that person will have differen learning rates for different skills. However, given enough time, any person can achieve any level of aptitude for any skill. The learning rates can also be increased, so, in addition, any person can achieve any rate of learning for any skill.
This doesn't mean that those with innate talent don't have a large advantage; one person may be borne with a facility that it may take another 50 years to acquire.
Exceptions: (1) there is a ceiling; there are some levels that are not achievable by any human (but sometimes people think the ceiling is lower than it really is) (2) people who have something wrong with their brain can have a lower ceiling than everyone else (3) "Creativity" may or may not be included in this, I'm not sure. The thing is, most people don't have the luxury of throwing large amounts of time at improving their "creativity", so it's unclear how mutable it is. My best guess it that creativity can be learned, but at such a slow pace that you can't become Beethoven by trying, even if you have a whole lifetime to do so. (4) In my framework, "genius" can be defined as the opposite of mental illness, that is, having something __right__ with one's brain that raises the ceiling above the norm. I am skeptical of the existence of genius (that is to say, I think you could be as good at math as Galois --- if you practiced for 50 years), but I can't rule it out. (5) I say that learning rates can be increased, but in most skills there is diminishing returns as you learn more. What I mean by "increased learning rate" is increasing the rate of learning, given a skill level.
People can change, but change can be slow and often incomplete. By slow, I mean, think of your body healing from an injury, or a (typical) plant growing -- these things move on a timescale significantly slower than our consciousness. By incomplete, I mean that often someone will improve on their faults so much that the fault no longer holds them back -- but they will remain worse on the topic at issue than other people.
I think people have different tendencies to be happy. Genetics and upbringing both play a part in this.
I think circumstance does play a large role in happiness; someone who is safe, well-liked and filthy rich is likely to be happier than someone who is threatened, hated, and desperately poor. This is just a guess though, I don't know enough people in these extremes to be sure, and I've never seen a study.
Through the ages certain advice is repeatedly given for making oneself happier:
I think this is good advice and can change your tendency to be happy. I think change in someone's tendency to be happy follows the pattern in the section "habits and "personal character" traits/skills".
In recent times, due to urbanization, I might add:
Organized groups of people, considered as entites, are also bumblers. They are somewhat less ethical than individuals. Small groups can be better than large on both counts, if the people in charge are.
Some political opinions that stem from the above:
