History Main / HumanityIsInsane

* Creator/IsaacAsimov

--> Williams grinned, "we have a certain amount of rule-of-thumb knowledge about the workings of the uncivilized mind. You see -- we come from a world where most people, in a manner of speaking, are still uncivilized. So we have to know!"

* George Orwell's ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' plays this [[HumansAreBastards in the worst possible way]]. The entire planet (or, at least, Airstrip One) is ruled over by a totalitarian regime which encourages the population to adopt a concept called "Doublethink", which allows people to [[MindScrew accept the truth of two mutually contradictory statements simultaneously]]: for example, [[spoiler:O'Brien]] describes how the Party will develop a dual system of astronomy which says that stars are very close or very distant depending on which is more convenient to Party propaganda at the time. This is completely in flight with logic and absolute madness, but it's what the Party wants.

---> [[AC:"That's mortals for you. They've only got a few years in this world and they spend them all in making things complicated for themselves."]]

[[folder: Anime & Manga]]

A thread sometimes seen in Sci-fi, is that humans - all of us - are several cans short of a six pack. It could be the [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} emotional drive that overrides]] [[StrawVulcan logic]], or more of a "What were they thinking?!" when aliens watch us go about our day, but when looked at compared to all the races in space, Humanity is bonkers. This can be to our advantage, as a sane race would never even consider trying to sneak into the fortress dressed up as pizza delivery men. What really drives other races crazy is that [[CrazyEnoughToWork it sometimes works]].

Of course, [[StarfishAliens other species might seem just as insane to humans.]]

Also compare ConfusionFu (sorry, no "Humans Are.." comparison here).

* In the ''Literature/VeilOfMadness'' stories from Website/FourChan's /tg/, this is revealed to be why humans haven't found any alien life. When humanity finally journeyed into space, they found several extinct alien civilizations, some pre-industrial, some which had expanded into space empires, but ever last one of them eventually succumbed to some sort of madness and committed mass suicide. Humanity only found one alien race still alive, an insectoid one still in its Stone Age. They too had succumbed to the same madness, and the entire race was psychotically violent, murdering each other over any minor slight and spontaneously committing suicide on a whim if there was nobody else around to kill. The only reason they hadn't gone extinct like the rest was because their birth rate was so high, and their young were able to defend themselves almost immediately after hatching. It's not until humanity has its first disastrous encounter with ''sane'' aliens that the truth is revealed: Earth is located in an area, encompassing around 3% of the galaxy, that is known as the "Veil Of Madness". Anyone who spends enough time in it, be they natives of the Veil or outsiders coming into colonize the place, is eventually driven insane by some kind of NegativeSpaceWedgie. Through some quirk of evolution, humans have ''just'' enough sanity that our species haven't succumbed to complete self destruction and are capable of rational behavior, but the fact that our species originated from the Veil means that the rest of the universe is terrified of us. Eventually, the humans give up on trying to convince the rest of the galaxy that we aren't roaming space murderers, instead using our scary reputation as an edge in negotiations and diplomacy, playing up the Terrifying Psycho Alien image by wearing scary power armor and distorting our voices. The result is that the other space-faring civilizations view humans as "scary and dangerous but not unreasonable". The reason we tell the other aliens for why we can live in the Veil is that [[InsanityImmunity we were already a little crazy to begin with]]. It's just something we made up to go with the whole Terrifying Psycho Alien act, of course, but the narrator muses that, since we're pretty much playing a giant practical joke on the entire galaxy, it might be true after all.

* There are [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters several]] [[HumansAreWarriors ways]] [[HumansAreCthulhu to interpret]] ''Literature/TheDamnedTrilogy'' by Creator/AlanDeanFoster, but in terms of tropes on this site this might be the best way to describe its portrayal of humanity. Humans evolved on a planet that shouldn't have been able to support life, in a way that shouldn't have produced a sentient species, and while as individuals we're usually decent, we display disturbing tendencies in our speech patterns and our art that are magnified when we're in large groups. We're also immune to MindReading, with [[TooSpicyForYogSothoth spectacular]] [[BrownNote results]] any time it's tried. [[spoiler:The Lepar, normally considered the least intelligent of the fully sentient species in the Weave, are immune to the countereffect resulting from using mind reading on humans. Because the Lepar can counterbalance the negative influence of humans, humanity is finally fully integrated into the Weave.]]

* ''Film/MenInBlack'': This could be why human thought is viewed as an infectious disease by some aliens. No wonder they don't want us to get our hands on a UniversalTranslator.

* This is a repeatedly appearing theme in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fandom. Mostly that's explored when the topic at hand is how Equestria's [[PaintingTheFrostOnWindows carefully hand-crafted weather]] is bizarre to us, the staggering amount of independent nations and the history of wars between them, our lack of a defined destiny as depicted by ponies' cutie marks, or how some humans prefer this apparent bedlam over the more rigid order of the Equestrian world.

* ''Letter to a Phoenix'' ends thusly: "Only the insane destroy themselves. And only the phoenix lives forever." All other sapient species in the galaxy grow moribund and die out, but humanity survives because it periodically comes within a hair of wiping itself out. (The near-immortal narrator still hopes we never again get as far as the civilization that planet-busted the world between Mars and Jupiter, though.)

* In the backstory of ''Series/BabylonFive'' Earth Alliance had this reputation for a while due how they reacted to privateers from the far more powerful Centauri ended: when Earth Alliance met the Centauri the latters' House Jaddo, having established first contact, obtained a monopoly of Earth-Centauri trade, resulting in the other Houses sending privateers after Earth ships knowing nobody would risk war with the Centauri Republic, only to see [=EarthForce=] patrols chasing the privateers across the border with overwhelming numbers and shooting down anything short of a naval base with its battlefleet that tried to get in their way, and eventually [[NukeEm nuking one such base and its fleet]] when the commander of an Earth squadron took exception at [[BlatantLies the usual fake claim the privateers had been arrested and would be executed]]. This actually ''improved'' Earth-Centauri relations and prevented the Centauri conquest of Earth, as the Centauri emperor realized conquering these madmen would not be worth the losses but they were more than willing to trade fairly as long as their ships weren't attacked due Centauri internal politics.

* ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Indilic is a [[VideoGame/{{Destiny}} Psion]] (telepathic alien cyclops) who concludes that humans are "woefully short of reason" after seeing Ikharos kill a [[SeaSerpents Nïdhwal]] by [[EatMe charging into its mouth]] armed with only his [[BladeOnAStick glaive]].