Did you know you should be embarrassed to be an American and you should horrified to be a human or is it the other way around?

Answer 1

Actually, I believe the answer is neither one is correct. There is no reason to be embarrassed or horrified about being an American. You may not like the president (whoever the president is); you may disagree with certain things your government is doing (which has happened ever since the United States was first created). But America is still a great country and a great place to live. True, as the country grew, it made some stupid decisions-- accepting slavery and then segregation come to mind, or denying women the right to vote. But again, the people who should have been embarrassed or horrified were the bigots, and the people who did nothing about putting an end to bigotry. Everyone else worked hard to change things and to make the country better. It's still a work in progress, but the country has absolutely improved from where it was 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago.

As for being ashamed or horrified or embarrassed about being human, once again, there are many things we have done in life that we can look back on later and feel a sense of shame for our actions. I'll be honest: in high school, I was bullied, and to make it stop and take the focus off of me, I participated in bullying someone else. I'm not proud of that, and years later, I found the person on Facebook and apologized. My point is that making mistakes is part of being human. We are not perfect. We do things wrong sometimes, even if our intentions were good. Hopefully, we learn from our mistakes and make amends to anyone we hurt, and hopefully we don't do those sorts of things again. There are many things I've said over the years that I wish I had said differently, and if I had a time machine, perhaps I would go back and get a do-over. But in the real world, most humans are decent and they try to be kind; sometimes, they succeed, sometimes they fail, but they keep on trying. Some people are indeed cruel and evil and vile, but they are not the majority. I would never want to live my life thinking that just being human is horrifying or shameful. Being human is an adventure. And as imperfect as the human condition is, I'm glad I am alive, since it certainly beats not being here at all.