For cynics, human history isn’t exactly all that wonderful and cheery. Throughout the ages, human civilizations have been primarily motivated by both viciousness and greed, having fought countless wars, colonized lands that were already inhabited by other people, treated those inhabitants as second-class citizens (at best), sold them into slavery or just slaughtered them (at worst), and stripped lands bare of their precious minerals and resources for their own wealth and benefit. This trope generally comes in two distinct varieties, but the basic point is the same.