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Since he hasn't come back, I can only speculate, but it appears to me that he experienced some hard luck and wanted to vent. Unfortunately, his conclusions were philosophically reductionist, which is a bit of a thorny problem in a philosophy forum. To be dismissive of the potential of human achievement will go unnoticed in certain places, but not here.
To his original notion, I simply say: If everyone thought the same as he, we would have destroyed ourselves decades ago, in the midst of the Cold War. There would have been no Civil Rights Act, no desegregation, women's sufferance, Emancipation Proclamation, Declaration of Independence, Glorious Revolution, Magna Carta, Renaissance patronage, or any major turning point that defied the regrettable aspects of human nature. We are where we are because of those things, not despite them; their existence is an illumination, not an anomaly.
Certain decisions have also led to anguish and destruction, sure. The Inquisition, Salem witch trials, the Holocaust, Jim Crow, et al. But what those things establish is not that we are evil or shallow, merely that we are complex and often conflicted and downright stupid. But you can find illumination even in those dark places, rather than glumly accepting them as the status quo.
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"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine
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