That we have such a stark and straightforward word in so many languages suggests that, whatever our apparent allegiance to our species, it isn’t very uncommon for a human being to look at who we are collectively – what we get up to, how we behave, how our thoughts run – and in the end want to give up at the sight of our limitless violence, wickedness and folly and wish that we had never evolved, homo sapiens having ultimately proved an unending and undignified plague upon the earth whose reign should end without regret.
Am I a misanthrope?
In the article cited above, that paragraph sums up so much of what I now hold core to my beliefs. The author shares many reasons why a misanthrope has lost all hope that I also feel and adopted it into my own narrative against humankind.
Misanthropists love people of course – or they did once upon a time. What high hopes one has to have started with in order to end up feeling so sad at the state of our species. How much one would need to love humanity in order to conclude that we’re a cosmic error. Misanthropes aren’t mean: they’re just casting around for a few solid reasons to keep faith with the human experiment. And, for the moment at least, they’re struggling.
The final paragraph of the article made me question the term “misanthrope” and whether it fits me. Am I a misanthrope? I am not sure if that is completely a true definition for me. I deeply distrust humankind. I don’t hate it. I hate some humans, though. What is the term for someone who has lost faith in humanity, given up on it, but doesn’t hate it? Maybe it is “misanthrope” and I am a shade of that word.
The last two sentences from the quoted last paragraph make me bristle a bit. I wonder why. “Misanthropes aren’t mean: they’re just casting around for a few solid reasons to keep faith with the human experiment. And, for the moment at least, they’re struggling.” I don’t think I am “casting around”. I am not struggling any longer either. It is pretty simple once it became clear to me. I don’t trust humanity. The struggle is figuring out how to fade out of it short of suicide and/or becoming a total recluse/hermit. I wont go to those extremes, but I am wanting to detach myself to a much more basic and distant relationship with humankind. I don’t hate it, I have decided to uncouple from it.
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