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Misanthropy

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00:22 / 12.04.07

When I start feeling down, like, really down, as if the world's a terrible place, and one I'm only making worse by being in it, personally, then what I usually do is take myself off to the theatre, to watch 'Starlight Express.'

00:50 / 12.04.07

Prayer. Charity. Comedy. Drink.

Are these only supposed to be healthy methods?

01:09 / 12.04.07

I've just spent the last two hours playing pictionary with a bunch of people whose idea of high comedy was drawing a penis every other turn. I'm at the point of condemning the entire pictionary playing world to some Bosch-like hell at the moment, but I'm sure it will pass by morning.

01:32 / 12.04.07

I don't think of myself as a misanthrope nor do I like the idea of misanthropy in general, but being human I of course feel misanthropic at times. I don't like to separate the world into "good" and "bad" people, for reasons including that due to an authoritarian religious upbringing I already have a tendency to be too black & white in my thinking... but beyond that, I don't find the idea of good and bad people to be terribly reassuring. In fact I find the idea of "good people" nearly as unsettling as bad people. Neither is very accurate as a descriptor for a human being, is it?

I know this will sound terribly pious, but I try - try - to deal with my misanthropic feelings by having compassion, and where that fails, at least attempting to understand from whence a certain mindset comes. Which shouldn't equal making excuses for offensive behavior/attitudes, nor resorting to condescension or pity (both of which being easy traps). I try to tell myself that the fact that there are people out there who are behaving meanly, offensively, & selfishly shouldn't reduce me to doing the same.

06:48 / 12.04.07

Living where you live I imagine you have to try pretty hard, Ibis

All Acting Regiment

09:54 / 12.04.07

I think the key to getting round the "I hate these people for what they do" response (and avoiding beoming a Tory) is to grasp once and for all that people do bad things because the world (in terms of economic position/race/gender etc) does bad things to them. However slightly, and with however many qualifications, this applies everywhere - yes, even to terrorists, and beyond - Fascists even. Underneath every hard shell of "I am a fucking wanker" there is a little person snivelling and saying "What if I am a wanker?"

10:34 / 12.04.07

Lord Henry; I like your theory, but I'm not sure it holds up in history... in my (very limited*) understanding of how history has run, the groups of humans tending towards exclusion through violence tend to come out in a dominant position. I'm hoping that this changes and that every individual is recognised as an asset so people aren't excluded because they are useful, helping the culture to develop, and I guess this is what the whole globalisation movement has in mind... but if a culture values violent exclusion and has the strength to back it up, surely it will apply this to itself against minorities it dissapproves of and to other cultures, bashing them down and becoming dominant. Perhaps not the best culture it could be, but the one in charge.

*I am not good with history, or politics, but from what I've heard this mostly seems to be the case.

00:19 / 13.04.07

Living where you live I imagine you have to try pretty hard, Ibis

This place really challenges me, that's for sure. It's weird though, as I get to know some people here I find my views of other people shifting. Some of my coworkers at my temp job have folded me into their little social group (chatting between cubes, eating lunch together). There one woman, I'll call her Kelly, who's close to my age and the most like a peer out of anyone there. She's also the biggest offender in terms of casual racism and political viewpoints that I find repugnant. And yet, over and over I can't help but see the similarities between her and myself. She watches the news, she's opinionated, she is passionate about things she cares about, and she tries to connect with people rather than just soliloquizing. Every time I cringe at something that comes out of her mouth, I (perversely, maybe) reflexively think, I'm like her in so many ways. I definitely get on my high horse (privately, to my SO) about how offensive/racist/wrong she is... but then something happens like the other day when I was bitching about my sister-in-law's unplanned pregnancy and Kelly said sincerely, "you know, after all the times I used to say I didn't want kids before I changed my mind, I hope no one ever says that about me." Ouch. Who's the judgmental, self-righteous one now?

I'm not saying that I find it easy to excuse racism and classism and cruelty in people because it turns out they're just nice folk who love their families or some crap like that... just that people are a lot more complex than I sometimes realize when I think about them in the abstract. Misanthropy is probably, more than anything else, just too oversimplified a view.

02:58 / 13.04.07

a very small child arguably doesn't hold any horrid opinions, but to what extent does a very small child hold any opinions

I'm actually fairly convinced my own small children hold some abominable opinions about why things happen and why people (and cars and dogs and breezes and puddles) are the way they are, but the hopeful thing is that they don't really mean it.

I overcome misanthropy by paying attention to all the little details. Sorry to drop the phrase, but yeah.

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