how to fight misanthropy

It's been a long term conviction of mine that misanthropy is a bad, reactionary impulse. The idea that people in general are stupid or mean blames "human nature" for problems that can and should be solved, the best it can lead to is apathy/fatalism and at its worst of course it's a gateway for Randian thought, Enlightened Despot bullshit and the like. This view has also been reinforced by the fact that most self described misanthropes I've met have, frankly, been very mediocre people with a hugely inflated sense of their own intelligence. Keep in mind also that I grew up in the most rural part of Portugal, so coexisting with people very different from me and who have different values, religion, etc. was pretty much essential to my survival.

But the combination of an internationally ascendant far right and my own middle age makes it harder to keep the beast at bay. I am sick of not knowing when I meet someone new whether they're gonna start spouting some brainrot about trans people or immigrants or death vaccines. I used to put this down to living in the UK, a much more culture war prone territory, but I'm in Portugal right now and everything seems to be moving in the same direction here as well. I used to think that the people around me, while perhaps harbouring some regressive ideas and absolutely not being signed up to my political beliefs, were generally good people trying to get through their day and without active malice. Now I'm not so sure.

Politics is obviously a big part of this here, me being myself, but I don't want this thread to be limited to that, because I also think that as you get older it becomes more difficult to be optimistic, you start to feel less patience for people's foibles, and I am sure that this is a factor here too. And it feels like a combination of social media and the permanent enshittification of everything HAS turned people in general nastier, more distrustful, more combative. Or I may be wrong about that and projecting idk.

Anyway, I don't want to succumb to this, I want to believe that my short time on this planet will not be spent surrounded by people I hate and who hate me (and yes I am aware of my white male privilege here, I know that's something a lot of people can't even hope for right now). Anyone else struggling with this right now?

just get out of the house and meet people

Did you read Daniel's post?

"I am sick of not knowing when I meet someone new whether they're gonna start spouting some brainrot about trans people or immigrants or death vaccines."

hmm

meet people in the context of something bigger than oneself that probably won't hit brainrot topics, such as sports or clubs or societies or something

people only spout the brainrot when they're bored or there's a vacuum in 'things to do'. collective activity will preclude most of the shit

Brainrot topics are everywhere, that stripe of cunt usually isn’t shy about their views

Sports will absolutely hit brainrot stuff about vaccines, nutrition, health etc. lol

Joined my local pub's scrabble night last week, not a wack opinion in sight. Obviously be picky lol

How many points for "woke"?

I don't recommend this, but: having a pretty complete mental and physical breakdown, then nearly dying, has turned out to be pretty fucking great for me.

(Long story described else77where: I got a liver transplant.)

Sure I found I had more resilience than I thought, yadda yadda. But the bigger revelation was how kind and good every single person in my orbit is.

In my time of crisis, my family put their lives on hold and rushed to my bedside. Acquaintances I barely thought about offered to cook for us. Nobody judged or shamed.

Of course I have been very lucky and privilege helped a bunch, but. Every relationship I have is deeper and richer. Pretty much every aspect of my life is better than it was eight months ago. People do not suck.

That's something that national politics doesn't get to take away.

I worked for a few years with a manager who always had something positive to say about everyone, and it was always very specific. It was never just "I like your hair", it was "that really suits you, the length accentuates your bone structure and the colour suits you, I hope you keep it." This has rubbed off on me and I find myself doing it a lot, without even trying most of the time now. It's not that I'm on a crusade to spread kindness or anything, but I find that bringing positive energy, offering praise and compliments to people around me, has made my life feel a lot less miserable. I'm aware how Life Guru Coach that sounds but I think there's a lot to be said for setting the tone of the world you want to inhabit.

I'm very lucky in that my everyday life (workplace, chosen family, etc) I don't really have to deal with bigots and brainrot. But when I do have to encounter them in the wild, eg customers and clients in work, a big smile as I say "oh let's not get into that today!" and a quick change of subject usually does the trick. The big smile is essential because you're leaving enough plausible deniability that you agree, when actually the smile is the smirk of the satisfaction not letting their nonsense go on. The key to this strategy is also to act like of course you're not going to discuss it.

This doesn't prevent me from being annoyed when people hit out with "its the transes and the immigrants" rhetoric but the sooner I can shut it down and make it clear it's not up for discussion, the less imapct it has on me.

Let me be very clear that this is NOT about online interactions, I've ceased arguing online with strangers years ago.

It is also, and perhaps I should have been clearer here, not about making friends - I have plenty of friends who share my views and whom I don't feel misanthropic towards.

However, we live in a society, and while to some extent I know that society and I won't be on the same page on tons of things I do not want to look at my friend group as a fortress erected against the world at large.

My misanthropy here is concerning all the little interactions that make up human existence - work, friends of friends, cab rides, baristas, random strangers that you happen to share a few words with. You know, people.

xposts

That's a great post boxedjoy and life coach-y or not it sounds like good advice.

Saniel, rob the baristas etc. of the power to bum you out. They don't deserve that power.

*Daniel sorry

people only spout the brainrot when they're bored

if only. Twenty years of working in customer/client-facing roles has taught me that people who have Very Strong Opinions will always find a way to work them into conversation. "I'd like a banana smoothie, please, almost as much I'd like to bring back hanging"

I hope that didn't actually happen lol

Some of my pleasantest conversations over the years have happened with bartenders. I guess I'm good at avoiding wingnuts, sadists, and charlatans.

Xp both are true - a strong-opinion-having person who stirs shit at the smoothie counter because of wokeness is doing so both because they are bored, and shit-stirring is their antidote.

Either way you do not feed the energy creature, right?

I would say better to balance your feelings rather than fight stuff off entirely. Or to channel feelings that are more often painted as negative into doing positive things. I know that anger gives me energy to do good in my work, and I also know I will, presumably like many other people, always have some level of anger. I don't want to get angry with people or be angry with them, but under the hood of what I am doing, anger is a fuel. I work in a public-facing bit of the state so, for example, being angry with people or bodies I work with could mean refusing to accept something that has a negative effect on vulnerable people. I don't think I would be able to do this with commitment if I didn't have that underlying feeling. I have felt hatred in that world also, but tried to use it to generate energy also.

I think sometimes there is pressure on us to consider certain feelings or behaviours as inherently negative or positive when it's often more complex than that. If you care about the world you're going to feel misanthropic sometimes - I am not sure you can fight that or avoid it. Maybe better to try to find a way to channel it positively into something.

But ymmv.

"My misanthropy here is concerning all the little interactions that make up human existence - work, friends of friends, cab rides, baristas, random strangers that you happen to share a few words with. You know, people."

With cab drivers I would suggest re-watching Taxi Driver the film to remind yourself why they are like that.

or to find some ideas for expressing your anger

Honest answer is...perhaps doing something positive where you can be with others but you are just doing stuff and minimizing verbal interaction.

But I wouldn't necessarily fight off misanthropy if you feel like that sometimes. But its about reminding yourself its not all doom and gloom.

my current role involves working with vulnerable people in a capacity where I can help them and I find myself getting very angry when other people, whether it's colleagues or third parties, do things that do not help or serve these people. I'm not always successful at this, but I find it helps me to reframe it as people making mistakes because they're not aware, rather than stupid or lazy. Then it means when I challenge them on this I can frame it not as accusatory or angry, but collaborative and helpful.

I do think positivity can become very toxic if it dismisses people's real experiences and struggles, and I think it's important to not just silence people with platitudes of how things could be worse etc.

I've had some difficult stuff happen in my life, and I've wasted a lot of time being static because I've struggled to deal with those things. But the difference between me now and me then is that I know there is nothing productive or useful about ruminating and stagnating on the bad things, and I can find and carve a future I want for myself with that energy instead. My personal anger and sadness didn't make my life better, but the warmth and love and kindess I've experienced has made me want to shape my world accordingly.

I started typing a long post I. Response to this but it basically boiled down to “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with misanthropy”, which tells me maybe this isn’t a conversation I should be in

i'm naturally shy and i've always been idiosyncratic / in my own world. that shaded over into misanthropy starting in my teens. i never liked that feeling much and i'd say i've been making slow progress in the other direction since my mid-20s. i've had a boost recently because of starting a meditation practice. it hasn't made me like turn over my distaste for other people or anything but it's turned the 'bewildering shock' of experiencing someone doing something that doesn't make sense to me into sort of a pure kind of witness state. there's a mystery to other people. as far as the "brainrot" stuff goes, i think a lot of that is just attention seeking behavior. but i mean using the term "brainrot" in the first place is misanthropic. what if there are no enemies? what if there are no enemies?

i agree with djp that there isn't really anything wrong with misanthropy

I've been so upset about the latest cobblers going on with Zuck and Trump and Meta.

I realised recently that the permanently-online lifestyle, which we all embraced when the pandemic struck five years ago, is something we just never really worked our way out of.

And this isn't a "people should get back in the office" type of thing, but more the fact that being creative in 2025 is often about supplementing your craft through online self-promotion, often at the expense of the craft itself. Whereas before, people would post videos of themselves on Insta and TikTok in order to get recognised and go on to do other things, nowadays the aim is more to become big on those platforms; i.e. to game the algorithm in order to get as many views, likes and shares as possible.

It means that while social media gives the illusion of a cottage industry of creators who've skipped the middle-man and are doing it for themselves, they're still in thrall to these platforms and algorithms, all of which are owned by devious billionaires and now largely controlled by nefarious politicians who profit from a constant stream of "content creation" which has to be tailored to their platforms.

And while this practice of creating short-form content suits some people, most musicians, artists etc find that having to post five times a day to these places just to remain relevant and accrue fans is a full-time job in itself - one they never really signed up for in the first place. It is not conducive to most art or expression.

So the way I've taken action is to start a community of crreative people in my city - artists, performers, DJs, musicians, crafters, promoters, part-time doodlers - and to hold monthly in-person get-togethers where we can host guest talks, exhibitions, demonstrations, open deck and open mic sessions, and just a chance to mingle and get to know each other.

It's such an obvious and simple idea, and I'm calling it a "real-life social network", but it's just meant to be an antidote to the first-person loneliness of being a creative person locked behind a screen.

This was all figured out and put into motion over the weekend and I've already got about 50-60 interested people on a closed Whatsapp group that only I can post announcements from - other than that, everything will be done IRL. I'm hoping that if it's a success we can put our resources into collaborative projects, such as a zine (remember those) or putting on different types of events.

It's a small thing. I don't expect it to replace social media, of course. Just feels like in the last five years it's nice to step away from the screen and try a different way of working.

misanthropy is an ego thing rooted in hurt. i think that really paying attention, letting mind go, being in the present are keys to being less misanthropic.

re: banana smoothie and hanging: A guy my father-in-law just met introduced himself and then said, "Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero" as way of starting a conversation.

Not right now because I started doing things that give me more time with anarchists and radicals :) so I get to be with my people, but I used to work in a part of NYC that was verrrrry conservative, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, antisemitic, religious in a superstitious way but with no generosity of spirit. Every day I was humbled by the patience and grace of people who had suffered the most--immigrants, refugees, racially marginalized people--and every time I tried to get my colleagues to care about those people (our community), they'd respond with racism, ignorance, hatred, suspicion, conspiracy theories, etc.

I tried to disagree with the other staff tactfully but keep communications open,; that was my job. I spent 5 years trying to slowly change people's minds every day but it only worked in proximity to me and only for a few minutes. The next time I would interact with that same person, they'd say the same racist shit about immigrants taking all the public benefits or "illegals"--I heard slurs openly that I didn't even think were still in common usage??

It was soul-crushing. I burned out. Schools also have this weird thing of being, like, closed universes where the school environment seems like the whole world, and part of it was that I worked too much to be able to keep up with my friendships and other things in life that would have sustained me. (Incidentally if anyone in ilnyc wondered why I disappeared, that's why.)

That lasted up until covid shutdowns, I quit right before then (coincidentally but luckily). I didn't start hating people necessarily but I was kind of broken in my ability to feel feelings. It took a month of rest and disconnecting before I felt a weird, like, lift one day and was like...oh, I think this is...happiness? So maybe at least you have that going for you, that you don't turn the misanthropy inward.

I gave up. I got away from those people. And my tolerance for bigotry now is so, so low. Diplomacy did not work. It didn't change people's beliefs that they really loved having, they loved clinging to. They held them with GUSTO. I tried it again with someone I got to know during covid up until last year. I really tried to get her to open up to the world and see things differently but she chose, over and over, to embrace that easy, comfortable racism and hate and fear.

Idk what to tell you. If that's who you have to be around and they feel like the whole world, yeah, that's pretty dispiriting. I just decided that I don't do the work for those people. I think I'm paraphrasing some of Harriet Tubman's writing when I say, everyone is not ready to come with you and you can't wait for them, you need to GO. This train is leaving the station. There are lots of needs, people are in desperate need, and I don't need permission from racists and transphobes to do something about that.

That's where I am right now.

I agree with in orbit 1000%

lol xxxxxxp to "What's wrong with misanthropy?" otm

To be clear, I had a slow-growing personal evolution from high school through my mid-40s where I rejected my youthful misanthropic tendencies and began to adopt a more hopeful, positive outlook towards humanity that was pretty much obliterated by the litany of high-profile murders of Black people, often by police, with little-to-no legal recourse combined with Trump becoming President. Effectively, I don’t live in a world where it is either safe or rational for me to approach interactions with the general populace without a measure of guard and distrust. I don’t have to be rude or dismissive of everyone I meet but I do need to protect myself.

Buying guarded is far from being misanthropic. Also believing that humans are fallible and can be bigoted, ignorant, or foolish is also far from misanthropic. I suggest that the only truly misanthropic are, like school shooters and politicians.

People do not suck.

I spent the last two months in a particularly dark place, at least some of which was exacerbated by the results of the US election, and now the overwhelming likelihood of a lite-Trump conservative becoming the next PM of my own country. Towards the end of December, I had to travel to Ohio, and while I was there a woman noticed the "Challenge Transphobia" pin I have on my bag and started up a conversation with me. After hearing I was from Canada she asked if I knew what was going on in her state re: the implementation of "Don't Say Gay" type laws. I had been actively avoiding the news since November 6, so this was in fact new to me (although hardly surprising). She talked about how this had spurred her into political action, how she finds ways to politely shame people at her co-workers who won't indicate their pronouns in the workplace, and asked me how the situation with queer kids was in my country (I responded by sharing a story which I won't here, as it has to do with the elementary school my husband works at and the some of the horrible homophobic shit the kids there face from their parents). All in all, it was a brief exchange, but an uplifting one, and as corny as it sounds, it really can be a powerful thing to relearn every now and then that not everyone is awful.

misanthropy is an ego thing rooted in hurt

I agree with this. I used to laugh about being misanthropic, but now I'm much more disconnected, in a positive way. I simply don't care about the people I encounter/interact with in my daily life. Those encounters are fleeting, and whether they're positive (which they mostly are) or negative, they do not accrete into any kind of deep relationship. So if someone is an asshole in my presence for a minute or two, what do I care? I can go outside and stare at a mountain or watch a river flow past, and it all fades away.

There is no such thing as "humanity" (collective noun). There are individual people. Billions of them, and you'll never meet most of them. You're an individual, right? With a unique package of experiences that have made you who you are? So is everyone else. Deal with the individual person who's right in front of you, but forming big ideas about people as a collective/mass/herd and trying to live by those big ideas is insane.

xp Totally, crypto! I do community-based work in a few different capacities and some of it is with activists and people with radical perspectives but LOTS of it is with "normal" people who use some of their time and resources to make sure others have food, good food, get to choose what food they want, get access to resources. People who make art, raise kids, play music, organize for housing and food and climate justice, elect progressive candidates, support Palestine, and also incidentally get together every other week to pack boxes of free food and drive them to people in remote areas. Just normal folks. It really, I'm not being cute, it really fills me with love and hope.

i strongly agree with the reality that there are a lot of people out there who will do you or me all kinds of harm and that we need to protect ourselves. by 'what if there are no enemies' i don't mean to deny that, just to suggest that i don't think we have to let these hard lessons about innate human violence turn us into spiteful people. i'm not sure if this is too general to mean anything, but there's also something here, for me at least, about accepting violence as a part of the human condition. i don't mean to suggest that we condone specific acts of unjust violence. just that if we look at ourselves and our history, violence is very much part of the fabric of existence. i don't think that we talk about it enough. we reject it outright. but i think it's worth looking at dispassionately, seeing the histories and the nuances. i think the more we understand it the better we can keep ourselves and the people we care about safe.

one way that i've managed to become softer, more open and honestly happier is by curtailing things i hear about injustice happening to people who i will never meet. that may strike some as selfish, which, fair enough. and i don't mean to suggest that would work for everyone. just that for me, my care is going to be limited to my garden. grave injustice has always happened in the world and will continue to happen. but my life is my garden and tending to it enables me to bring glimmers of that life to everyone else i encounter through my days. they may receive it or they may not. and i'm lucky not to be in the position of being 'natural prey' for anyone else. a huge burden i don't have to deal with which affects my experience greatly.

I think I'm operating with a different definition of misanthropy than some itt - I think of misanthropy as being about humanity in general, meaning it includes oppressed groups as well as the groups doing the oppressing. Which then often leads to fatalist bs about how oppression is part of human nature, if it wasn't this group doing it right now it'd be the group being oppressed, etc. And yes true most of the stuff I posted itt came from ppl who are privileged, or ppl who are marginalized in one context being bigoted towards groups marginalized in other contexts. But I certainly don't view anger or even despair regarding oppression to be misanthropy.

I am planning to start up volunteering again when I get back to the UK and in orbit otm that this will hopefully make me feel like this less often and LG also OTM that anger can be creative, spur me on and I hope that I will feel that anger.

Despite years of therapy dealing with my anxiety issues and many many attempts I have still never managed to get the hang of meditation at all. It feels like a prank everyone is in on to convince me that I'm the only one for whom it doesn't work.

You're an individual, right? With a unique package of experiences that have made you who you are?

No.

I'm a loose and temporary confederation of mostly bacteria

Plus groceries

I have still never managed to get the hang of meditation at all. It feels like a prank everyone is in on to convince me that I'm the only one for whom it doesn't work.

that's too bad. don't mean to be a polyanna about it but it's always worth another try? and maybe it is a prank, that would be a good starting point for meditation! to be really real though different things work for different people.

naps > meditation

Seriously, just lie down and close your eyes for 20 minutes in the afternoon. It's amazing the way a nap can salvage a terrible day.

Those encounters are fleeting, and whether they're positive (which they mostly are) or negative, they do not accrete into any kind of deep relationship. So if someone is an asshole in my presence for a minute or two, what do I care?

Yeah, if someone says some crazy shit to me, my response now is "Welp that was certainly a choice that you made to say that" and then I don't include that person in my consideration or calculations anymore. They're on their own. Like...the door isn't closed forever, but it's up to them to change, to be ready to be part of the world beyond themselves.

Having said that I don't ask about the beliefs of people who get food resources though my labor, that's not what I mean. There's no "loyalty test" for need.

forming big ideas about people as a collective/mass/herd and trying to live by those big ideas is insane.

I mean, I disagree with this, I think people are predictable in many, many ways if you're paying attention and you can read and accurately interpret the signs and also we all tend towards wanting dignity, ease, respect, and will be, in a big sense, motivated to get those needs met (however we define them). But that's not really important to this conversation necessarily.

in my experience there's a knack to meditation. i never really got the hang of it. the first time i tried it, it made me want to throw up or run around the room panicking

Oh yeah I can't do it, I'm just bored. But I can get in the zone/flow while doing a task that takes less than all of my concentration, and do some great thinking that way. My mom believes she's praying to a Christian sky god but honestly if you ask her to describe it, it's meditation lol. Everyone is different.

I wasn't suggesting you were suggesting anything btw, and I am not defending it. There are many bad things in it.

With cab drivers I would suggest re-watching Taxi Driver the film to remind yourself why they are like that.

Haha I knew that would come up and hey #notallcabbies. I had one who was very enthusiastic about discussing the sexualities of old school British entertainers (but not in a creepy or bigoted way). One dude who waxed poetic about the Jewish East End tailors and his cousin who brought Sinatra a suit on short notice when he played London in the 70's and got his wife a shout out from the man himself. Not saying those two dudes can't also have been bigots but they certainly didn't advertise it.

Fucking LBC though. A plague and the first time I got my nerve up to ask the cabbie to change the channel he gave me some excuse about it being the station with the best traffic reports...well, maybe it wasn't an excuse, dude wasn't white himself and didn't seem to be fist pumping over the content either.

The very worst I had was on this day where I had been on the tube a lot, horrible heat, I was just knackered and since I wanted to check out that Afghan ice cream place in Ilford I thought I'd treat myself to a cab. Just a torrent of LBC cuntery during the whole trip, it was after that stabbing and this woman was just going wild with islamophobia and fascist apologias, it got so bad that I piped up with "do you like music?" (in the hopes of getting him to change to Magic, we could just have been vibing to some soft rock ffs) but dude either didn't hear me or ignored me, the black cab setup of course allows for this very well the driver being separated by a window and so on (in Portugal I often take the co-pilot seat!). So finally I got out and found the spot, and I don't mean to fetischize but it felt almost like being back in my village, the dude serving the ice cream was on the phone to a mate and just letting ppl wait until one guy piped up with "bro, you can't just chat away when you have customers!", but in a friendly way, and after dude served him his ice cream he went "I speak farsi as well, I hope your mate is ok". I know on some level this just translates to "I got bad service" but there was something really likeable about this dude in hyper capitalist London just being like "work can wait, talking to my mate now" and that the guy who called him on it was nice and respectful as well. And it made me think that these are the ppl who get demonized while the fucking vultures on the radio just get to laugh all the way to the bank.

Also memorable was the night I got this one guy who said he had "a bit of a different way of looking at the world" and then to illustrate this mentioned his son getting fucked over in a bid for a house and him going to the office of the guy responsible and holding him out the window by his legs. He also mentioned having been a royal marine and said that, during the peace talks, "some bright mind in government" leaked his name to the IRA and this is why he had to move to Italy for a bit. This was all said in the style of a one man show, I didn't get a word in edgewise, felt like I was listening to an audiobook or something. Tbh that didn't make me mad, more of an amused awe (does he do this with every client??), did wonder if I was going to end up dead in a ditch that night for a while though. Def the most Bicklesque I've had, though with a very different temperament, all jovial and expansive as he rattled off this almost certainly 100% made up crap.

I think social media - and the internet in general, even communication as innocuous as email or text - has made the discourse and negativity so much worse because it's just so much faster and easier, privileging being first or loudest, which doesn't leave a lot of room for considerate reflection or empathy or whatever. There was a Louis CK bit (from ... before) where he talked about posting and bullying in the internet age. Iirc it was basically how in the past, if you wanted to say something mean to someone, you literally had to say it to their face, where you also saw the immediate reaction. But now you can wake up, pick up your phone, type "John is fat" or whatever, then put down the phone and grab breakfast. You don't see the reaction, but John sees the comment, and it's just left there for him (and everyone) to see and dwell on.

So by default I find that online interaction tends to magnify the negative and minimize the positive; it's way too easy to read passive aggression or anger into generally innocuous exchanges. On the other hand, I do think the vast majority of people are kind and generous, even the people I've trained myself to dislike. I think most people just don't put a lot of thought into their interactions with others, or how, say, their words might hurt other people. I think it's just too easy to cast stones from your internet perch and not see where they land. But I think, or hope, that most people, when faced with the hurt they've caused, regret it. Getting them to change their behavior might be a bit tougher, because it's not any harder to be cruel from a safe remove, but I think most folks are not clouds of destructive energy.

I do think one big problem is that the people that *are* that bad might make up for their minority status through the efficiency of the internet. Someone like that Libs of Tik Tok dickhead, their entire deal could only happen with the ease and amplification of the internet.

First, thank you for starting this thread, Daniel Rf.

My own perspective is simple enough, which is that humans are wonderful, strange, amazing, and deeply flawed creatures. All of us. The problem with most misanthropes is that they seldom have the humility to see their own ignorance, or recognize their own propensity to rationalize or excuse themselves from their general condemnation of humanity. We all need each other. We all fuck up. It takes constant self-reminding to steer even a wobbly path of compassion.

I generally have the lowest-possible expectations for strangers, friends-of-friends, in-laws, randoms I might meet at the bar, in terms of "where their politics might be at", and I've found it to be a helpful position. I don't argue, I listen with some interest when things might veer into "bad ideas". Spent a week with a pile of evangelicals and the only time anybody crossed the line was when somebody said that "drug users were more inclined to get AIDS", not because of sharing needles, but because "irresponsible behaviour" (i.e. gay sex) was exacerbated by drug use. I shut that one down smilingly and affably and let them know there were going to be certain topics that we'd have to leave undiscussed.

With regards to friends/colleagues/collaborators, and (especially) certain ex-boyfriends or ex-lovers, there has been more of "a case for misanthropy"-- notsomuch when an individual fucks up, or we have a disagreement, but when their behaviour toward me becomes demonstrably, palpably, malicious, with intention to cause harm.

For example, an employer who had me under contract for a year and a half, for whom I worked very-long hours at 50% regular pay, devoted myself to the project, he informed me abruptly that our working relationship was terminated, and that he intended to "take the project in a new direction". A year later, the project emerged with all my work intact, unaltered-- and I was uncredited for it, unacknowledged for it. I was confused, and (frankly) really hurt, but it was... fine. He was my boss. I was his employee. I was at his service, so. I don't care how he credits me, really.

It emerged about a year later, I was told by a mutual friend, that this "campaign of non-acknowledgement" was intentional, and malicious; that my former employer would smirk about what he was doing, and refer to me as "You Know Who". That another friend of mine who still worked for him got angry, took him aside, and told him to stop. Hearing that this was all deliberate, with intent-to-cause-distress, well... it knocked my assessment of my former employer down into sub-Hell levels of estimation.

It did not make me "more misanthropic". It made me traumatised. It made me fearful of devoting myself to somebody else's project, lest I get burned again. It kept me up at night. But it didn't make me, y'know, "hate humanity". Just my former boss. I hate that guy, that is some evil bullshit.

Yeah part of the power in resisting misanthropy is that you can accumulate whatever broader negative feelings you might generate and then vent them toward individuals who are worthy of them. Loving humanity doesn’t preclude disliking particular humans.

Loving humanity doesn’t preclude disliking particular humans.

E.G. Jimmy Carter, who did a ton for humanity while being a world-class hater one-on-one.

re: shutting down hateful speech and conversations, I think this is more effective than debating people. I don't think it even drives them back into their spaces to say these things -- they don't have a space a lot of the time. So you draw a line, maybe put a little shame on it in your voice when you shut down that line of conversation, if safe. Society is how we interact with each other and build public spaces and some of these things are promulgated purely as hinge points for dividing us as if we're all on opposing teams

the practice that chips away at my misanthropy is trying to understand other people, and to build that mutual connection. it's difficult! there are so many tools and shortcuts and cheat codes that people have attempted, from personality tests to "what's your love language", etc. etc.
but negotiating some shared space where you understand how to do the things people appreciate in the way they appreciate, or more specifically in a way that you're mutually comfortable with, is something that defines the human experience for me. caring for others can seem so transactional, and I don't think the internet era with upvotes and follows and numerical validation is doing it

all the stupid stuff that people do and say is just so tiring to me. i've heard so many years of it. it makes me feel so sad and old to hear the same racist crap decade after decade. one of the "great" unseen benefits of being a big dumb-looking white person in this country is you get to hear ALL the fucking racist/sexist/etc crud because people assume you are on the same page. when every other white dude started calling me "brother"...oof...i am not your fucking brother. fuck off. so, i mostly stay out of things. i talk to the people i know and like and who are KIND. i'm really into kind people. people way kinder than me! i always hope some of it will rub off on me. i like when people take my negativity to task and don't feed on it. i leave my negative feelings - for the most part - for the stuff i write. which i figure is fair because all is fair in love and art and its like catharsis or something. but i try not to let the bastards get me down. dumbness is so contagious. i'm not very trusting. of people. of this country. but i just try to be as much myself as i can be when dealing with the outside world. you want to say something stupid to me? that's fine. but wait until you get a load of me! i'm a big weirdo and let me reiterate that i am not your brother. i will tell you what i think. and then i will ignore you because you dumb. but for every idiot, i meet some nice folks! which really really helps because it makes me see that not everything is black/white or good/bad. people are all over the place.
as far as social media and all that, i would say its definitely more bad then good. i'm so glad that i have never had a cell phone because i never got trapped in horrible places like twitter or places that are ideal for phones. i never got addicted to them. this is the only place on the web where i have ever really interacted with people. facebook and instagram i can take or leave. i go on there for the pictures of sandwiches and kitties.

xp to myself that sentence kind of clunked off at the end

there's something to the idea that people want to see and be seen, but I feel that's often reduced to a very surface level thing. and to truly be seen is scary in so many ways, so I get the appeal of wanting a few more likes on social media or w/e

Gotta think about this (though it’s something I have been thinking about already). Thank you for this thread.

when every other white dude started calling me "brother"...oof...i am not your fucking brother. fuck off.

I know what you mean, but you can treat this like a cheat code in a way. Because I am a middle-aged white dude, if I call another white dude "brother," I can disagree with his bullshit without it becoming a fight.

I used to think I was misanthropic but then I realised I just don't like being around people rather than I didn't like people. I mostly assume everyone is okayish and I'm probs not going to find out if they are awful or not in my v limited interaction with them. Did have a customer last week ask if we had the tommy robinson book and when I told him we didn't he turned to the woman who was with him and said "that says it all". So I wouldn't really want to hang out with him but then again I wouldn't want to hang out with the customers who are lovely either.

I hope I don't sound like I'm just being cute here, but I really do believe that I am considerably less misanthropic than I might otherwise be because I don't do social media.

― cryptosicko,

Interesting. I'm less misanthropic because of social media, i.e. outlets.

i also don't think its fair that monks go live away from the world and are considered holy and humble and all that shit and I'M supposed to love everyone? let the monks deal with some of the people i've had to deal with over the years. they'd cry into their prayer bowls. they'd make extra mead to get wasted on just to forget about the sad fuckers out there in the wild. (i definitely feel like organized religion has made me way more misanthropic than i would have been naturally. so much of it is hateful, hurtful garbage but i'm supposed to respect it? and it is thrown at you here EVERYWHERE. despite the clear wording about freedom FROM religion in the constitution. scaring my ass with their demons since i was five. fuck them. but also bless them. they know not what they do.)

also about meditation: listening to music is my form of meditation. it helps me a LOT.

haha, it just dawned on me what i've been listening to in the store while typing all this:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81goicWLmoL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

but enough from me. i have enjoyed reading what you all have to say. you are all very articulate and it has been good and helpful. cheers!

"Haha I knew that would come up and hey #notallcabbies. I had one who was very enthusiastic about discussing the sexualities of old school British entertainers (but not in a creepy or bigoted way)."

My worst cabbie seemed to let out that he kinda felt sorry for Jimmy Saville/felt he was being witchunted during our convo. I sorta smiled and sat quietly after that.

Thank you for your v entertaining cab journey reminiscences, Daniel. And good luck in fighting the misanthropy.

Seriously. Good thread too -- terrific posts.

Feeling misanthropic is a sign that something is wrong, that I’m not well. By nature I live to help people and be of service, for better or worse. It helps me feel connected, useful, and fulfilled. Hating makes me feel terrible, especially if I already feel terrible. I’ve never felt road rage and am not prone to irrational anger but I’m very vulnerable to melancholy. Maybe misanthropy is curdled melancholy?

Feeling misanthropic is a sign that something is wrong, that I’m not well.

Also, possibly a sign of being in Harvey Danger.

My feelings about humanity have sort of coalesced into disgust/loathing at the individual level and love/hopefulness at the collective/community/society level, but this thread is helping me remember that's too convenient as a fallback position. It's my way of fighting back against rightwingers who exalt individuals and individual rights over societies and social responsibilities. I don't know if I'll change my preconceptions — we're still at our worst at the single-cell-organism level, and communities still have the power to make us better through the power of encouragement as well as through shaming — but I might be less kneejerk about it.

there are so many tools and shortcuts and cheat codes that people have attempted, from personality tests to "what's your love language", etc. etc.

Boy are there ever. Most of them boil down to "listening to people and helping them" though. I asked someone who makes GOOD money as a coach/consultant if all "change management" and "strategic design" frameworks were just "listen to people and believe them," and was there really nothing else to it? She said yeah when men started trying to do relationships they didn't have the skills so they had to re-style it as a rigorous framework with lots of acronyms but it's just relationships.

Maybe misanthropy is curdled melancholy?

You're the truth bomber this week istg

like cynicism is curdled sentimentality: you're embittered by a world that hasn't met your expectations.

reading the posts it strikes me it's quite healthy to be aware of one's own misanthropy.

i feel like anything that quiets the mind down is valid meditation. anything that puts the mind on the backburner while you receive an experience in the present. i love hearing about people doing anything like that and how it helps them. knitting, cooking, walking in the park. all accessing god. for me the two things that always did the trick were "listening to music" and "doing exercise." but there was a missing piece of the puzzle that totally got filled in when i started meditating. more direct access, more direct love, flooding and connecting all of the disparate parts of me. it was great. i was sort of resigned to relying on my old standbys for the rest of my life and always sort of being in the same mental paradigm. but now something has actually shifted. something i didn't know i needed. i still get sad and lachrymose and unstable but i have something new, something is legit different. where i'm most often a misanthrope is probably when i'm driving in traffic. people are godawful nightmares in cars. but i get road rage a lot less often now! i can just let people be crazy somehow.

ok i'm done evangelizing about meditation .. for now .. muahaha.

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/473540447_10162781599392137_3552575124941530947_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=bd9a62&_nc_ohc=cdka2CltcgwQ7kNvgHeylui&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&_nc_gid=AbnjMeWTMbtMMtTsD87bT6f&oh=00_AYC1b5IlXYvT8cf_kaDbYKd6AlDprYXDb8rlSa7eXzytWw&oe=678B7338

i was REALLY nice to my dad when i got home tonight. i credit this thread for that. not that i'm an ogre...

Here is a piece I came across just now by a former writer, now publican that deals with some of the issues we have been talking about.

https://buttondown.com/behind-the-bar/archive/yes-it-is-time-to-ban-discourse/

'in basically Kent'

possibly near me! will have to drop by for a drink

not near me lol, but if I'm ever in Barnehurst...

Yeah part of the power in resisting misanthropy is that you can accumulate whatever broader negative feelings you might generate and then vent them toward individuals who are worthy of them. Loving humanity doesn’t preclude disliking particular humans.

"But individualism is apparently bad for leftists to adhere to"

Leftists have accomplished certain goals (higher wages, lower rents) in groups. Its not just an abstract ideology.

"But individualism is apparently bad for leftists to adhere to"

Leftists have accomplished certain goals (higher wages, lower rents) in groups. Its not just an abstract ideology.

Just checking!

I want a pint in Hazel’s pub please!

Unperson's philosophy when applied to politics is basically libertarianism. I know that's not what he actually supports/votes for but it's the logical conclusion of what he's saying. I don't say this to start shit, it's just my worldview is so fundamentally incompatible with it that there's not much point in discussion.

Unperson's philosophy when applied to politics is basically libertarianism. I know that's not what he actually supports/votes for but it's the logical conclusion of what he's saying. I don't say this to start shit, it's just my worldview is so fundamentally incompatible with it that there's not much point in discussion.

I would not apply my philosophy to politics, though. I was speaking specifically of how thinking of people as faceless hordes leads to misanthropy. "Oh, they're all like that." "You know how those people are." "You can't negotiate with [people from country X], they're all crooks." That kind of thing. I am in full support of people banding together to work for a collective goal (provided I support the goal). But a way to avoid misanthropy is to remember that every other human being on earth is just as much an individual as you are. You think you're a good person. They do too. You think your problems are unique in all the world. So do they. That's all I meant by my earlier statement — just basic mindfulness that every other person is one person, and not a member of some arbitrary class or subgroup that you've decided you're against.

if we're talking group formations out of political science textbooks let's not forget anarchism which sounds drastic but at least makes space for romance <3

And chore wheels

Great thread, wish I could collect and express my thoughts as well as y'all. Maybe tomorrow..

And chore wheels

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, January 14, 2025 6:54 PM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

trading fridges for fridge magnet calendars

I feel like a lot of the libertarian to conservative pipeline is "I should have complete control over my situation" starts with the individual, then branches out to the home and family, and eventually becomes this authoritarian project to protect supposedly personal liberties that rely upon all of those institutions to be actually functional

It's like car ownership. I can theoretically go from a parking spot that's as close to my current location as physically possible to anywhere connected by land. It just took the world's largest terraforming projects and the maintenance of a global energy pipeline to accomplish this.

map is making me into an anarchist to fight my institutional misanthropy, minute by minute

like with everything political positions are libidinal and no one's general political beliefs are actually coherent. there, there's my over-general statement for the day, time to take a break from this thread.

I didn't start out as an anarchist but mutual aid made me one.

i also don't think its fair that monks go live away from the world and are considered holy and humble and all that shit and I'M supposed to love everyone? let the monks deal with some of the people i've had to deal with over the years. they'd cry into their prayer bowls.

lol scott

I don't even own a misanthropy

I answered this last week when I was off from work on annual leave. I've been back three days and actually I have decided I hate everyone and everything.

lol and also <3