This just in...

[jawnbc]

...misanthropy isn't clever, entertaining or terribly useful. Most misanthropes are also lazy fuckwits who do nothing to address the world's ills that oh so upset you. Usually ones with superior educations, excellent career (or prospects), with no appreciation for what a really difficult life is like.

Get off you fucking asses and make change happen. Or shut the fuck up.

Kind regards,

jawnbc

Comments

[chen-tokuryu.livejournal.com]

Amen to that!

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

My experience with misanthropes: nine times out of ten, they've been bruised so badly by [insert something here] that they no longer experience pain as pain, but as a trigger to anger. Which they need to vent.

I give 'em hugs, unless they point the anger at me or mine, at which point I say "bitch, please," and find ways not to associate with them.

Sometimes they recover; I was going down the misanthropy path a few years back myself, but it wasn't much fun, so I pushed myself elsewhere.

[bear-left.livejournal.com]

I'll second Pete's observations (& all the 'amens')... it's tempting to make John's post a sign for my office door. The people who need to get the message would miss it, though.

That all said, wouldn't Miss Anthropy be a fabulous drag queen?

[jawnbc]

I'd make it a 20/80 split, with 80 being folks whose biggest challenge in life has been student loan debt and a bit of body fascism.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

[giggle]

At the risk of being serious, one thing I had to take a look at during my own "recovery" process was "why did I get so wrapped around the axle about shit that didn't bother my sibs?" My life has, arguably, been rather charmed, but I think you've seen me go off my nut about stuff that bothered me once or twice. I just think I turned out a little too vulnerable to shit. When I see misanthropes and major drama queens these days, I see a LOT of what I used to wrestle with ... minus the recognition that I had to learn how to heal myself.

[jawnbc]

Ah but there is a difference between a discourse, a diatribe and a rant. ;)

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Yep. Pace my reply to Stephen, I'd say I figured out those distinctions sometime AFTER you first met me, though. Not that I hadn't been working on it long before that. :)

Glad to read that this wasn't any *particular* misanthrope who had gotten to you today, however. I agree, the older and more mature I get, the less patience I have with some of it.

[lusty-librarian.livejournal.com]

there is a drag queen in vancouver with that name!

[dakoopst.livejournal.com]

*nodding in agreement*

One of the first lessons learned in teacher training: when a kid lashes out at you, it's almost never for the apparent reason.

Misplacing one's anger to deal with it is a very effective defense mechanism. Not the healthiest, perhaps, but effective nonetheless.

[jawnbc]

Not children. Grown-ups. Who, while deserving at times of license, are equally expected to be responsible. Misanthropy isn't a bad mood, it's a demeanor after all.

[dakoopst.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. I didn't make clear that I think the same issues hang around through our teenage years into adulthood. I think that's where a lot of the misanthropy comes from: ossified defense mechanisms which run so deep they become an integral part of a personality.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Precisely.

Best thing I learned from my first therapist, who worked primarily with sexual-abuse survivors: ultimately, everyone wants to be healthy. Sometimes people are caught in dangerous situations, and adapt in order to survive--and people are VERY flexible about the ways they'll adapt under pressure. Later, the adaptive behaviors are no longer useful or healthy, because circumstances change. But people have a tendency to cling to what helped them survive; at that point, they're often not very flexible at all. A great deal of maladaptive behavior is traceable to people not outgrowing their old wounds and/or their old defense mechanisms.

Adulthood is not a chronological age; to a large extent, it's the process of outgrowing one's old shit.

I became an adult somewhere between 39 and 41. I'm 42 now.

[jawnbc]

42 is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

I heartily endorse the latter option, since I'm quite aware that misanthropes are no fun whatsoever.

But that doesn't stop me from being misanthropic.

It's hard not to be in a place where every aspect of your life is dominated by competition for space, and where 99% of the people you encounter don't share your values.

As for "making change happen", I really, really, really hope that life in the country will be more pleasant.

[jawnbc]

Well you are making changes. And really Tony you have a choice of two of the best, most secure, opportunity-rich countries in the world (if not more).

[bix02138.livejournal.com]

i'm with both of you on this one. sometimes it's damage, sometimes it's assholeism. and sometimes it's one passing as the other.

lots of damaged people cope by becoming bitter or what is called cynical (though isn't, really: g.o.p./p.c. (aù canada) handlers and tacticians are tryly cynics), by building walls of separation and protection. these walls keep the good out as much as the bad, so things don't get any better.

assholes born of privelege are bored with their uninteresting, entitled existences. they haven't had—and i mean had—to work to survive, or make terrible choices, or have no options at all. their lives of stultifying sameness are made interesting only through inflicting their ennui and entitlement on those they deem powerless or without requisite beauty.

i suspect you've had a run-in with one of these today, and for that i am truly sorry. think of querelle or any view north from vancouver city centre... and smile.

[jawnbc]

Thanks, but actually not. Just one of those spur-of-the-moment social commentaries. ;)

[bix02138.livejournal.com]

ah, ok. good.

you can still think of querelle or any view north from vancouver city centre... and smile.

that advice is always good.

[jawnbc]

Indeed! And after the fabulous banging he gave me last night, I should be smiling all week.

I'm just sayin'...

[bix02138.livejournal.com]

oh dear... did the room just go all wobbly?

must. sit. down.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

You hate everything.

[jawnbc]

you mean I'm a mis-it-all?

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

heh heh

mise-en-plot

[zurcherart.livejournal.com]

I was going to write an ironically misanthropic post. But, then I realized I couldn't pull it off - the ironic part that is.

[jawnbc]

How paradoxical

[jawnbc]

Bitter men don't wear pink. Or marry Whores. Bitter me that Doc...

[shawnsyms.livejournal.com]

I can handle misanthropes. I really hate lycanthropes, though!

[shawnsyms.livejournal.com]

I was trying to be funny with the -thrope thing, but I like all animals.

Especially squirrels!

[unzeugmatic.livejournal.com]

This reply isn't about misanthropy per se, but about its external expression. Which is all we can sometimes control, anyway.

This could seem Pollyannaish or too simplistic to note, but day-to-day life (in particular work) is hard enough for most people. The idea that there are those who, through their attitude and behavior and general presentation, make it even harder for other people is abhorrent to me.

So I see self-preclaimed misanthropes giving salesclerks or waiters or bus drivers a hard time. Or being testy in the workplace in response to perfectly legitimate requests (which, as a practical matter, gets you less work to do as it makes people reluctant to ask you anything, although that's at the price of making more work for other people). I see people just being generally unpleasant for reasons I cannot discern.

So is this misantropy I speak of, or simply rudeness or perhaps just a bad mood? Well, in the workplace -- yours or somebody else's -- it goes beyond rudeness, but actually it doesn't matter to me whether it's actual misanthropy or not because the affect is the same. And it's only in what you are doing to others that your attitude towards the world and its inhabitants should concern me at all. Hate humanity with all the energy you have, as long as I don't have to live you with why should I care? But turn that hatred into behavior that makes things harder for other people and then you become a poopyhead, in an objective sense.

The hell of it is that there are so many rewards, both shorterm and longterm, in thinking generally about whether you are not making things harder for other people.

[jawnbc]

or better. or at least no worse. Agreed.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.