misanthropy - why is it so bad?

[noel emits]

It's either misanthropy or myopia. Choose.

 

[Guybrush]

Ok, so it’s like misogyny + misandry = misanthropy?

 

[john eden]

Misanthropy became fashionable for a while thanks to Boyd Rice and Death In June banging on about it.

A moot point is whether people who adopt it for a pose then become genuinely misanthropic, or whether people are just drawn to stuff like that because they already hate everyone.

It's quite a big thing to hate, I think, and must be quite time-consuming and tiring.

 

[noel emits]

Yeah hating is bad and self-defeating I suppose, but I feel like I'm being a proper mush-head hippy if I don't retain a good awareness of certain realities regarding many people. We're all bozos and I don't tend to blame but you know - there is much stoopidity and selfishness. Maybe I should get over it.

 

[dogger]

It's quite a big thing to hate, I think, and must be quite time-consuming and tiring.

but i think that's the whole point for certain types of misanthropes: the strength of their (negative) feeling becomes a raison d'etre...:slanted: returning to gek-opel's first post on the thread: yes, of course misanthropy is the hatred of people /in general/, of humanity, and as such is inevitably associated with a tendency to withdrawal and isolation. or excessive identification with another species, cf: swift's houhyhnhnhms.

turning it around, the do-goody christian/university union "i'm friends with everyone" types are ball-achingly irritating, the idea that you could uncritically "like" everyone is as ridiculous as the idea that you could hate everyone...i suppose they both are symptomatic of a refusal to engage with other people on a meaningful level, and both these types of people tend to be fundamentally self-obsessed.

 

[john eden]

turning it around, the do-goody christian/university union "i'm friends with everyone" types are ball-achingly irritating, the idea that you could uncritically "like" everyone is as ridiculous as the idea that you could hate everyone...i suppose they both are symptomatic of a refusal to engage with other people on a meaningful level, and both these types of people tend to be fundamentally self-obsessed.

I wish I'd written that.

 

[Martin Dust]

Misanthropy became fashionable for a while thanks to Boyd Rice and Death In June banging on about it.

Boyd was very funny with it tho, while Douglas just couldn't back anything he said up.

 

[noel emits]

I think I'm with Sid Vicious on this.

 

[gek-opel]

I agree with John, misanthropy must inevitably be more of an aspiration than an actual psychological state, given the inherent difficulty of the thing- is it possible to be misanthropic to humanity in general, but ok with individual people? Or to love humanity, but despise each individual example of it that you happen to meet?

 

[mms]

black metal shrives on misanthropy or kvlt behavior, negative feeling is their reason d'etre, or negative feelings expanded into total negativity about humans or superiority mythology wrapped in misanthropy.
i don't know how they keep it up.

 

[mistersloane]

black metal shrives on misanthropy or kvlt behavior, negative feeling is their reason d'etre, or negative feelings expanded into total negativity about humans or superiority mythology wrapped in misanthropy.
i don't know how they keep it up.

Certainly for the Norwegian lot I always saw it as an over punk response to living in a liberal climate : faced with a society that lets you out of prison at the weekend, what can you possibly do to piss your parents off? Or anyone for that matter? A return to Odinist pagan times is like the dumbest thing you could do in that situation, thus...