Everyone has “off” days, days where a person just wants to lay in his or her bed with the covers pulled up to hide from the world. Everyone has had a day when he or she just doesn’t want to deal with people. The reasons for the lack of interaction can be many and varied. Once such is the oft-peculiar reason of just plain not liking other people. There can be a myriad of reasons why a person may not like and feel comfortable with others or they may feel quite at ease with the world and just not trust their fellow man. Of course, distrust and dislike can manifest themselves in many different ways. People are victims of consciousness, that is, they can make decisions and influence their own choices. A misanthrope is a person who doesn’t like dealing with others; a misanthrope distrusts, fears, and oftentimes resents others and their actions.
Distrust of humanity and those other than oneself can result from many different things. Abuse as a child (leading to hatred of those who harm instead of protect), being forced against your will into an unpleasant and arduous task (such as going to war), or being taken captive by the KGB for disagreeing with Lenin, father of Great Mother Russia. Sometimes, a person can be a misanthrope without having suffered at the hands of their fellow man. Many people distrust other human beings without suffering- they merely witness and observe actions executed by others and see the horrors that result. These people watch the news, read the paper, use the internet. Global communication provides many more reasons for distrusting humanity. Previously unaffected people now witness the abused children, abandoned and raised by wolves; one sees soldiers dying in wars they don’t agree with. Humans witness other humans being killed by still more humans (just for having an illegal telephone) in a Utopia gone awry. These causes are more than enough for anyone to distrust.
Fear and distrust can go hand in hand, or they can be two quite different beasts. You can have a fear of flying without distrusting the pilot or the airplane, or you can fear that the pilot may not be the type of person that you want your life in the hands of. One can distrust his government without fear of being enslaved, or that may be the exact fear one does have. Many fears of humanity are quite valid- fear of fellow humans can help, rather than harm. Fear is a primary motivating factor in many of life’s decisions, fearing consequences dealt by fellow men. For example, someone may really want to try marijuana, but they fear the consequences of doing what has been deemed an illegal action. What gives governments and nations the right to forbid and control what goes into the body of another person, just like the humans that make up said government? What gives any person the right to punish another human for something that causes no harm to themselves or anyone else? What makes a person have authority over another free human being? It is the element of fear. A human won’t do something that one fears will end up bringing harm down upon ones shoulders. Fear can cause someone to shy away from humanity, whether they go to a secluded cave in the mountains or a volcano fortress on an island in the south Pacific, or into the inner workings of one’s own mind, becoming withdrawn, introverted, and alone with one’s thoughts.
Misanthropy can also be looked upon as resentment or a feeling that mankind owes you something, mankind could have acted differently in certain situations or that the rest of humanity isn’t up to the standards one feels it should be. Resentment towards others can be as simple as jealousy or annoyance, or it can be a form of silent protest, or revenge. “We lose sight of our brothers and sisters in humanity and that loss of human intimacy is what breeds hatred.” Andy Barlow tells us why one may feel negatively towards others; they’ve simply lost the pleasant feelings associated with other humans, like love, friendship, respect, and acceptance. Lack of these simple pleasures can and often does lead to misanthropic tendencies.
Misanthropes are often misunderstood or viewed as “bad” people. No people are good or bad, and it is unfair to paint everyone with the same brush. Does one ever stop to consider the reason why misanthropy is constantly being labeled with such negative terms? No one likes being crammed into a niche against their will and such categorizing can surely lead to resenting others. However, those accused of such social distortions such as misanthropy are often very kind, albeit skeptical, smart and sensitive people; the most anti-social among us are quite capable of reforming, given proper reason. Anti-social, misanthropic types often are such because they view it as a way to deal with injustices they may have witnessed or experienced. After all, there is certainly no better way to punish humanity for something humanity isn’t aware of doing than to remove oneself from them. Many people feel shorted by their lot in life, be it a perceived lack of goods, money, respect or otherwise. This alone does not make one a misanthrope, however. Surely many people feel cheated out of something; misanthropes lament supposed losses to the point of resentment.
Surprisingly enough, more people are guilty misanthropic tendencies than we (mankind as a whole) often realize. Most people can remember being on a train in the city and laying eyes on someone looking away and not making eye contact with another living person for the rest of the journey. They were probably regarded with suspicion, with someone wondering “what their deal was.” Truthfully, it was probably nothing. The quiet person on the light-rail across the city probably just didn’t like being crammed into a can of strangers going 60 miles an hour. A misanthrope is one who generally resents, hates, fears or distrusts humanity or mankind as a whole. Misanthropes also have the ability to do good deeds and trust others, though not everyone. Just because one doesn’t agree with the practices of the rest of the human race doesn’t mean that they are incapable of helping their fellow humans in times of need. A misanthrope is not the quiet person playing GTA: Chinatown Wars on the train in the morning; a misanthrope is not someone who’d rather read a book than go to a club. A misanthrope is someone with valid fears and thoughts and opinions about their fellow man, all of which are worthy of respect.
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