In hindsight this thread was a bad idea
I feel like I am mostly a misanthrope. The reason being that most people have treated me absolutely abysmally. My own parents violently assaulted me to the extreme as a child and didn’t feed me to the point I developed serious illness that has had lifelong repercussions. No adult intervened to help me, despite me asking for help. Then abandoned me before I was even an adult. Then I worked for years, a hard job but was paid barely enough to survive by society to the point I had to live in terrible conditions with no security, in dangerous places where I ended up being assaulted by various people. And the police not only did nothing to bring the offenders to justice but even blamed me for the attacks - for instance saying I’d brought it on myself by my clothing style (wearing a heavy metal T-shirt). Then when I became too ill and disabled to work, I find myself in a situation where the government reassesses me for disability benefits far too frequently, awards me zero points for no reason and stops my benefits so I have to beg to survive. Then the people in charge of the social safety nets like food banks, are shit. The packages they give are useless, mostly drinks and junk food, they’re often closed and when my cancer treatment caused me to develop food intolerances and I explained these food intolerances to a food bank worker and asked for food that won’t aggravate it, he got angry, accused me of being a choosing beggar and refused to serve me at all. Then when I turned to Christian organisations for food aid they refused to help, told me to sort my own problems out and said that people shouldn’t even get disability benefits at all because it’s socialism. This is all just the tip of the iceberg.
On top of this I have been let down by doctors every step of the way. it took nearly four years to get my cancer diagnosed because they refused to do any tests, telling me I was a hypochondriac, or just depressed. During this time I suffered immensely and was treated like lazy garbage by everyone. Since then it’s been an endless catalogue of struggling and failing to get the medical help I need, being rudely dismissed by medical staff and treated like crap because they just don’t care. My local pharmacist even complained that my prescriptions cost the NHS too much money.
Hexbear/lemmy is the only place people have treated me with decency and actually helped, and yet even in these places I’ve had nasty people do things like promise help and not deliver, string me along for weeks or months with talk of the help they’re going to send and then just ghost me, and one person on lemmy sent me multiple messages telling me that it doesn’t matter what happens to me, whether I end up homeless on the streets while ill, and giving me helpful suggestions on how to commit suicide.
Even my landlady doesn’t give a fuck about me, she only lets me live here because I hope to get my disability benefit reinstated and when I do I’ll owe her a load of money and she wants it. But she is awful to live with, for instance I suffer severe migraines, aggravated by scents and she just won’t stop spraying scented shit around even though it’s unnecessary and I beg her not to.
Also a ton of sexual harrassment and being treated like crap because of my asexuality, people refusing to accept it’s real and trying to bully me into sexual/romantic relationships, and an incident where I was publicly shamed and humiliated in a cafe full of people by an old man I know because of my asexuality, and then laughed at by the entire cafe.
On top of all this society in general has no sympathy and won’t listen, whenever I’ve talked about this online I’ve been told there is “so much help available” and my situation is my own fault for not accessing it, and having to listen endlessly to how it’s too easy to claim benefits and it must be made harder because it’s so unfair for workers to pay for us lazy dole scum. Yet, are we allowed to access assisted suicide? No. Society won’t feed me or care for me, yet also does everything it can to make sure I still exist, suffering endlessly.
Humanity also very much has a “kick you when you’re down,” mentality. The lower my life has sunk, the worse I’ve been treated by most people. So sorry, yes I’m a misanthrope because in my experience most of humanity is terrible. If that makes me a repulsive person, so be it.
Holy fuck you’ve had a bad lot. If you ever want to just vent or even chat, HMU. I know you’re not trusting of people, but even if you just want to rage at someone, I’m more than happy to listen. I know, shit sucks, but there are people that care. Few and far between, but we do exist.
Thank you. I know there are some that do, I’ve made some friends in the disability megathread who are always compassionate and received help obtaining food and other items from several other people here, so I know not everyone is bad, I just think most people dgaf about anyone who doesn’t benefit them in some way.
Like I said: HMU. Or don’t if you don’t want to. I understand either way, and I got your back either way. <3
thanks, I probably will when I have more energy.
You take care of you. That is the most important thing. <3
Thank you.
Wow you have definitely been through some shit. You are absolutely not the sort of person I’m talking about, and I would never say you’re repulsive.Thank you.
I don’t self identify as a misanthrope but I sure as shit get why people hate the group oppressing them and as an autistic person a lot of times that feels like every other human being on earth.
I have, I’m one of them. I don’t like most people; I much prefer the company of animals. Lots of people don’t seem to get along with me, and that’s not for lack of effort on my part. My particular combination of neurodivergence and medical needs are incompatible with apparently 90% of polite society, and they’ve shown me again and again they have no desire to accommodate, so they can have it. Some of you are all right, though.
If you don’t habitually advocate genocide, you’re a marked improvement over the last one I interacted with.
The struggle of the oppressed and marginalized is my struggle. That this person you speak of exists is why I am the way I am. They’re everywhere. They’re your colleagues, your parents, your comrades. As a pretty smart guy once said, “the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.” Last I checked, Stalin is still dead, and the USSR—the greatest accomplishment of humanity—is gone. We now live in such a rotten time, without a shred of remorse, and without any end in sight. The periodic glimmers of light that peek through the hegemonic forces which shape everyone to be Little Hitlers are not enough to brighten nor warm my cold and hardened heart to them. Maybe someday.
Interesting angle. I would’ve thought if anything that misanthropes would love capitalism and fascism since if you hate humans and think they deserve to suffer, you can’t inflict it much more effectively than those systems do.
I’m sorry that this might seem childish but how do you feel about Disco Elysium?
It is one of my favorite video games. I think it is a masterpiece. I’m glad it was made before COVID.
spoiler
You are a violent and irrepressible miracle. The vacuum of cosmos and the stars burning in it are afraid of you. Given enough time you would wipe us all out and replace us with nothing – just by accident.
I exist.
I exist too.
I was sobbing even before then, during the conversation with the Deserter, which I would later learn is not a common reaction to his dialogue, apparently. For all his other flaws, he was me. I am still him. There may be two wolves inside of me, in fact. They’re both gay. I hope this makes sense.
Yeah I was asking mostly to get your thoughts on
. I don’t know if it’s a wrong to say that the game is kinda made (among other themes aimed at other audiences) to comfort leftists who feel like the Deserter and help them climb out of that feeling, so it’s a bit weird to me to relate to the Deserter without also seeing that the game is asking for us to not be that way? Obviously you can’t help how you feel, and it’s 100% justified to feel rage at all of humanity for getting to this point. But it’s also apparently Not Good to languish in that feeling for all your life, thinking that the world’s only shot at communism was blown and it’s all doomed now.I don’t know, I’m sorry if this comment comes across like how people abuse the term “media literacy” to talk down to others who don’t interpret things the same way. I’m trying to figure out how you engage with the story too, not just pontificating about what I think the intended message is (not that the message being intentional even makes it correct or more valuable).
You’re totally fine. I think that is the correct reading, for the record. Which is why I say that I am glad it was made before COVID, when that reading would have resonated with me, and I can re-contextualize it for the time period it was written. It would not (does not) resonate today. Today, if I were to meet Steban and Ulixes, the representatives of that hope for and resilience of the future present in a war-torn world facing encroaching oblivion, they would tell me that asking their demonstrations to require masking is too alienating to the proletariat, and they won’t be doing that, actually. Precious lines about stars going out in the darkness notwithstanding.
In the real world, COVID was the trial run for how, during a genuine Earth-shattering crisis, a global movement in the modern age materializes, and nowhere in the world was able to meet that very important bar*—how can I believe that we will Do Climate Action, another practically Olympian feat and one just as if not more threatening, let alone Do Communism, a relative pipe dream, in this light? I can’t. I can’t ignore what’s happening in front of me every day, and what’s happening is the era of blackest reaction, gleefully. Remember how a strain of the flu went extinct in the US when only half the population (a generous estimate, even in the early years) were wearing unfit cloth masks—not even proper respirators! Remember when the viral memes all over social media were about nature healing and returning to us when we stopped it all for just a few months? Everyone said no, to that, after a while. Overwhelmingly, and around the globe. Look at what we accomplished when we were merely half-assing it, and we refuse!
The future is unknown, and nothing is forever. I’ll do what I always do: what I can. Fighting is in my blood. I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. In spite of that, I do not have hope, and no one will be able to convince me to hope in this world, with the people that made and continue to make this. We aren’t totally helpless lemmings at the whims of our overlords, not completely, not everywhere; we’re all complicit in this as far as I’m concerned. We’ve by and large abandoned each other, and especially the most vulnerable among us. It’s not just leadership. China’s Zero COVID was supremely unpopular, and what eventually led to its retraction. Try asking your next PSL chapter meeting to mask up. They won’t. This is what’s necessary, and even those without the genocidal, fascistic tendencies of the worst of us won’t abide. How could I not loathe this outcome and everyone who perpetuate it?
*That said, credit must be given to the few countries that stuck it out for years despite global pressures. China and I believe Taiwan, too? New Zealand. There were others, as well, but those are the ones that come to mind right away.
It’s just semantics but I think you’re likely more dealing with antisocial people. I think a misanthrope in a more authentic sense has a distaste for humankind as a whole rather than just generally being socially malapted or resenting other people for existing in their vicinity. Most stereotypical annoying antisocial American males tend to fail to have a deeper misanthropic ideology and are just stunted and bitter.
I associate the term with a particular strain of right-wing thought that tends to include support for stuff like
- Eugenics (“humanity has gone bad because it let too many stupid people breed”)
- Ecofascism (“humanity is a virus so it’s good if unchecked climate change kills hundreds of millions”)
- Social darwinism (“We shouldn’t help someone who gets in trouble, it’s their own fault for being stupid”)
- Support for police brutality/harsh criminal punishments (“Even if they didn’t do the crime they’re accused of, they probably did something bad”)
- Selfish individualism (“Everyone else only cares about themselves, so why shouldn’t I?”)
- Incel ideology (“All women are awful because they only fuck Chads and all Chads are awful too but we’re also awful because we’re 0/10 omega males, everyone and everything is awful”)
In particular I think of that Norwegian guy (IIRC the one Varg Vikernes stabbed) who joined a communist party because he really liked the idea of gulags and secret police but ended up leaving in disappointment when he realized the communists actually wanted to help people.
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Most people think it was right for me to suffer and be mutilated and be ruined forever. My life is forever ruined, forever suffering, and they think that was right. A lot are way worse on the issue then that too. Dunno how I can feel any other kind of way about people like that. Could easily talk about a million issues though.
Fair I probably am repulsive. That’s the attitude most people have. Wonder why I’m not the biggest fan.
You worded this better than I could have. OP lacks any insight into why people may become misanthropic and complains that people who have faced hardship aren’t happy enough about it.
You assume that because I don’t consider it a valid excuse to support things like incel ideology and ecofascism, I don’t understand it.
That’s not what your post said though. A lot of people on this site could fairly be called misanthropic, but those other sentiments are much rarer.
I’m describing my own experiences with people who openly identified themselves to me as misanthropic. If people who do so on this site prove better examples, I’ll happily update my expectations. In fact if their politics are good enough to not get them banned from Hexbear, they’re definitely better examples.
You can be a class conscious misanthrope, but you’ll probably not run into this much due to the self-contradictory nature of it. Someone who dislikes humanity not due to feeling superior to it, but precisely because they are disappointed in the lack of action from said humanity, which inevitably then includes the person themselves.
I also am repulsive and nobody likes to hang around with me. I reel of failure and am the source of it all. I am so big of a failure I don’t even have a country, because it collapsed before I was even born. But it’s okay because I’m 0.000% done building the new one.
if you’re the source of your failure you have time-travel powers.
No I don’t have any special powers. A lot of people (not you!) like to give me superpowers, they like to make me seem super powerful, dangerous, in order to make others fear me and those like myself. That ends up hurting me a lot and then I’m supped to hate society.
That’s how the powerful view me, they dehumanize me and those like me and in their eyes we are just agents of chaos. They think we live in a world where people hurt each other and enjoy it, but there over the border, in the civilized world people hurt each other and hate it.Truth is I can feel the resentment deep down in there. The resentment towards those in power and those who were too indifferent to stop them. I can’t go back in time and save myself. I can’t go into the future where a world exists for those like myself. A world where I’m accepted and can live without fear. The only thing I can do is live right now and hope the people who come after myself don’t need to look back and ask why did I abandon them. Anyways this post isn’t directed at you or anyone really and I’m not helping anyone by making it either, besides the fact that it helps me keep going, which is pretty selfish of me.
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I have, there is usually a steonf mix of self loathing but not necessarily repulsive.
I mean they probably do hate themselves
In my experience they always think they’re the exception lol
I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.
If you’ve met somebody claiming to be a misanthrope, they are lying.
A true misanthrope would never go outside to be met in the first place.
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