Some version of dedicated dismissal of the human species has always stalked the official narratives, whatever they may have been, from Diogenes the Cynic in the ancient world barking at Alexander the Great, all the way forward to the dedicated neurotic fuck-yous of Richard Lewis and Janeane Garofalo in the Comedy Cellar in the ‘90s, with countless stopovers and loops on the way. Maybe the draw was Nietzsche writing his little zingers in his garret, maybe it was Lou Reed flipping off all you guys, and all you girls with all your sweet talk.
Because the official institutions and their associated narratives that constituted mainstream opinion in whatever form they took – religious orthodoxy, civil society, the reassurances of the Hollywood ending – allowed the misanthropic alternative to thrive as an omnipresent shadow figure. Alceste, the original titular Misanthrope of Moliere’s play, was a serious pussy-getter who got exiled for being too real, man.
But that was then. Religious orthodoxy continues to flare up, but not as an all-encompassing weltanschauung, but rather as a series of reactionary fevers. Civil society and the prospect of a commons or a shared destiny are memories at this point. And to find an unironic Hollywood ending, one has to go to the emerging and shamelessly populist morality-play cinemas of Bollywood, Nollywood, and the dopey nationalist action movies coming out of Shanghai and Moscow.
So I can't help but feel that some form of misanthropy has gone from a subcultural current to a mainstream opinion. This is regrettably logical. If we live in a world of unprecedented loneliness, that loneliness is stalked by an unprecedented misanthropy. In the era of climate change, information overload, future shock, panoptic social media, and the levers of power being gripped onto by alternating teams of psychotic nationalists and psychotic neoliberals, it is difficult not to be pessimistic – like I said, a natural and reasonable response, if sad. But that pessimism needs an outlet, and it has an unfortunate way of manifesting itself as a contrast between one's own ego and the repulsive mass around us.
“In spite of everything, I still believe people really are good at heart” – Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl
“They should be rewarded for not being people. I hate people.” – Aubrey Plaza as Depressive Pixie Dream Girl re: cute aminal friends, Parks and Recreation
The various figures of the contemporary commedia dell'arte reflect this widespread attitude. Facebook boomer dads with receding-hairline opinions think they're the heirs to George Carlin, autistic teenagers without relationships or hobbies can dedicate themselves to self-flagellating as they demonstrate their correct opinions, and viral TikToks show imaginary arguments between a random 32 year old creative and himself with slightly different hair. He, of course, wins that argument.
In the atomized space of online communication, it is comforting, a guaranteed win. In your Madison Square Garden of the soul, you will always be the Harlem Globetrotters, they will always be the Washington Generals.
Because in this world, everyone is an idiot but me. Crying-laughing emoji crying-laughing emoji.
Unfortunately, this is not too far from my own natural state of being. Any smart, oversensitive kid quickly learns that many things sucked. And now, let's run some teenage hormones over those existential-angst default settings, add the usual edgy boy inputs (the complete discographies of Nirvana and the Dead Kennedys, repeat viewings of Fight Club and The Usual Suspects). That gets one to the usual teenage fuck-you, the kind that comes with a bottle of Fireball that rolled under the passenger seat of a 1995 Ford Tempo.
Now add high-art texts, chosen pretty much at arm's length, one leading to the other. Kierkegaard seemed like a high priest of anxiety and isolation, and after listening to Nevermind and taking a swig of that Fireball, I accepted Sartre's proclamation that hell was other people more or less as a prime directive. L'enfer, c'est les autres. Fuck the normies, pass the Doritos bitch, I got hella munchies.
But when Sartre said that, he didn't say that other people were hell -- the vision of the hell he didn't believe in that he puts forth in No Exit consists of anxieties, fears, conflicts, resentments, and projections, not the people themselves. And even then, this most famous quote was not a philosophical statement – it’s a quote from the character of Garcin, and, well, he's a bit of a dick. So it's no different than the other teenage boys who took Tyler Durden (or for that matter Eric Cartman) at his word. It’s a natural desire to be known as a heretic with an unforgiving vision.
And yet while I said as much... I didn't hate people, not truly. Sure, my fellow man disappointed me more often than not, but at the end of the day I found people more frightening and confusing than worthy of contempt. Some might have called my attitude misanthropic, but perhaps the better word is weltschmerz, the “world-pain” engendered by the inability to account for the cruelty of the world.
Many years ago, my beloved high school Western Civilization teacher (hard to believe such a thing still existed) asked us where we were on the scale of belief in the capacity of humans – were we John Locke, optimistic believers in tabula rasa and the liberal democratic politics to follow, or were we Thomas Hobbes, inveighing against the nasty, brutish, and short life of the uncultivated man? As a wee edgelord, I of course agreed with Hobbes more, but… I didn’t like the implications, the belief that therefore man must be steered by a tyrant. Nor should I have.
And misanthropy does lead to reactionary politics, whether that’s Hobbes’ Leviathan, or the puritanical belief that we are all sinners in the hands of an angry god, or the strict delineation of a dar al-Islam as the only locale in which peace may reign. I clearly didn’t vibe with that, because, well, I liked things like democracy. And being free to smoke a bowl whenever I damn well pleased. I may have disagreed vehemently, albeit purely intuitively, with my teacher at the time, but that may have been a moment when doubts were sown as to my contempt for the human species. My pessimism existed because I felt bad for my fellow man, not because I hated him.
Furthermore, the misanthropy itself was also infinitely more charming when it was an undercurrent. Diogenes and Heraclitus and Lucian, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Stirner, Richard Pryor and Dave Attell and John Kennedy Toole, they all spoke their truth, and sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong, but they at least felt like original and necessary interpretations and counterpoints.
So the older I get, the more my love and empathy expand. I’m not in a childhood bedroom or grotty college dorm anymore, and I’ve somehow against all odds managed to live a life of travel and art and letters. And when I flaneur around, staring at the infinite sea of faces, all I can think is how utterly fascinating they all are. So when I feel hopeless about the brave new world we inhabit, it’s more that, well… I just feel bad for all of them. I still think I’m trapped on a burning planet with a bare minimum of hope, but I feel lousy for even the most pigheaded and deluded of my fellow prisoners.
Now I can already hear certain protestations. This could itself be a new version of the contrarian hipster attitude -- I was misanthropic before it was cool.
Perhaps that is true, but if so, I’d like to think this isn’t me being even more of a dick. Rather, it’s a generalized sadness at no longer being the canary in the coal mine. All the humans followed me down, even as I gasp and flutter my last as the white damp sets in.
So, dear reader, let it be known that this canary loves you, even if he’s wondering why the fuck he’s here.
