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In Defence of Misanthropy

Diogenes_looking_for_a_man_-_attributed_to_JHW_Tischbein, cynic, misanthrope

Ignorant critics that are against those who possess a misanthropic and/or cynical outlook on humanity often prescribe their outlook as the cause of lifestyles or behaviours that the critic deems undesirable. These critics lack the ability to acknowledge reality. And, in some instances, these critics lack negative life experiences that would enable them to handle potential hardships that which the cynic often has prior experience typically as an indirect or direct result of the decisions of their fellow humans. This is why the critics, in their own personal lives, seem to struggle to accept and react wisely when something undesirable happens to them. Instead, emotional reasoning is what influences their decision-making in such hardships.

As an attempt to gaslight and deride the misanthropic cynic, critics erroneously espouse cynicism to be the cause of a lack of relationships and friendships, diminished employment prospects, development of mental disorders and so on. But it is entirely the opposite. This backwards view of cause-and-effect is an example of the just-world fallacy that such critics are ignorant of self-reflecting. Their response is merely a defensive ploy; an attempt to perceive humankind with utopian lenses rather than for what it truly is.

An indiscriminate disdain of humankind isn’t generated out of existential nothingness, and by indiscriminate, I mean to say the whole nature of our species rather than particular groups of people. The cynic and the misanthrope see humankind for what it truly is and they are not in denial of its nature. They have experienced this nature and thus reflected without an over-optimistic bias.

The human race is comprised of people who are inherently vindictive, insincere, fickle, ignorant, cold, distrustful, unreliable, uncaring, selfish, hypocritical, vain, judgemental, intolerant, deceitful, insidious, delusional, naïve, opportunistic and I shall stop otherwise this essay will exhaust more commas than words.

For the misanthropic cynic, it is not at all surprising for me to witness them approaching the conclusion that which they arrive and to then see them withdraw from the banes of society in preference for a life of solitude and very selective social engagements.

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