Misanthropy
Hey everyone,
Part of writing a newsletter is spending a lot of time using a thesaurus. I like to keep my newsletters as brief as possible, and I look for new words to help get my point across more efficiently. One word that I’ve discovered in the past year is misanthropy, and I felt it nicely summarized my view of the world until very recently.
According to Wikipedia:
Misanthropists believe that human beings, by design, are not to be admired, liked, or trusted due to inherent flaws in how people interact with each other and the world at large. Misanthropy is directly at the center of Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. album which asks the listener to decide if evil in the world is due to weakness and bad choices or wickedness in human nature. I’m not sure how Kendrick truly feels about the subject, but I’ve long held the opinion that you need to lower your expectations when dealing with people to not be disappointed. You can only be hurt by someone you trusted once.
I can’t pinpoint it to one specific event, but gradually I’ve become more compassionate and empathetic towards my fellow human beings. We have more in common than divisive identity politics would have us believe, and it’s sad to see people being so easily manipulated and distracted from what is the true cause of our ailments. We are greater than the sum of our parts, and we will need others to become self-actualized and reach our full potential. And to fully trust and depend on others, you need to have faith in humanity being capable of good.
A month ago, I watched The Whale, starring Brendan Fraser. Fraser plays the film’s main character Charlie, an overweight college professor desperately trying to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie before his inevitable death due to weight and health issues. When Charlie resigns himself to his fate, what keeps him going is his goal to help his daughter lead a better life than he did. He’s convinced that everyone can be a good person, and it’s up to him to get through to Ellie that she can change for the better. I don’t want to spoil the film for anyone that hasn’t seen it, but his journey of regret, redemption, and ultimately salvation is equally heartwarming and heartwrenching. I highly recommend this to anyone that hasn’t seen it, and it’s obvious why Fraser won the Academy Award for Best Actor, but I digress.
I’ve been off of social media for the past few years because I noticed that the dialogue on the various platforms was becoming increasingly negative and it was reinforcing my misanthropy. I’ve been reminded why I have yet to return to Twitter or Facebook with all of the media coverage of the recent OceanGate Titan submersible voyage and implosion. The lack of empathy and compassion displayed for the victims has been predictable and disheartening. Regardless of how wealthy an individual may be, they’re still a human and they still leave behind loved ones after such a tragic incident. Much like Charlie in The Whale, I have to believe that people can improve and become kind-hearted despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
I don’t have a magic wand to wave around and make people more empathetic. I don’t have a mathematical equation for how to improve the way humans treat each other. I don’t have a simple solution for how to address the growing loneliness epidemic among American adults. I don’t have the answers Sway. But the one thing I do have is hope.
And I hope that you all have hope too.