Why are Americans so misanthrope?

[Tamingstrange]

Sorry, but a lengthy rant ahead:

Has anyone noticed how nihilism and misanthropy is celebrated and encouraged in the west? I see A LOT of it on websites like Quora and Reddit and it honestly sickens me. It’s often too biased and one-sided. They always complain about all humans are evil, even the ones they've never met before. They all wish that everyone dies. They only see the bad and no good. Firstly, Most of my daily interactions with people are neutral, if not decent. Secondly, who gives them the right to want to harm everyone based on your hatred for them. What moral level does that put them on? Plus, I see many misanthropes on the internet cheering on people getting the virus, even when they did no wrong as far as I could see.

Many of them are one-sided and biased and there need to be more people calling out against them. Nowadays, misanthropy seems to be considered one of the less controversial forms of hatred. It's somehow considered cool to be overly cynical and misanthropic, and to just ignore everything that humanity has accomplished, as if such attitude indicates higher intelligence.

I see people constantly holding the entirety of the human race responsible for the actions of terrible individuals. It's almost mandatory for someone to casually complain about how terrible humans are whenever someone commits a heinous crime, but it's far less common to see people praising humans as a whole when someone does something remarkably positive. I get that there's a natural bias to accentuate the negative, but it's just profoundly unfair and ungrateful to the people who have created everything we benefit from, and to the people who never chose to be born as humans, but simply want to live in peace. I don't get why the good people that I know, and myself, have to be insulted for things over which we have no control and didn’t even do.

The impression I get is that misanthropes are simply projecting their own failings onto the rest of humanity in order to avoid the responsibility of improving as people. If people are just shitty by default, they don't have to feel particularly bad for being shitty. In their eyes, we are guilty by default, regardless of what we accomplish as individuals.

They also use the excuse that nature would be better off without us. The thing is: we ARE a part of nature, and a very valuable part. No other species on Earth has the capacity to care deeply about something to the extent humans can, and we are actually the only species that gives a damn about the wellbeing of any other type of creature. Although we have caused great damage to the environment, that would be true of ANY species nearly as successful as humans.

There seems to be a lot of overlap between misanthropy and nihilism, too, and I find nihilism to be one the most repulsive worldviews in existence. I believe the things that we consider good and beautiful have inherent value; they don't need some greater purpose ascribed by a divine being in order to be important. We, as humans, have the capacity to ascribe importance to things, and that is all that should matter. I'm deeply grateful for the fact that I exist, and that I can experience things, even if that includes a lot of suffering. Existence, as a whole, would be lesser without these experiences, and I can't stand the fact that miserable people want to diminish their meaning while spreading their misery to others, wasting the life they've been given whining about the fact that it's not infinite or perfect.

I see them as pretentious, sanctimonious hypocrites who have no problem benefiting from exploitation and misery while pretending that they’re somehow smarter or more redpilled than everybody else because they claim to resent the human race for that misery. Misanthopes also often confuse their self-proclaimed misanthropy with nihilism, the two of which are very different things, and they’re soul-sucking and depressing to be around.

Much like narcissists and people with borderline personality disorder, misanthropes of the genuine variety give off that “toxic” vibe that most normal people are put off by. They are unnecessarily morbid, bitter, self-righteous and overdramatic, and oftentimes they act as if their disdain for other human beings makes them feel special.

They generally do very little to improve the world around them, and they judge others under a much more scathing lens than they would put themselves under. They seem to have no problem owning purebred domestic pets, for example, even while statistically cats and dogs are responsible for unbelievable amounts of ecological degradation, wildlife killing, factory farming and overall pollution (and are mutants genetically bred by humans; domestic cats and dogs don’t even exist in nature), but then they’ll argue that one of their big reasons for hating the human race is the way the environment is damaged by people. Most misanthropes also have no qualms about using the internet, or with partaking in owning and using digital technology; I could write for hours about the child labour, climate change, strip-mining, destruction of waterways, heavy metal pollution, e-waste and authoritarian regimes tied in with the production of digital technology, but regardless, your garden-variety misanthrope still apparently likes the human race enough to partake in socializing on a smartphone.

It would stand to reason that a misanthrope would have genuine reasons to hate other people: maybe they were horribly abused in childhood, or maybe they saw a brutal murder or something… but no. In my experience, misanthopes exist purely because they have the privilege to be misanthropic. They often cite petty first-world problems, such as career dissatisfaction, frustration with the dating pool or friendship drama, as key factors in their hatred of people, or they observe people at their most extreme (e.g. a 600-pound person on reality television) and use this for their own confirmation bias. If they cite something much more severe as the catalyst for their misanthropy, such as starving children in Africa or the September 11th Attacks, you can bet your money that they’ve only ever read about it in a book or seen it on a video from the safety of their computer screen at home, and rarely, if ever, does the misanthropist get directly involved in trying to change these tragedies. You won’t see or hear a self-proclaimed misanthropist volunteering to help first responders get affordable, accessible healthcare for the cancers and ailments caused by exposure to smoke and toxic debris on 9/11, and you won’t see them going over to Africa and volunteering, or giving their own income to African children in refugee camps. In fact, being that they are misanthropes, they most certainly hated all of the people that died in those disasters because they were humans and are happy about it. They’ll spend their own money on hedonistic pursuits and material property for themselves, of course.
End of rant

[kangarunner]

It's perfectly normal to not like people in general. It's perfectly normal to want to be alone and only associate or spend time with those who are your true friends. Most people are selfish bastards.

Andrew Tate said show me someone with 25 friends and I'll show you a fool. Then he went on to say that most intelligent people have small, highly selective circles of friends.

Most smart people in general have a core group of 3-5 friends.

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

@Tamingstrange

Tamingstrange.. nice name. Here's my little rant with America.

I guess not enough compassion, respect, and love to go around to all those isolated and lonely males in America.
I mean you can't even get laid without looking like a sexual deviant or be labelled as a sexual predator on the evening news. Prostitution is only legal in parts of Nevada and it's prohibitively expensive. All men, regarding their social status, power, and wealth are one "false rape accusation" away from prison and destruction of everything they have built, so men can't mingle and communicate with women openly and freely. Feminism has taken root for the last 60 years in America and most men are seen as socially undesirables, pariah, and scum that needs to be kept down. In addition, single motherhood and kicking your kid out when 18 didn't do Americans any favor in having a tight knit family structure. American public education system is a total joke and divorce is a total nightmare for men financially, physically and mentally. America is an open air concentration camp for men. That's why we got MGTOW, Incels, Passport Bros, and scammer assholes like Tai Lopez and Andrew Tate. And you get lot of f*cked up m*therfuckers like Eric and Dylan Klebod, Choi Seung Hui, Adam Lanza, and many others...

Social media technology and smart phones are also major factor in facilitating isolation. Too many mobile phone zombies today and not enough real face to face conversations. They destroy the ability for people to feel empathy and make people susceptible of instant gratification instead of forming long lasting relationships.

Economic factors also come into play. American wages has barely risen starting from the 1970's. That means there must be two income earners to keep the roof over their head, food on the table, and pay for everything else such as student loans, car loans, mortgage, credit card debt, etc.
In the 1950's and 1960's, you only need one breadwinner to pay for the house, car, vacations, and raise two-three kids. The U.S dollar used to worth something, but the Federal Reserve kept on printing out more money and getting away from the Gold Standard really turned U.S dollar into monopoly toilet paper money.

I can go on and on about the grey and drab architecture that sucks the soul right out of you especially the suburban strip malls and cookie cutter houses and how some places in the U.S looks like a f*cking warzone inhabited by gangbangers, crackheads, and crack dealers.

And American food is filled with all kinds of GMOs, Pesticides, hormones, High Fructose Corn Syrup and all the toxic junk. I mean you are what you eat. When did last time American had a healthy wholesome meal?

Not to mention, all the legalized Political corruption happily conducted by our politicians and those bastards in Washington who doesn't give a f*ck about the willfully ignorant masses.

Perhaps that's why Americans seems to turn into cynical misanthropes. I mean who wouldn't in that kind of repressive and soulless environment?
Their cynical misanthropic demeanors are merely symptoms of a dying empire and their last attempt to numb their pain in a toxic environment.

[Tamingstrange]

I’ll admit that I don’t like people in the abstract sense. But I am not one of those people who indiscriminately hates every single person I come into contact with simply because they are human. It seems that with the misanthropes that I mentioned in my OP, Their hatred and contempt towards humanity doesn’t stem from having been harmed or hurt by others, nor does it stem from the disgust of the evils they inflict on each other. Instead it seems to come much more from narcissism and sociopathy. They hate the human race because they feel that it is stupid and inferior to them. Those types of misanthropes I cannot stand.

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

I’ll admit that I don’t like people in the abstract sense. But I am not one of those people who indiscriminately hates every single person I come into contact with simply because they are human. It seems that with the misanthropes that I mentioned in my OP, Their hatred and contempt towards humanity doesn’t stem from having been harmed or hurt by others, nor does it stem from the disgust of the evils they inflict on each other. Instead it seems to come much more from narcissism and sociopathy. They hate the human race because they feel that it is stupid and inferior to them. Those types of misanthropes I cannot stand.

Yes, that's true. There are some irredeemable misanthropic sociopaths and psychopaths out there. However, the American crony capitalist, corporatocracy, dog eats dog, every man for themselves environment, surely produces a lot of those people that your talking about. That kind of environment is very hostile and toxic towards positive, benevolent, spiritual people.

[martellthacooldude]

I don't like Americans at all

[publicduende]

What ruined the US is individualism. Even people who never lived in the US, like me, know for sure that there was a massive cultural rift between the US before "Reaganian hedonism" and the US after.

People mind their own business: they have college debt to repay, one or more mortgages to repay, probably one or more alimony payments to make. These factors alone are enough to turn every well-meaning man into a soulless work-consume-sleep machine. Whatever humanity and desire to establish genuine relationships with the fellow man are swept aside by anxiety, frustration, fear about both the present and the future.

This is something that has been forcefully engineered and injected into all Western societies. A community that lives in perpetual uncertainty is more likely to stop thinking with their own mind and become malleable, obedient and ready to delegate decisions about their lives and happiness to "the State".

[kangarunner]

People mind their own business: they have college debt to repay, one or more mortgages to repay, probably one or more alimony payments to make. These factors alone are enough to turn every well-meaning man into a soulless work-consume-sleep machine. Whatever humanity and desire to establish genuine relationships with the fellow man are swept aside by anxiety, frustration, fear about both the present and the future.

This is something that has been forcefully engineered and injected into all Western societies. A community that lives in perpetual uncertainty is more likely to stop thinking with their own mind and become malleable, obedient and ready to delegate decisions about their lives and happiness to "the State".

Eventually, living this way will crush your soul....your life force....your life energy....the fire that's in you.

And when you get to a certain age, you've become so stuck that getting out of this ongoing dread and drudgery is too hard of an effort.

Even if you were to become free, your mind has become so programmed to it, that you wouldn't know what to do with your newfound freedom.

I read a good quote, "Most people live in a prison of their own mind".

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

People mind their own business: they have college debt to repay, one or more mortgages to repay, probably one or more alimony payments to make. These factors alone are enough to turn every well-meaning man into a soulless work-consume-sleep machine. Whatever humanity and desire to establish genuine relationships with the fellow man are swept aside by anxiety, frustration, fear about both the present and the future.

This is something that has been forcefully engineered and injected into all Western societies. A community that lives in perpetual uncertainty is more likely to stop thinking with their own mind and become malleable, obedient and ready to delegate decisions about their lives and happiness to "the State".

Eventually, living this way will crush your soul....your life force....your life energy....the fire that's in you.

And when you get to a certain age, you've become so stuck that getting out of this ongoing dread and drudgery is too hard of an effort.

Even if you were to become free, your mind has become so programmed to it, that you wouldn't know what to do with your newfound freedom.

I read a good quote, "Most people live in a prison of their own mind".

That's right. America is only good for making money. All the other factors sucks especially your social and romantic life.

I make six figures, about 95k in salary(recently got promoted to senior manager) and many more in stock dividends, but I still live like a monk because I have no one to talk to and I don't spend a single cent on unnecessary stuff. It feels like a purgatory for me.
Each Americans have a "thick ice wall" in front of them and even if you managed to break that ice wall, they have nothing substantial for me.
Each Americans are just empty vessels like bunch of "Jar Heads".

American Beauty and Fight Club are good movies illustrating my point.

[fschmidt]

I am a misanthrope. I don't hate everyone, only about 99% of modern humanity.

I get that there's a natural bias to accentuate the negative, but it's just profoundly unfair and ungrateful to the people who have created everything we benefit from, and to the people who never chose to be born as humans, but simply want to live in peace. I don't get why the good people that I know, and myself, have to be insulted for things over which we have no control and didn’t even do.

The people who have created everything we benefit from are dead, they are from the past. I don't hate people from the past, I only hate modern people. I hardly know any good people. Yourself? What have you done that is of any value?

In their eyes, we are guilty by default, regardless of what we accomplish as individuals.

The only thing that modern scum accomplish is to make things worse. Modern scum never improve anything.

They generally do very little to improve the world around them, and they judge others under a much more scathing lens than they would put themselves under.

I have done a lot. I have written a lot of good open source software tools. I have designed a way to form a eugenic ethnicity to improve human genetics. Of course modern scum hate everything that is good, so they will hate anything good that anyone creates.

In fact, being that they are misanthropes, they most certainly hated all of the people that died in those disasters because they were humans and are happy about it. They’ll spend their own money on hedonistic pursuits and material property for themselves, of course.

Of course, f**k those people. Why should I help cockroaches at my own expense? Just look around this forum. Clearly most people on this forum itself should die.