Connor Beaton explores why misanthropy is spreading, pointing to social media, financial anxiety for younger generations, and how hatred has become tied to identity. He argues cynicism offers an escape from vulnerability and warns that widespread contempt corrodes social cohesion.
You've likely felt the temperature increasing in recent days, weeks, months and years. The temperature of people hating other people. Now, the word for this, the term for this is misanthropy. Misanthropy literally just means the dislike of other people, specifically humankind. It's kind of like a dislike for humankind, for mankind. It's an antisocial behavior, a cynicism, a skepticism, a kind of reclusiveness. But the other part of this is the othering that happens when misanthropy is on the rise, when the hate of people is on the rise to such a degree that it's become almost like a badge of honor to hate people based on some arbitrary ism or ist, right? You look at somebody, they disagree with you, they disagree with your political stance, they disagree with how you vote, they disagree with some, you know, social value. And immediately this becomes the, the, the reason with a kind of like righteous indignation for you to dislike them, for you to see them as the enemy. And slowly this is poisoning the waters of the human psyche. There are other factors that play into this, right? There are other things just beside social media and the virtue signaling and the narratives that happen. There's the very real fact that you watching this, depending on your age range, I mean, if you're under 45, you are far more likely, far less likely, sorry, to be successful financially, to have financial abundance and freedom than your parents, AKA for the majority of people, especially when you're in your 20s or your 30s. The truth is that the economy sucks and most people will be incentivized to hate the people that are doing better than you. I remember feeling like that, you know, in my 20s. I was like, man, the people that have money have it so good and they have such an easy life. And you know, and then I look at how much worse the economy has gotten for the average person and what it must be like to be 20 years old in today's economy and think, I, I've seen some of the data, I've seen some of the reports, I've seen the news. How in the hell am I supposed to get ahead? And so it feeds into this hatred of people. We could go down the rabbit hole, as I see many people do, of, well, this is what the elites want, this is what the powerful want. This is how the government does X, Y and Z. You know, it's a mass psyops and all that kind of stuff. I see all this stuff online. My message for you remains the same. That misanthropy and the hatred of people, of anyone that is different from you. It may feel like a clever or even a righteous stance. It might leave you feeling a sense of ego and entitlement, it might leave you feeling with a sense of strength and righteousness and a conviction but it fundamentally corrodes the very soil that you and I stand on collectively. Disagreement should never be the foundation of severing relationship or at the very least disagreement should never be an excuse for us to wish fundamental harm on one another even if it's unconscious, but to actively contribute to the destruction of our species. And if you look closely you'll find that cynicism is actually a very easy way out. Hatred of another is a very wonderful way out. It spares you from the vulnerability of hope. It spares you from the real effort of having to engage with somebody who is fundamentally different from you to seek understanding. And through understanding the there is always some type of a portal for change and connection and transformation. Always with there. So the question is not whether the world really deserves your love. The question is whether you will choose to be the kind of person where the world is worth being in that you continue to perpetuate the quality of love and compassion and acceptance and curiosity that is actually necessary in a time of vile misanthropy, a vile hatred for anyone and all people that are different from you. And yes, I understand that there's a whole other conversation about policies, about politics, about the people that are running our governments and our countries and that sometimes how you feel and how I feel and how another person feels about what should happen within policy is wildly different. That doesn't mean that I should hate the other person on the other side of the policy and it doesn't justify my violence towards them ever. So man it forward. Share your thoughts and your comments in the comment section below. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this one and until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.
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