WHAT THE HELL IS MISANTHROPIC PESSIMISM?

by John Grauerholz

Misanthropic pessimism is the suspicion that existence itself is a rather horrible affair and that any change human beings might make on this earth would only make things even more horrific.  Misanthropic pessimism starts from the recognition that life itself is agonizing and appalling – and the realization expands to the awareness that it is actually other people that have made things so much more anguished and atrocious.   Humans, being what they are, will start to meddle in this awful reality – and all that effort and exertion will only make this planet all the worse.

Being born is bad enough to begin with, but it is humanity that makes this world unendurable.  For a pessimistic misanthrope, mankind is the worst thing about existence – other people are the most ghastly and grisly things in the universe.

Think of the cosmos as a sort of concentration camp – a terrible enough way to live out one’s days.  But, to make things even crueler, each inmate is then violated and victimized by the other prisoners, making life all the more terrifying.  Being imprisoned in life is ruinous enough – but the every day you are raped and ravaged by the other convicts.   Just as in a Nazi death camp, the Jewish kapos were far more sadistic than the German overlords.  Like a celestial warden, Jehovah delights in your eternal suffering. Human existence is a life sentence.

There is an easy and obvious solution: extinction of the entire species.  Only human extermination and execution will end this scourge.  The only encouraging thing about modern society is that total annihilation is close enough to tickle the nose hairs.  During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army determined that sometimes it is necessary to destroy a village in order to save the territory – so it is necessary to eliminate the whole species in order to attain salvation.  The only thing that ought to inspire and invigorate you is the prospect of complete eradication of the human race.