Why I'm A Misanthrope Part II
O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in't! - Miranda in The Tempest Act 5, scene 1, 181–184
Yes, there is going to be lots of Shakespeare in this post. I will share the reason I love his work. I didn’t read to any of it until I was 30 years old. It’s true. As an intermediate school, high school, and college dropout I never took an English class on Shakespeare. When I returned to college at the age of 29 as an English major, I took plenty in a short period of time. I knew a bit about King Lear from “I Am the Walrus” and Hamlet from various sources, but I didn’t actually do a deep dive into Shakespeare until I took my first English course called “Critical Practice.” I needed to visit the professor, Leroy Searle, during office hours because I didn’t understand Hamlet. He was surprised I’d never been exposed to the play and patiently answered my questions about Hamlet’s age, the funky names of characters, a little background about the origins of the story, etc. “Critical Practice” was a tough first course after being away from college for eight years. It may have been the only class where I took copious written notes that made no sense when I looked back on them. In essence, critical practice is how to approach text. There are many ways to do this: historical, literary, deconstruction, exegesis, etc. After reading the play, I wrote a paper about the concept of age in Hamlet, particularly the interactions of Hamlet and Polonius. I earned a B+ on that paper. As Leroy Searle said, (the course was taught by him and Hazard Adams) “Polonius is an old fart.” Indeed, he is, but even an old fart can dispense wisdom.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
— Hamlet Act I, scene 3, lines 78-80
The problem is that people don’t see themselves in others. The bigger problem is they don’t see themselves as others do. They go about their lives deluded, lying to themselves about almost anything so they can avoid the truth. No one hates themselves more than they do, because no one truly knows themselves. There is only one thing of importance while we’re here, alive, in this moment. Awareness. I don’t subscribe to inference although most of humanity does; the sun may not rise tomorrow.1 The world is full of wonder and awe and every day is opportunity to experience it with our senses and perceptions. It’s also the opportunity to trudge through the day miserable, unhappy, anxious and stressed. The choice is ours and it’s called free will.
If evolution is a thing, and all humanity is involved in it, I’d say we’re devolving. It’s Mike Judge’s Idiocracy writ large. There are more dumb asses who have no common sense and can’t think critically than thoughtful, considerate, intelligent people. Humanity pursues its basest desires by worshiping values that they, themselves, have created. Money is an illusionary concept, devoid of real value and meaning, yet is worshiped above all else. The destruction of this stressed planet is directly related to “economic growth,” another man-made concept that doesn’t account for the real cost of actions. In this illogical pursuit for “profits” over “conservation” we have ruined our only home. So much for Jehovah’s command that mankind have “stewardship” over this dominion and all on it, we failed miserably. We’re fucked and I don’t see us fixing a damn thing.
My thoughts are desolate, my health problematic, my life growing shorter, and my patience worn thin. I spent a great deal of my life like other people, deluded, lying to myself and others, lacking compassion and empathy, and hating myself despite professing how exceptional I was. I was an asshole and a jerk. My unabated abuse of alcohol and cocaine were symptoms of my disease (nothing says dickhead like an extremely drunk coke freak). When I started smoking pot again and moderating my alcohol intake I had my Epiphany of the Rice Bowl. Everything in its time, everything in its place.
From Hamlet Act II, scene 2, lines 318-332
HAMLET I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
It’s so good they made a song out of it.
As I contemplate human history since the American centennial in 1876, I am amazed. For all recorded history there has never been such an acceleration of technological advancement. The human population at that time was approximately 1,400,000,000. Today, it is over 8,000,000,000. In 150 years, the world’s population grew by 6,600,000,000 (somebody is fucking a lot!). In those 150 years we’ve gone from lighting our homes with gas, to electric incandescent bulbs, to LED bulbs. We’ve gone from hand-cranked mathematical calculator to handheld computers. Telegraphs gave way to telephones, radio and television. Physical media like motion picture and photograph film, recorded music, and books has given way to digital files. The entire recorded knowledge of humanity can be accessed from any device connected to the internet, a world-wide communications and information network. Transportation has advanced beyond horse and buggy, wind-powered ships, and steam engine trains to supersonic aircraft, gasoline powered automobiles, and nuclear-powered ships. In that span of time, we’ve experienced nuclear fallout, acid rain, ozone depletion, air pollution, microplastics in our brains and blood. We’ve created things solely for profit and convenience without a thought to the effect it has on our environment (by that, I mean our entire system of existence). O brave new world, indeed!
GUILDENSTERN My honored lord.
ROSENCRANTZ My most dear lord.
HAMLET My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do
you both?
ROSENCRANTZ
As the indifferent children of the earth.
GUILDENSTERN
Happy in that we are not overhappy.
On Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button.
HAMLET Nor the soles of her shoe?
ROSENCRANTZ Neither, my lord.
HAMLET Then you live about her waist, or in the
middle of her favors?
GUILDENSTERN Faith, her privates we.
HAMLET In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true!
She is a strumpet. What news?
ROSENCRANTZ None, my lord, but that the world’s
grown honest.
HAMLET Then is doomsday near. But your news is not
true. Let me question more in particular. What
have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of
Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?
GUILDENSTERN Prison, my lord?
HAMLET Denmark’s a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world one.
HAMLET A goodly one, in which there are many confines,
wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’
th’ worst.— Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, line 240-256
Doomsday, yes! In 150 years, we have set the course for the destruction of all we’ve known and everything on this planet. We’ve endured wars, famines, droughts, disasters, and a litany of atrocities so vile they are almost beyond comprehension. Humans are untrustworthy, cruel, thoughtless, inconsiderate, selfish, and contemptible. “I have no love of man…” as Hamlet said, and I have to agree with him. It isn’t me that is insane, it’s a society that allows this to happen.
Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer2 wrote, presciently about our current condition:
I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, for grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want everyone to scratch himself to death.
For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens. Not one of us is intact, and yet we have in us all the continents and the seas between the continents and the birds of the air. We are going to put it down -- the evolution of this world which has died but which has not been buried.
Nothing will avail to offset this virus which is poisoning the whole world. America is the very incarnation of doom. She will drag the whole world down to the bottomless pit.
This was written 90 years ago. The human condition and Western society are even worse today. The virus has spread. We are all infected. I admire and pity those indigenous tribes who encounter modern man, because they will not survive. They fight the oil companies who infringe on their lands (because their land doesn’t really belong to them). We played all this out with the genocide of indigenous tribes here in the good ole United States. Nothing old will remain.
Maybe it’s not humanity, maybe it’s Americans.
As for myself, lately I’ve been a shit magnet that has taken to muttering “stupid cunt” and “twat” (pronounced the British way, like “hat.”) when I encounter an ever-increasing amount of ridiculous stupidity. I’ll share the latest adventure in riding public buses in Reno.
This happened about a month ago at the bus stop near the East 2nd Street Walmart across from the Grand Sierra Resort (aka GSR. I call it the Gun Shot Residue casino.). Walking from Walmart to the bus stop, there was a very vocal, very loud, very annoying family: mom and dad and two boys who were around eight or ten years old. They were heading toward the bus stop too. I walk pretty fast for a variety of reasons, but this time it was to create distance between myself and this family. They were irritating and annoying to me. I said nothing to them, I just kept on trucking.
There were a lot of people waiting at the bus stop. There is absolutely no shade anywhere. It was hot out. I was sweating. I sat on the metal bench and waited. The buses were about ten minutes away (three stop there, the 18, 12, and 9. The 18 and 12 come at the exact same time and go to the exact same place. Badly planned transit is my go-to piss & moan). The family arrived at the stop and placed themselves directly in my line of sight. The eight-year-old was whining because he didn’t get something he wanted at Walmart. It was loud and constant with dad, who I named White Bubba, asking him to stop. Mom was picking on the ten-year-old, who was absorbed in his Nintendo Switch. I took it all in, because I love watching bad parenting! (Yes, that’s sarcasm.) I took a few glances at Bubba’s t-shirt to try to understand what was on it. I finally saw it was the word “FREEDOM” in large letters with a bald eagle flying above purple mountains majesty and a motorcycle. As soon as I confirmed my original suspicion that Bubba and his family were MAGA asshats he looked at me (again, he was in my line of sight) and accused me of staring at him for five minutes. There were many responses I could’ve have given, from the literal (“We haven’t been here five minutes.”), to the sarcastic (“If you don’t want to be looked at you shouldn’t go outside.”), or simply ignoring him. I chose the one that he wasn’t expecting. I said, “Are you angry?” This could be taken a number of ways—he was dealing with his whining son, he was probably hot and tired as I was and pissed about it, or that I wasn’t going to back down. Bubba wanted a confrontation with me. He wanted to PROVE something in front of his family, and so did I. This wasn’t my first rodeo dealing with a potentially violent situation and I was prepared to fuck him up if it came to that. He again stated I was staring at him. I replied that I wasn’t staring at him. He repeated it. I realized he was not too smart. I shrugged, told him, “Yes, I was staring at you,” got up off the bench and walked so I was facing the street with my back to him.
When the bus arrived the crowd of people surged to enter. I was right there so I got on early and watch Bubba, his wife, and his kids enter the bus and head toward the back. Again, loud, obnoxious, and with an attitude of entitled privilege. After all, they are white Christian Americans. What more could you ask of God? We rode along until we were close to the last stop at the 4th Street RTC Station. They got off by the Truckee River trail (which is lovely!) and the Reno Police Station. All except the ten-year-old! The bus pulled out and this kid was so absorbed in his game that his family left him on the bus! Child abandonment. He started yelling that he needed to get off. I yelled at the driver to pull over and about a block from the stop, on the bridge over the river, he got out and ran after his folks. I didn’t see how it happened, but my feeling is this happens all the time. I also know how scared the kid was, because I’ve gotten separated from friends and family without knowing where they were or how to get back home when I was young. This happened once at Yankee Stadium when I was ten. I had a can of Hawaiian Punch in my bag lunch, and I had to drink it or surrender it because no cans allowed in the stands. My friend and his brothers kept on going and I lost them. I had never gone to a Yankee game before. I didn’t know which subway to take. The police took me to the substation and called my mother to pick me up.
Reading “In apprehension how like a god” there is a feeling of hope, yet look at the society, the culture, the choices we’ve made. This is what we have collectively agreed to—a world of dog eat dog and a rigged game. The American Dream? I’ve read it is no longer accessible…although I never understood why anyone would want it. What do I know? I’m an aberration, a freak, abnormal, an outlier. I spent years in isolation and emerged after the virus had its effect. One more Miller quote: “I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”
This piece could have been comedic, but there isn’t anything humorous when you’re in constant physical pain (it’s funny for others who aren’t afflicted). I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth….
As always, especially on Yom Kippur, Shalom!
Here's an interesting article about hikikomori, something I experienced from 12 to 15 years old.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2x0le06kn7o