I'm a misanthrope. Which means I don't like people in general. There are a few exceptions to that 'rule', but seriously: I can count them on the fingers of one hand. As far as I know there is no law that dictates me to do otherwise. Fortunately.
I hate a lot of people, but mostly I just don’t care about them. This means that if I see someone in need of help, I will not help them. Unless the person we’re talking about is an attractive young woman, preferably unconscious. I kid you not.
When a tsunami kills a hundred thousand peasants in some country I have hardly heard of, in a city that I can’t even pronounce, I do not care. In fact, I tend to smile a little. Sometimes I will actually take the time to say: “Exponential growth, motherfuckers, do you know it?” But most of the time I’ll just smile a little. Because in the back of my mind I am doing some simple calculus: 7000000000 – 100000 = 6999900000. And the end result somehow always makes me happy. I’ll actually start daydreaming about deserted streets and lonely cities when these so-called dramas and catastrophies happen.
I smiled when the Towers went down. There was no law that obligated me to cry. Fortunately. There still isn’t. Fortunately. I do not approve of it, in fact I think the guys who did that were complete morons, but still, in the back of my mind a little voice was saying: “You reap what you sow, motherfuckers.” And so I smiled a little.
You have to understand that I rarely smile. And so I take every opportunity that offers itself to me. I also smile a little when my neighbour buys a new and thus bigger car. And I’ll smile a little when I see him having an accident in it. That’s how I work. If someone is successful, I die a little. When someone fails, I blossom up.
So here you have this rich, prosperous Scandinavian country, blessed with its own oilfields, a country wise enough to stay the hell out of the European nightmare, a country – in fact – that makes other countries look like Togo, and still some reincarnated psycho-Viking over there cracks up and goes crazy on a herd of homo sapiens. Why? For his ideas. His ideology. His set of memes. A single hornet might ravage an entire beehive because his genes tell him to do so, we humans can exterminate another human, another city and even an entire race because our memes tell us to do so (I hope you know what I am talking about, because I’m not explaining). Personally, I see no difference. Both are purely Darwinian in nature. Both fascinate me and make me smile. I like seeing proof of the theory of evolution. It is somehow cute to see humans (myself included of course) put to practice what the theory says.
You want the short version?
WW2 was a colony of war ants on search and destroy mode, conquering various colonies of termites before getting visited by the two-headed ant-eater.
Iraq was a mouse who encountered a python.
I think no more of humans than I think of those creepy crawlies. Humans claim to be different from them because they possess this thing called ‘intelligence’, but I have yet to see proof of that. I’m still more impressed by the voice in my head that goes: “Exponential growth, you mongrels. God doesn’t exist, you dunces. And you reap what you sow!”
That psycho-Viking is what you eventually reap. If he is anything, he is a thermometer that tells us society is in a fever. He is what you get when you put homo sapien, who has barely learned to put his animal past behind him, in a grey, concrete world of stress, memetic warfare , competition, economic growth, sex, money money money, and insane consumerism. He’s telling us that we’re on the wrong course. He’s one of them bacteria that realizes that the petridish is full and that he ought to eat the other bacteria to stay alive. But then in terms of memes, not genes. It’s different, but it’s the same.
And it does not impress me.
If at birth, some divine being would have told me I would eventually die at the age of – let’s say – 16, but that I could choose to live these years in a capitalist paradise or in fucking Togo, I would have opted for the capitalist paradise. Everyone would have. Somehow life in a capitalist paradise is more, is better, is worth more than life in a shitty country. Us lucky westerners have developed this attitude that if life in the West is better than elsewhere, then the people in the West must be better than elsewhere. They must be worth more, they must be more developed, more intelligent, they must be somehow more human. That’s why your local newspaper doesn’t have a daily headline saying: “Another 2000 people died in Africa yesterday because they have no fucking water”, but changing headlines that go: “Gwyneth Paltrow caught naked” or “USA invade Iraq” or “77 killed in Oslo”. You think Sassa Umbalek gives a fuck after his whole family got butchered with a machete because the elders of the town thought they were witches? You think Sirra Moleiem gives a fuck after she’s just had her clitoris and labia removed by her own fucking grandmother because some absurd meme lives on? How much exactly is a spoiled teenager’s life worth more to you than those lives in the shadows of the media? Does having a cellphone, an iPod and the freedom to express your own opinions make you better than the daily deads in other countries? Where is their headline, their newsbreak, their morning debate show?
Fuck it. To me, they’re all the same. And so I tend to get annoyed by the over-coverage of such a minor drama (really) and the ladies in the queue in the supermarket that go: “Oh, it’s such a shame, such young people…” What about those thousands and thousands of others that suffered and died the same fucking day? Aren’t they part of the species as well?
I am most amused by the frauds that analyze these sorts of dramas on tv. They never quite get it, do they? They always go the psychotic, mass-murderer way. A deluded individual. Trapped in his own web of lies. He’s not a product of the crazy, capitalist consumer society he was brought up in, no, he’s a strange mutation, an abomination, an exception to the rule. Right. There’s probably hundreds of these ticking time bombs walking around in our clean, safe society as we speak. They are victim to data overload and urban loneliness. The guy who did this thing in Oslo is probably more intelligent than you and me together. Isn’t it weird that in his capitalist paradise he would rather put his intelligence to work at some devilish scheme instead of aiding that capitalist paradise? You ever thought about that? Isn’t the bacteria that realizes the petridish is full and he should start feeding on the other bacteria the most intelligent of the bunch? Isn’t that what Darwinism tells us? What if memes follow the same destructive paths as genes? What then?
Three weeks ago, the friend of an ex of mine poured gasoline over his body and lighted himself. He was schizophrenic and didn’t want to take his medicin any longer. He’s in the hospital now, in an artificial coma, getting skin crafts and all. The girl is going nuts but I simply do not care. I can not care. This guy is a lemming that failed to follow the right path. The fly who wanders into the web. Fuck him. And his schizophrenia. And fuck that drama queen of an ex. “People are dying all of the time!” Consider him lucky. Now he’s mutilated and schizophrenic. Maybe he’ll see the fucking light now.
Ya’ll want to be healthy, ya’ll want to be rich, ya’ll want to be famous, ya’ll want to have made a difference here or there, but you all forget about the other seven billion dreamers on this planet. You can’t see much further than your city, your country, your Western ideology, you stupid set of memes. It’s ridiculous that I even have to explain this sort of stuff to you. Do you even realize how conditioned you are?
If you can’t print a newspaper that reflects the real Mc Coy, if you can’t give a newscast without favouring your sort, if you can’t give me the raw data and the hard truth, then sod off, I’m not interested.
On my terrace a ladybug is going berserk on some lice that we’re infesting my tomatoes.
It affects me not.
Sabirah said:
You ASK people why they have kids!? WHY?
Because there are already 7 billion of us on this small, polluted planet? Because most of them should know better because they enjoyed the same sort of education I did? Because exponential growth is something you learn about when you're seven? Because maybe informed people know a little better than to follow the dogma of their rather stupid genes? Because maybe it's not that smart to put 50% of your genes on a planet that is obviously going downhill fast?
I dunno. What does God have to say about these sort of things?
Wintermind said:
Also lol@ the implication that food animals are in anyway more important that people.
What exactly makes people more important than "food animals" (never heard that one before, but sounds a lot like "human resources", don't you think?)? The fact that they can spend most of their lives doing ungrateful jobs for ungrateful companies that make sure that future generations will have to do the same ungrateful jjobs for pretty much the same ungrateful companies? Or no, wait... is it love? Is love what makes humans so different to animals for you?
I'm 35, see, I don't buy into that bullshit any longer.
It's the cellphone and the computer, innit? Those are the things that make humans more important than, say, the intricate complexity of coral reefs, right? If that asteroid hadn't killed the dinos, we would still have evolved, right? We're the chosen ones, the special species, the favoured multicellular organisms.
Oh man.
Wintermind said:
Seriously? Capitalist pigs? You realise that majority of those 77 hadn't even reached the age of majority, right? They hadn't even had the chance to be capitalist pigs.
Piglets. Piggies. Whatever. It's just words, man.
Sabirah said:
If you have such a problem with poverty and people dying in Africa join the Red Cross/Crescent instead of talking to us about it.
Sorry: misanthrope.
Ilosar said:
Quite done? Now, why don't you go say that in the face of the victim's families? ''By the way, some people have it worse off then you are. People you are close to being gunned down by a maniac is no big deal, seriously get over it. Oh, and you society sucks, and so do you, capitalist pig. So there''.
Actually, yes, I would. Make it happen and I'll do it. Might wake those self-pitying bastards up a little. Like saying: "Hey, isolationalist: there's a whole world out there, get with it."
Ilosar said:
What's your damn point, that we should just stop living and caring about others because shit out of our control happens?
Quite the contrary. I'd rather see people get on with their lives, enjoying it as much as modern society allows an individual to enjoy it.
And with that little note of humanity I would like to end this post of mine. Thank you and I'm suure we will meet again,
-- alec
say what?
