A Young Person's Guide to Misanthropic Pessimism

If you’re a young person just getting started in life, why not consider a career in the never burgeoning nor expanding, joy-resistant field of misanthropy, nihilism and pessimism? Misanthropes have always been with us, ever since the first misanthropes somehow escaped the range of the other human’s stones. If you’re looking for a good steady career with no hopes for advancement, nor any illusions about them, nor your fellow man and the worst case scenario seems like a party where you expect we’re all invited, then consider becoming a pessimistic misanthrope: like it really matters anyway.



What is a Pessimistic or Nihilistic Misanthrope?

A misanthrope is someone who hates, mistrust and despises the human race. A pessimistic or nihilistic misanthrope goes on to apply this salutary hate, mistrust and spite not merely to humans, but to life and perhaps existence in general. Indeed, for one’s critique to have any force at all, one really must include oneself in the class of despised things. Misanthropes are incomplete if they do not include themselves; these are more commonly known as “jerks.”




Pessimisms

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche writes that the pessimism expressed by Greek Tragedy is a sign of the relative health of the culture; this is the sort of thing you consider when your best friend is Wagner. True nihilism or pessimism, for Nietzsche, was expressed by later formations that professed an ostensible sunny cheery optimism that belied their true sickness; if you have ever known anyone who put up motivational posters or inspirational post-it pads for themselves ("god please give me the strength to accept what i cannot change and stay away from bruce"), you can immediately see that Nietzsche was right.

Whereas Nietzsche was basically a lonely man who wanted to love life, despite having no reasonable personal grounds or experiences for doing so, the greatest pessimistic misanthrope would be to be Arnold Schopenhauer, whose systematic pessimism is to great to be examined in detail here and to who these remarks could be easily dedicated. It is enough to say here that the work of Schopenhauer can be compared to some of the cheery Lieder of Schubert’s Winterreisse without the music or encouraging words.




Misanthropy and Philanthropy

Some misanthropes' constant criticism, nagging and general unpleasantness is done with a secret hubristic idea of somehow improving humanity, much like many hectoring, belittling spouses, or child-abusing parents: all these efforts have met with roughly the same degree of success and just renown.

True philanthropes are, not at all paradoxically, often seen in the company of misanthropes -they may even be responsible for bringing them their soup or warm used clothes. This is approximately for the same reason that masochists are often seen in the company of sadists. This is, as Hegel reminds us, the sort of struggle that can only end with death, much like the time that Schopenhauer decided he was going to schedule his lecture opposite Hegel’s or the time you dated that girl who wrote notes to her dog.




The Many Advantages of Misanthropic Pessimism

Misanthropic pessimism is not a very difficult schtick: material is easy to come by. Indeed great moments of humanity (Christmas, disaster relief, free cable) only throw misanthropy into sharp relief, into a fervent and peculiar kind of ecstasy, while humanity’s many low points (wars, genocide, basic cable) are only mildly palliative and at most provide for a bitter self-satisfied chuckle that at most demoralizes normal people and moves the phlegm around.

For human life is inevitably full of disappointment: misanthropy allows you to make the most of them; indeed, every failure and setback becomes a triumph of one’s world view. Indeed, once you have truly mastered misanthropy, you will never lose an argument because no one will talk to you. At this point, you now never need worry about becoming bitter or cynical.

As a perspective on humanity, a pessimistic and misanthropic view has the virtue of being trivially and incontrovertibly true: it is unlikely that the human species will always exist. As Keynes observed, in the long run we will all be dead, but you will be among that smug minority to have the foresight and mindset to enjoy this fact. Indeed some physicists speak of a weak misanthropic principle to explain why some features of the universe are the way they are: to bust their balls.

Whereas the life of the species is almost certainly finite, the individual lifetime of the misanthrope is often extended: many misanthropes are comparatively long lived (Schopenhauer, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Samuel Beckett). The reason for the extended lifetime of the misanthrope is obvious: loving people and having hope takes enormous effort, as they are subject to disappointment and death. The misanthrope is able to conserve their energy and so goes on to a long life of sucking on its gums and and yelling at kids to get off its lawn. There are notable cases of superannuated misanthropes of superior advanced age, demonstrating that hatred of life is not at all incompatible with craven fear of death.




How to Get Started

As a young person you may well wonder “how can I get started on this miserable path of schadenfreude and general hatred of my fellow man when I am still so young and full of such optimism and hope?” It is this very optimism and hope, as Plato observes in the Phaedo that is the starting point for all misanthropy: set your expectations for people, for yourself and life in general impossibly high. Be open and trusting and think the best of people. All you must do now is not fail to note when friendship turns to betrayal, anticipation to disappointment and hopes into failure. Be sure never to get over things, but instead let these small emotional wounds fester inside you, remembering how unfair and unjustly you have been treated, nursing fantasies of revenge until a general sepsis overtakes your character. Also, listen to a lot of Metal.


Finally, whereas loving humanity despite all its faults and injuries requires bravery, patience, faith, empathy, imagination, intelligence and kindness -all perhaps above the ordinary, misanthropy requires nothing of the sort. It asks less than the average. It asks only that we never forgive, that we hold our grudges to our hearts dearly and that we reserve what little love we have for ourselves in the form of self-pity. Like gluttony and sloth, it asks only that we give into ourselves gracelessly and surrender to our basest instincts. As such, it is enlightened.


TURN #91: WEEK 77; WORDS: 86,327
NEXT BY 13 DECEMBER 2006

A Short and Seemingly Unfinished Guide to Public Speaking

Many people experience a fear of public speaking -and why not? We’ve all seen movies where someone is about to make a momentous announcement only to get blown away by some hidden assassin with a high power scope or have their head psychically exploded by some other scanner in the audience. By the logic of our times (which is terror, not logic) your Key Club meeting or key party could be next.

As a man who is frequently called upon, if not actively prevented from, acts of impromptu public speaking, I have prepared another brief, yet helpful guide.


Openings

Bear in mind that there are only three classic openings, which have remained more or less consistent from the times of classical oratory. A fourth, “Who is Our Greatest Nero: the Poet, the Actor, or the Living God Who We Love?” fell out of vogue before the age of the Schoolmen. The classic remaining openings are:


A. Some old guy you used to talk to

B. First time you had to do a medical procedure you didn’t know how to do

C. The time Grandma found you masturbating

Each of these openings is totally invincible, much as certain kung-fu attacks or pick-up lines -but equally requiring the handling of a master, so I will describe each in some detail.


A. Some old guy you used to talk to

This is a classic opening into some warm homily or home-cooked folderol that will please every flabby weak-minded Payless shoe wearing sentimentalist in the audience: in other words, most people. You begin by simply relating how, as a younger person, you used to listen to this old guy:

Old Tim had been a ridin’ the rails for ages, probably with that same tin cup of his. The songs had not changed, but perhaps the meaning of the words or the notes that he bent in his careful hands. Old Tim didn’t think of me as a kid. He told me things other adults were afraid to tell me. Things that helped me be a man. But this isn’t about that. Nor the string of unsolved crimes throughout the region at the time.

Never mind if you never really knew a kindly old Hobo named Tim who rode the rails and explained Penthouse Forum to you with dead rabbit and a can of beans: this stuff writes itself. Why I can see Old Tim’s sweater vest before me now, all torn and dappled with little dry shakes of tobacco like a tree in fall, with the heavy clink of the necklace he always wore that he always promised to show me, which sometimes weakly profiled through said vest looking somewhat like a mutilated police badge.

This opening always works. Why? Because in actuality, our whole society is built around the premise never having to listen to an old person unless they own GE. Yet, it is an experience that people fantasize about all the time. Also, like your itinerant hobo, this opening need not go anywhere. Old Tim’s lessons can be so profound and vague as to tie up with any possible presentation; whether you’re explaining way the immanent necessity of drilling a wildlife refuge, or how your client with his underage sex addiction is the true victim here, Old Tim can just come in at the end with some hard earned lesson of life, returning like Obi Wan at the end of Star Wars or like some faceless killer with protean features that seems to only strike when the Southern Pacific line is running. Your listeners won’t care. Like Old Tim they’ll just be glad for the ride.


B. First time you had to do a medical procedure you didn’t know how to do

Public speaking is a lot like television (see “folderol” above); so we can take a cue from television to see what it is that our audience wants to hear about. What are the popular shows today? I’ll give you a hint: they all have to do with the human body in some way. But not just any human body. No, the human body when there is something really, really wrong with it. The appeal of this is so natural as to almost defy explanation. Briefly: bodies: everyone has one, everyone likes looking at a car wreck.

So, what can enthrall your audience more than your account of how you had to perform a complex medical procedure - a complex medical procedure that you didn’t know how to do. Again, as with Old Tim, do not be distressed if you haven’t actually been in this life threatening situation. Audiences at public speaking events actively engage in what is called suspension of disbelief. Without this valuable convention, the entire past five years of American History becomes totally unintelligible.

This is also where the you didn’t know how to do part comes in. You can be vague. Oh sure, be real specific of how and where this event occurred (food court, mother’s wedding) and how (spear gun fight, spicy food) -though, as always, be sure not to include details that are easily falsifiable or conspicuous (the president, the moon). However, once these details are established (“it was my Aunt Hildy, not my Great Aunt Hildy, mind you, that had gotten the shaft of the spear”) you can afford to be vague. After all, you’re not a doctor (if you are a doctor this opening makes no sense for you).


Themes

There is no greater theme than “if.” “If I had two heads” -What if they fought? what if one ate the other? Which one would I be -always end with -”But I don’t have two heads”

“What if I were invisible.”

Examples

1. Don’t be afraid to try something new, or pretend you are someone else

2. Timeshare means leveraging your time

3. Overcoming adversity through ignorance

4. What we do not swallow or digest does not make us fatter

5. Best naked James Bond

6. Revenge is a dish best served cold


Closing

1. Lookout, I’m gonna blow!

2. You can take your fingers out of your partners mouth now

3. I’ll see you -in the bathroom!


TURN #90: WEEK 76; WORDS: 85,275
NEXT BY 6 DECEMBER 2006

Thanksgiving Special: What to Tattoo on Your Pet

Preface

We here at the Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth never stop working to provide you with the very best in literary entertainment: to wit, I thought of the following piece while I was asleep in bed (I would cite the well-known fact that I do some of my finest work in bed). This dream, I assure you, is the actual cause of this column, and not some cheap literary device to lend credence to an otherwise unlikely and unpalatable conceit. As proof of this would add further that you were there, and you, and you, and you.



What to Tattoo on Your Pet

Have you ever wanted to tattoo your pet? I haven’t, at least not while I was conscious. Yet here we are, with that very same question that goes unanswered because no one is asking. Why tattoo your pet? I don’t know, because I’m asleep. I don’t sleep well, I have lots of problems. Let’s move on.



Dogs

Treasure Map
On the face of it, this seems like the most likely sort of thing you are going to tattoo on a dog, once you have made the piratical and rum-fueled decision to tattoo a dog in the first place: dogs are a loyal and innocuous place to store a secret map. Consider, however, that your map will only be secure for about 12 years, after which you will have to have him stuffed and he will no longer be loyal or innocuous.

More importantly, consider how impractical the surface of a shaved dog is for any kind of map projection, unless that map is of the surface of the same or similarly shaped dog. If it is the latter, then it becomes highly questionable as to what sort of “treasure” whose position you are notating, and if it the former, and you are making a map of the surface of your shaved dog on the shaved dog itself, then the field becomes even more radically open as to the question of what the hell it is that you are doing.


Butcher’s Cuts
Here is a gay and inappropriate idea for permanently decorating your dog: why not make like you were going to eat him? Even after its fur grows back (presuming you did not eat him right away -but if you did, why did you bother with the tattoos?) you can romp and play and hug your fuzzy companion knowing that under his fur, he is already designated and gerrymandered up into delicious chops.

In a similar fashion, I often give the most innocent and platonic of hugs and think to myself: We’re naked under these clothes. Totally naked and hugging one another. Our nipples would brush, if not for this flimsy material. Sometimes I think this and whisper it aloud. That is usually the end of the innocent and platonic hugs for that person.

Likewise, if I actually am naked with someone else, I like to put my head on their stomach and think: you’re full of guts, squishy, squishy guts and they’re all talking to each other. It’s like a magical kingdom of soft gooey friends!

If you actually eat you pet, email me and let me know how that goes. Please do not include any attachments.


Your Name
An interesting idea, approaching sense, and yet clearly not qualifying.


Dog’s Name
This is an almost sensible suggestion, were there anything acceptable about the premise of tattooing a dog in the first place and if it didn’t beg the whole “naming picture of language” to begin with.


Your Friend’s Name
Friends and friendship are truly some of the great boons in life, and yet their celebration seems strangely and wholly out of place here. If your friend is your dog, see above. If your friend is not your dog, but they share the same name, read “Your Friend’s Name” (ibid).


Jail Tattoos
This immediately begs the question: what is your dog in jail for? Though one may immediately think of the pound as some sort of canine penal incarceration, the dog pound and jail share important distinctions: even in the worst and most unfair jail the inmates are detained for a specific crime, which they are entitled to know, as is the public, which is further entitled to know the name of those detained; the inmate also still has certain inalienable human rights. Finally, inmates in a jail are kept in minimally tolerable cells; dogs are kept in kennels. How then, do we tell the difference between dogs in a pound and detainees at Guantánamo? Simple: detainees are allowed to wear orange jumpsuits some of the time.



Cats
It is unwise to attempt to tattoo a cat. It is marginally unwise to even try and give them a bath. It is best just to let your cat do what it wants. If they were slightly smarter, you could just give them fifty dollars now and again and be done with it.


Snakes
First of all, is it possible to tattoo a snake? We might ask if it is desirable, but somehow it has come to this anyway. The answer is, I don’t know, and I’m asleep, so I can’t look it up in Wikipedia. Sure, I could look it up in my dream Wikipedia, but suffice it to say when you start basing your decisions on the Wikipedia you consult in your dreams you are living in a fool’s paradise of user generated content.

My advice to you is pass on the obvious: avoid racing stripes and other designs that will blend in with the snake's original design. Tattooing a poisonous snake to look like a non-poisonous is all very sophomoric and degrading to the poisonous snake, who has evolved over millions of years to look cool and threatening. Tattooing non-poisonous snake to look like a poisonous snake is just pathetic and the nail in the coffin for the pitiable cry for attention that having a snake was in the first place.

Given their overall body type and your passion for freaking people out, snakes are suited to long sentences, such as quotations from the Bible, or Leaves of Grass. If the latter, be sure to dress up as Walt Whitman and go downtown to the park; speak in a kindly grandfatherly voice, like the Civil War’s Santa Claus; your eyes are luminous, loving and sad. Ask the gathered kids and old people if they’d like to hear parts of your famous poem Leaves of Grass. When they say yes, let the snake slither out of your bosom and start reading it. This will be the best Thanksgiving ever.


Fish
Some of the same questions that apply to snakes apply to fish, only you’re more of lunatic because they live underwater. Considering the inherent difficulty and perversity of tattooing a live fish, it is probably something the Japanese do all the time quite proficiently*.

One immediate pedagogical application that comes to mind is to tattoo the names of the kind of fish you have on the fish itself, realizing the dream of many a distracted ichthyologist at an aquarium. You will also realize the dream of living in a children’s book. However, this is an amazingly stupid thing to do if all you have are goldfish. Once you have tattooed the names of your fish onto your fish (heaven help you), when you finally have someone over and you see them admiring your fish, you can lean over and say: “Pretty fish, isn’t it? Do you know what it’s called?”

You could also tattoo random parts of speech onto your fish in the hopes they will occasionally parse into intelligible random sentences. This is especially helpful if you have to write something random every week.


Birds
What? Are you an idiot?


P.S. Close.


next in this series of dream columns: How to Study for the Naked SATs

TURN #89: WEEK 75; WORDS: 84,261
NEXT BY 29 NOVEMBER 2006

Unfinished Notes Towards Laziness

Casual Remarks on the Practice and Philosophy of Real Leisure by a Gentleman of Leisure and Self-Discovery

for Pam Marwede


INDOLENCE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE, and this is not a matter of means, but ends. One can be entirely profligate in pauperage, or parsimonious in prosperity; one has to have an aptitude and a talent for it. Our time on earth is limited and so to spend it lavishly and wastefully doing nothing takes a magnanimity of spirit that only the greatest in sloth can truly achieve.

Indolence, like obesity and alcoholism, is really a form of athleticism that requires a conscious commitment and conditioning. Humans have a natural tendency to “wake up” in the morning after a full night’s rest when the sunlight strikes them. It requires an act of will and inspiration to pull the covers over one’s head.

First of all, what is “sleeping in”? Busy, active people have through their nefarious activities have abused this term beyond all meaning. They will be heard to make such paradoxical and erroneous remarks such as “Oh, I slept in until seven o’clock this morning, and then really napped through my morning jog.” Let me speak with absolute authority: it is not possible to “sleep in” until seven or even seven thirty in the morning in the same sense that it is impossible to be spoiled rotten eating carrots (rabbits excepted). “Sleeping in” is a well defined term, clearly delineated as remaining in bed until they stop making Egg Mc Muffins. If your feet touch the floor before breakfast is no longer served, except at places where they never stop serving it, you have not slept in. The truly immortal lazybones of this world don’t even know that this meal exists and know of the sun as only an inhabitant of the western hemisphere of the sky.


Ontotheological Justification: Fiat Luxury

The entire act of creation (light, sky, water, land, trees, animals, naked people) was an act of superfluous luxury, since God, being infinite in all things, and lacking nothing certainly didn’t need to do to it. It was also an act of indolence, since having infinite time and power it really can’t be said to have put him out any. But God, being God, goes one step further and actually creates a day of rest even though he hasn’t really done anything. God does not need to rest because he has infinite power; his deciding to rest, despite not really needing it is a greater act of omnipotence (in Scholastic terms, it has more perfection) than creating the universe in the first place.

When we decide to sleep in, when we take time off (especially if we are not doing anything) we are most like God and closest to him. God created the universe, not out of necessity, but love -but created rest out of pure luxury and a sense of style.

As for the kind of love, since (following Spinoza) God is all things, it was really a matter of self-love, of narcissism, which is, after all, the origin of all style.


Techniques:

Remembering one’s dreams

Trying to finish or change the ending to one’s dreams

Onanism
This is self-explanatory. This, along with one’s dreams and revenge, are the great graces that make human life and experience at all tolerable and remotely satisfying.


Reflecting that, whatever the day may hold, homeostatically speaking, it cannot get better or less stressful than this. It can only get more stressful and more of a hassle, starting with the toothbrush, proceeding through the coffee maker, becoming entirely a lost cause with the sound of the first human voice you hear. If you have to do anything with your hair, you are pretty much doomed.

Reading the news: if this does not compel one to immediately abandon the whole project of waking life, you are either insensible or illiterate.

Radio is generally contrary to the purpose in view and most morning programming may convince one to do away with oneself entirely and flee to that other shore where silence has its lease, but the “morning zoo crew” does not.

It is a good idea to have a comfortable and familiar cast of stuffed animals. They will keep you company, since you have no occupation and only the most worthless friends. They will accompany and watch over you on your quest for sloth like the animals of the saints.

Pillows and sheets should be like oneself, not too fresh, but comfortable and (like oneself), ideally quite limp, shapeless and strewn about. Truly lethargic people create nests, which are ideal sandbagged like berms against the rising tides of daytime.

Staying in bed, after all, is a siege: the phone may ring. Birds make sounds. Neighbors and society in general begins a diabolical din of activity and purposive action.

For beginners, earplugs and eye shades may help. The intermediate do not require them and the great masters never take them out or off.



Prerequisites:

Unemployment/Employment
For some, occupation may be the surest guarantee of inertia and inactivity, superior indeed, even to major disability, narcolepsy, or even an actual coma. Bordeom, droning mother of sleep, is most easily summoned when our attention is required, but not at all engaged. For a true career in indolence, you must pursue and indolent career where you do nothing, nothing is expected of you and somehow you are paid all the same. There is only one caveat: this is nearly everyone's goal.

Only Worthless Company
It is very important that you have only the most worthless of friends that only function after dark, become only tolerable after a few hours at bar and only really get going once the bars are closed when no firm plan emerges. Good, healthy bosom friends invariably have children or obligations and want to do things in the day time like go to the park or help people. Their altruism and involvement will invariably lay ruin to any systematic course of naps and lollygagging that you may have outlined for yourself.

Books
Books are the ultimate placeholders. Think of them as convenient bricks for motaring up the windows of one’s life so no sound or sunlight gets in. Books and reading are the great soil in which the healthy weed of sloth can grow. It is very important you never finish one. While this would not be an actual accomplishment, it comes embarrassingly close to coming off as one.

Notice we have spoken of books and not periodicals. Though periodicals are substantially less substantial than books, and, indeed, barely qualify as reading, they are for that reason poor absorbers of the surfeit of time that you aim to organize your life around. The comparison to sandbags is quite apt: you will require many, many periodicals to equal the time-retarding, stultifying volume of one book. Though this has worked well for many shut-ins and soap opera devotees, there is always the problem of someone bringing you the magazine and the hazards posed by a large pile of slick, glossy superannuated issues Cosmo or anedated People sliding like an ice shelf and crushing you. If you have followed the path of sloth with any diligence, you will be in no condition to dig yourself out. Consider then, the unenviable fate of spending your last moments on earth waiting for tardy death and reading about Matthew Perry.


Self-Love, not Self-Knowledge
We know what we love by the fact that it is never satisfied: this is why we never turn to our loved one and say:"My love for you is entirely adequate." Likewise, the things we discover about ourselves in our lifetime of leisure and self discovery are at best trivial things, such as: I look good in hats.

This is whole point of being a gentleman of leisure and self-discovery, that you do not actually succeed in discovering anything substantive, which, if you actually did, would no doubt be disturbing. It might actually upset you or otherwise provoke you to “stop wasting your life” or “get one’s act together” or other such distractions. Self-discovery is, after all, just the flirty aspect of one’s narcissism, and should be really matter of intrigue and not interrogation, as, like all love affairs, it is largely a matter of illusions. Ideally, even one’s self love should not be sincere.

TURN #88: WEEK 74; WORDS: 82,948
NEXT BY 21 NOVEMBER 2006