I want my own species to light up in hellfire

[Flickering]

I hate the human race with a passion. I could go into the reasons why, but they're probably clear already to a lot of people here. It isn't that I hate everybody, I just think the majority of us are violent, stupid and annoying, and I'm sick of being forced to share the planet with so many fuckwits. Common sense actually make it harder to live on this planet, not easier, because intelligent people get swept along with this ride of insane psychopaths and by and far they are powerless to make a difference. I look forward to dying just so I don't have to spend another minute dealing with the illogical, incoherent ways we choose to run our lives. I've felt this way for a very long time and I've given up trying to fight it. Like George Carlin I take the approach that I've been given 'front row seats to the freak show'; I no longer have a stake in this farce, I'm just gonna sit back and watch as we count down to a well-deserved nuclear armageddon. Most of our values are totally backwards and every hour I'm made to put up with them is like hell to me. Who else here is a total misanthrope?

 

[murphythecat]

I really understand you. I cannot understand why people hurt each other. I was looking at a crazy situation in china. they kill dog with stick, in the street. everyone who doesnt have a dog license get his dog kill with bats, in front of owners, on the street.

I dont understand how people can hurt others and themselves that much.

the freak show is there to show you something and maybe realize that every time you hate, you are not looking at this present moment. there's not much to hate when you are mindful. actually, if you are really mindful, you cannot hate.
you create the ahte in your mind because you think that what is should be different. I understand you, im the same. well, less and less, but still.

there's no problem if your mindful. follow that. nothing else. we cannot change the world, this is very hard to accept for me, but we cannot. we need to change ourselves.

find a way out of this mess. and honestly, the mess is in my and your mind, nowhere else.

I think you hate yourself for hating , hate yourself for not knowing other way to deal with situation you dont like and learn from that.

 

[Flickering]

A great deal of it is the extent to which we hurt each other. I used to go into medieval museums and be baffled at the creativity of the torture devices our ancestors made - and used! I'm a creative guy, and writer, and I've come up with all sorts of cruel apparatus in my head, but the thought of actually building and using them is staggering to me. I would think, though, that for the most part, the world is not like that anymore. We've disavowed torture and moved beyond it. We've grown as a species, we're not the same as we were three hundred years ago.

These were the beliefs of a child. Reality proved to be more horrible than I could possibly have imagined. The difference between me and 90% of people seems to be, though, that whereas I was honest about what I saw, most of us have just found ways to pretend it isn't real. We attach ourselves the dumbest ideals instead and attack problems that aren't problems at all, and in so doing we perpetuate the very problems we're hiding from. It's pathetic and disgusting.

It's true that mindfulness alleviates the stress of the situation, but I challenge that it only exists in our minds. In one sense that's true. But in another sense, if we lived in a society that did actually make sense and run, if not prosperously, then at least coherently, there would not be this tremendous challenge of coming to terms with it to begin with. To accept the world as it is and to love people anyway, in a reality such as this one, you have to be nothing less than a saint. I didn't come into this life with such aspirations. Being on earth feels to me more like an undeserved prison sentence, an unkindness, and a mistake.

 

[murphythecat]

we've moved toward torture? what?
go look at abbatoir footage

humans create hell that no other creature could even begin to create.
but humans also have the most amazing capacities.

the root is ignorance. I remember when I was young, I used to kill bugs. I didnt knew that it made me feel bad and that it created suffering into the bugs. I think I didn't even knew that the bug could feel.
stop hating and understand that people are just ignorant. its not even totally their faults, they dont know what YOU know. you should have compassion for those who do stuff that isnt good for them and others but they dont even know. its a real tragedy that could be alleviated if they only knew. imagine all the suffering that will inevitably be brought upon them because of their bad actions. there's no place to hate, only try to understand that they act out of ignorance that what they do will not bring what they want.
we all do stuff because we think it will make us happy. some, more advance then other, have seen that some stuff we do creates more suffering then happiness, so we stop doing those things.

I think its the only way to stop hating. at least, that is for me. to understand that its not stupidity, not cruelty, but ignorance that is the problem. from that, hate dissipates and understanding and compassion will arise.

about accepting the world as it is and being a saint about it. its not that at all, reality is, we dont know the world. the senses doesnt give you the big picture at all. from your limited point of view, you decide to observe and see stuff you dont like and dont want to see and decide to act upon it (hating for example). its a process. if you were really mindful, you couldnt see the world the way you see it.
from a couple of time we talked together, I suggest to practice more and more. you are clearly a very moral person I think, its time to develop the ability of the mind to love, understand, and bring insight into your mind to stop that hating that creates suffering only in you.

to repeat, be mindful and the hate will dissipate. be mindful of your thoughts even. look at the hating thoughts, label them and see that eventually, they also will leave. they are impermanent and thres absolutely no point in giving your thoughts power over your happiness because lets face it, everytime we hate, we suffer.

 

[Flickering]

That's what I'm saying - I used to think we've evolved, but that's part of the myth of our age. Truth is we've just found new ways to torment each other. These days it's more a matter of numerical dehumanisation and psychological torture, as we figure out how to inflict pain upon a person while at the same time denying her even the possibility of seeing we're doing it at all.

I think that ultimately you're right, that I know better and should make a decision to move past this, but the kind of contempt I feel is overwhelming. The reminders of it are just so constant. And all I want is to live in a society that makes sense. We're so backwards in so many ways that it leaves me with a bitter envy that so many people let themselves be deluded into thinking they're living in anything but a dystopian cesspool. And it's hard not to think of them as idiots when their complacency is precisely what allows the systemic problems to continue.

For one small instance: you talk to someone who believes marijuana should be illegal, it's a little frustrating, because they're just plain wrong. But then you step back and realise: hang on, the very fact so many people hold this ridiculous stance is precisely the reason we're not allowed to smoke this simple plant... AND that the War of Drugs goes on racking up billions of dollars from greedy assholes while landing millions in prison and killing countless civilian bystanders. We live in the Information Age, there's no excuse anymore for not examing the data and the consequences. I will argue the point, since after all there's a great deal to know about the world and I'm ignorant of the vastest majority myself... but where someone refuses to listen, and where this is such an overt issue, I just lose all patience with them. Why do I have to be the one who tolerates everyone else's delusional bullshit? I'm fed up. Again, that's just one small example.

The best tip, and I appreciate you bringing it up, is to reframe the whole issue into sympathy. For now I'm going to try to make the transition from outright hatred into some lesser form of contempt, like pity. Look at all these morons, so willingly blind that they've taken what could have been paradise and turned it into an inescapable landscape of nightmares. They had life itself, they had the beauty of art and science and friends and family and spirituality and philosophy... and they're going to destroy it all so the top .1% of them can make fucktons of money. Hah.

 

[murphythecat]

I think very much like you, but I realize that Its my fault. its because I want (wanted) something that wasnt worthy to have from this society that was the source of my problems. not the other way around.

practice mindfulness as much as you can. develop it until you see quite clearly that being mindful brings you more then any other thing in this world. as you may already know, mindfulness is like entering a new reality.

what you want from this society belongs to you and you are responsible if you are affected when society doesn't live up to your standards or gives you what you would want to have. We can never blame outer condition for affecting us. we let ourselves be affected.
if someone doesnt want what this society has to offer like good food, good music, trips, good sex, ect what is there to dislike?
problem always comes from having what we dont want or not having what we want. only that, nothing else.

what people want is satisfaction. ever felt satisfied for more then 5 hours?
this society only offer sensual gratification. ever felt satisfied once a sensual pleasure have been attained? no, we want more and more.

as long as we let ourselves believe that we can gain what we want in life with sensual gratification, you wont ever be truly satisfied and contented. sad truth im afraid. what bring true satisfaction is not to be found within sensual pleasures.

so, I think we want something out of this reality that isnt realist at all. we cannot always be sensually satisfied, so we chase the high and fight the lows.
as long as we want the highs the way we have learn to do it, mainly with sensual gratification, we are doomed.

take care bro, I feel you are on the right track though!

 

[malakaix]

Maybe you just need a break from the west? I used to have a similar view until i got out of the mindless consumerist society for a while, and spent some time in other countries.. it was unbelievably refreshing to see people living simply and together with strong community ties, it took away some of the resentment i had. - At the same time it's made it much more difficult to accept the madness as well.

I doubt i will live out my whole life here, there's no way i can deal with the evolving trend..

 

[socko]

I guess it's fairly common for relatively smart people to fantasize about mass extinction events.

 

[sigmond]

I understand this is rather simple (cliche) advice, but I would just focus on the things you can control. If you have netflix you should check out the movie Frequencies.

(I could have gone without seeing that Chinese guy beat the dog with a shovel.)

It's ridiculous how some humans blame animals for their own incompetence. There was a guy in India who thought it would be a good idea to go to the local Zoo and enter the tiger exhibit. I am sure you can imagine what happened to him. The messed up thing was afterwards a gang of people beat the tiger, it survived but he's all messed up.

Recently a bunch of news outlets put out this headline "Black bears chase panicked tourists visiting Yellowstone National Park. When in reality the tourists are chasing the bears..

 

[-=SS=-]

Misanthrope and cynical old bastard at the age of 28 checking in!

This is a madhouse. A snake pit full of liars. We lie to each other and we lie to ourselves.. all the time. Deep down everyone knows this because as small children we figured this out intuitively, but we had no choice.. accept your parents and how it is or you die. The majority of people continue to function with the mask on for their entire lives rather than face the disturbing truth. Which is why I can not hate people for being how they are.. it is frustrating as hell having to put up with it, but you can't hate them for it.

What someone else said here provides food for thought.. there are other nations and communities out there that aren't nearly as fucked up as the Western model is, where family and community still reigns strong. It's not all of humanity that I hate, not even humanity itself, because as we can see there are good people out there (and in our own nations).

 

[swilow]

Singular humans are often awesome, but nothing exists in isolation. Where there is one, there's more and then we have 'society'. Would we be better had we not taken steps into behavioural modernity?

Whilst I understand the sentiments of the OP, I think it expresses the most perfectly human reasoning. We are awful vicious animals that don't deserve to exist; let us sweep earth completely clean with fire. Only a human would think to take out the totality of earthly existence to remove their own unhappy self. I entertained such thoughts a lot; I love post-apocalyptic stuff, the idea of the majority of you fucks not existing is just great to me :D But I think its a weak cop-out, to stand there as a human and pointing at other weak humans and condemn them. If you give up and opt out, you are no better then those who opt in and are actively destructive. Good men doing nothing. Who of us is free of sin. Thought has weighed me down immensely.

I sit here on my laptop; I have an ipad and iphone on table next to me. They travelled to me on the fumes of long-dead animals. They feature components that were ripped straight from my mothers womb, destroying things that will never be replaced. The people ripping them out lived in squalor and are largely valueless and anonymous. Guarnateed that people sufferred to give me the energy I require to sit here and hate all you cunts doing the exact same thing.

Its very difficult to change this awful shit but it is impossible to if you pretend you are not a part of it. Instead of burning the world from your moon-fortress, it might be more inspiring for the indivdual to come down and set fire from within.

 

[Xorkoth]

I definitely understand how you feel, and I've felt that way at different times in my life. Right now I choose to believe that we can make a change, that we're already seeing the beginning of a mass consciousness shift in understanding happening as a result of various factors including the Internet. Am I being naive? Maybe, I'll admit it... but it makes me a happier person to have hope. In the end, what does it matter if I'm right or not, for my own life? I was tired of feeling angry and sad and negative all the time so I decided to change my viewpoint and it's allowed me to see the beauty in the world and in humanity that I wasn't seeing before. And if I'm feeling positive I feel more motivated to do whatever I can to help the situation, and I sometimes bring some brightness into other lives I encounter which helps to spread something nice and worth living for.

Awesome post willow.

 

[Ninae]

Like George Carlin I take the approach that I've been given 'front row seats to the freak show'

That is true, I just wish it wasn't so freaky. Even worse, it influences you to be that way as well. Or I started out completely straight and now I'm so bent in comparison. I just find it hard to take anything seriously.

 

[sigmond]

That is true, I just wish it wasn't so freaky. Even worse, it influences you to be that way as well. Or I started out completely straight and now I'm so bent in comparison. I just find it hard to take anything seriously.

I started listening to George Carlin when I was about 12 but stopped paying much attention to him towards the end of his life. His HBO specials got more vulgar and negative as he got older. Same reason I don't watch the news too often, it's just a bunch garbage I would rather avoid and cannot do much about.

I remember John Frusciante saying something like it's pretty silly to judge people considering the majority of their personality or character was formed during a time when they had very little control over their environment. Also agree with not taking things too seriously, perhaps we're just here to make god laugh, and he has an exceptional sense of humor.

 

[Ninae]

That's an interesting chart.

 

[sigmond]

Where is it from?

 

[Ninae]

www.the-tao-of-flow.com


"It’s time for a synthesis of East and West into a higher paradigm. In the East spirituality was all about ‘escaping the world’ because it was seen as bondage and misery. In the West the idea was to get a ‘maximum of pleasure out of the world’. Both are extreme, off balance positions. Seeing the world as a source of misery makes you disconnect from the external world and seeing the world as the primary source of pleasure makes you disconnect from your inner world."

 

[herbavore]

Flickering, I have struggled with this all my life. If I can think of any metaphor that describes it best it is being in the sea. I don't know if you are an ocean person or not but I have spent most of my life in direct contact with this great being. Learning to ride waves, give in to being pummeled, have faith that I will float etc. are all relevant to how I process my extreme despair in the face of the suffering my species causes and also endures. There are metaphors within metaphors when it comes to the sea.

In a way, the ability to deal with a realistic view of our species as a whole (truly an out-of-control virus destroying the planet) while maintaining a loving, open heart for each and every individual that makes up this collective force is what life is all about to me. It does this world no good to live in abject misery, overwhelmed by the cruelty, arrogance, hatred and greed that surely define the cultures we both inherit and help to create (both wittingly and unwittingly). In my late son's obituary I wrote about his struggle with this despair. Like Socko, I believe it is a sign of true intelligence (emotional as well as intellectual) to even have this struggle. But be wary of becoming stuck in the despair. It is one of the most painful sources of guilt that I now struggle with that I was unable to adequately instill an antidote to such overwhelming pessimism in my young son's vulnerability. Rationally I know that it was only maturity that gave this to me in my own despair as a young woman but as a mother I cannot help but feel responsible.

Learning to live with life in all its fullness, holding multiple facets of truth that often conflict and seemingly even negate each other, is so difficult. But this is how I have learned to do it and maybe this might help you: I believe that what we do in our brief incarnations as human beings matters not at all and matters greatly. As T.S Elliot said, "Teach us to care and teach us not to care." If you can embrace this and learn to ride waves of despair, learn how not to become exhausted swimming against an undertow but swimming alongside it, relax your body into being thrashed and rolled by powers greater than your strength, knowing there is still air to be had, you can survive. Survival itself becomes your teacher. How did you survive? Some of it is mere biological directive. But there was also hope and faith. Where do we find hope and faith in the face of so much evidence against them? I think we find them by individual connection. What is good in us swims out to look for what is good in another.

Those connections are powerful, make no mistake about it. We may well destroy the earth and ourselves. But life is there outside of us. It is what produced us and what we will eventually shed these bodies to re-enter as ? (energy? souls? something for which we have as yet no language?) I choose to believe that creating peace in our own hearts and minds is our most important act as human beings. It is what we can offer. It is all we can offer. We cannot single-handedly stop most of the things that cause us so much despair. We can choose not to feed it with our own sense of impotence and fear though.

Start small. Appreciate small beauties every day. Sometimes this can crack the whole universe open for you (without psychedelics!). Beauty is everywhere as surely as hideousness is everywhere. Feed yourself beauty without blinding yourself to the ugliness. it's an art. Like body-surfing in strong surf, it is a dance where you learn just what you are in control of and what you are not. You will die, like we all will die, and the world will let go of you without a blink. So, it will be brief. What should you do with this brief existence? I hate to see young people suffer so greatly but at the same time I am proud of you for not closing your eyes. I hope that you can find a place of balance, "the angle of repose", as Wallace Stegner called it. Find the truth tellers that resonate with you. For me they are poets, some comedians and artists, animals, trees and rivers. For others they are spiritual thinkers or philosophers. (George Carlin saw a bigger picture and he showed it to us in a way that allowed us to laugh. But he was an incredible family man that held the bonds he felt with other individual human beings in the midst of this mess to be sacred.)


Be well. Ride your cynicism to the pinnacle of what it has to offer but let your compassion take you down the backside of that wave. Rest in the trough and get ready for the next ascent.

 

[socko]

You probably read this all the time in the Dark Side/Recovery subforums, but one of the things that opiates can do is make you stop thinking about that struggle with despair for a little while. It's like hearing good news. It's like picking up a newspaper and reading about something taht happened that is actually good. It's totally escapist in that aspect, but for a little while each day, you feel like you have found something good in the world..

 

[swilow]

Thanks for the great post herbavore . Really well said; I especially liked the lastest bit

www.the-tao-of-flow.com

I thought your chart demonstrated some inherent 'truth'. I just think its not as easy or simple as adopting a certain mood or outlook and things will change. Its often the 'changing of things' that alters one's attitudes or outlooks IME. Its natural as a human to feel negative emotions and connecting it to states of spiritual regression (of sorts) could be damaging.

That said, it seems to me to be a choice to feel despair and misanthropy. It doesn't really benefit anybody at all, so should not be mistaken for something noble. It is a natural feeling; you should not punish yourself for feeling it. I usually try and categorise things as useful (either to me or to the larger whole) or not useful. Whilst I still get sucked into voids of real negativity, I think I've recognised its futility and have tried to counteract it. Its hard to fight negativity- the fight often feels negative and spirals- but its more feasible to redirect or try and feel otherwise.

You probably read this all the time in the Dark Side/Recovery subforums, but one of the things that opiates can do is make you stop thinking about that struggle with despair for a little while. It's like hearing good news. It's like picking up a newspaper and reading about something taht happened that is actually good. It's totally escapist in that aspect, but for a little while each day, you feel like you have found something good in the world..

Yeah, but its fleeting and rarely ends well. I know that your own use doesn't seem to be a huge problem. That is simply not the case for most people here. The problem is how utterly opiates can "correct" a negative mood, but I feel it replaces it with neutrality. But then I have huge negative associations with opiates due to pretty severe past addiction, and whenever I occasionally use them (usually codeine or methadone once every 2-3 weeks) it doesn't relieve me anymore. They make me nauseous and trembly, and often dysphoric. I usually deeply regret having taken them, though I know that I will keep doing it sporadically for who knows how long. They are more bad then good for humans. We need as little extra as possible to avoid clouding already murky/confused minds. IMO.