This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

Just calling humanity "a bunch of idiots" does little to aid a personal appreciation for the situation of others.

But if you say "everyone is a bunch of idiots nothing will ever change" then not only do you no longer have to give any serious thought or effort to changing things (there's no point!), you also tacitly place yourself in that small section of humanity that ISN'T a bunch of knuckle-dragging neanderthals. Misanthropy is an immature way to take the easy way out of developing a real worldview and deigning to forge social relationships; that's why if you ask the average teenager who they hate most, they'll tell you "Everyone, man! Everything's fucked up and people are all stupid animals!", but if you ask the same of an adult who's lived in the world for a while, you're likely to get a lot less "Society!" and a lot more "Jenkins from accounting!".

Even that kind of person, regardless of their age and how long they've clung to their childish dismissal of the entire species as gluteocartographically challenged, doesn't really mean it. The ones who do are sociopaths. Not many people really internalize the whole philosophy of hate; they'll say "everyone is stupid" and "stupid people need to die", but they probably won't say things like "Let the AIDS crisis in Africa keep going, it's only killing the morons who are stupid enough to believe ointment made out of shit cures AIDS". It's just a way to place themselves on a pedestal and rationalize inaction, not a genuine seething disdain for everyone they see on the street.

It's especially prevalent now, I think, because of how much our society has shifted from valuing technical skill and physical prowess to valuing intelligence and reasoning ability, coupled with the rise of mass communication and relaxing of social mores that made it pretty tacky to express that sort of opinion. Everyone wants to think they're the smartest, and it's a lot easier to go on thinking you're the smartest when presented with contradictory information than to do the same with being the strongest. Maybe this whole paragraph is full of shit though; it's hard to really know what things were like in the past without having been there, but I'm well aware the fifties weren't actually Leave it to Beaver any more than the nineties were The Simpsons. It just seems like it's become a lot more acceptable to be a pseudo-misanthrope now than ever, and in fact there are social pressures that encourage it, especially in our youth.

That's why I don't hate everyone, I just hate everyone who hates everyone. It's way more mature, and makes me better than them.