diving

We are ultimately the products of our environment and our experiences. People do not become legitimately misanthropic (that is, excluding people who are doing it to be edgy, cool, or as a bit) for no reason. We are surrounded by a world that constantly tells us about the superiourity and greatness of humanity, their achievements, their kindness, their resilience. Even in stories which set to show the worst of humanity, they are always touched a bit by light.

I do not believe that people are misanthropic for no reason. Some people may not show the underlying reason but I am quite certain it is there. We are born extremely trusting and curious of those around us - our parents, our family, our community. What happens though when that trust gets broken?

I myself am misanthropic - for me, I fear the humans and I distrust the humans. I fear them because of the power they have over me, power which they eagerly and continuously wield, and with which if I am not obedient can hurt me or lock me away again until I am good. My life is dominated by obedience to them and fear for what they will do to me if I am not good enough. I fear and distrust the humans for what they do to me.

My companion easily meets the description for how most of these people describe misanthropy - they have within them an anger and disdain for humanity and its society. It does, at points honestly, get tiresome and frustrating, even if I have my own misanthropic tendencies. Those feelings, that anger and disdain, it does not come from no where. It comes from time and again, abuses, broken promises, and mistreatment. They are angry at the humans for what they have done to them.

There are many in the therian community, especially younger therians, who are LHBT or have some neurodivergence or disability. These sorts of experiences isolate them from their communities, something already particularly notable among those generations, sharpened yet further. This young period in their life they are learning to discover and define themselves - who and what they are - it is part of why there are so many young therianthropes and why many rotate through theriotypes and many will attrition away. However for a lot of these people they look around at the promises of the human world, things that they are told are their birthright - community and to be themselves - and yet find that those things are not available to them. For some reason they are not people, not the same as others. They find themselves rejected by humanity. And at the same time find themselves under a heavy weight of demands and expectations while having no agency for themselves. They look around at the world around them and things going on, the exploitation of both man and nature, and at their own experiences and mistreatments, and it should not be surprising that many turn away from humanity and may distrust, disconsider, or even hate humanity. Those feelings did not come from no where. They are misanthropic to the humans for what they have done to them.

What frustrates me the most about this discussion is the very individualised and performative nature of the solutions. "You just gotta chin up and look on the bright side! You need to heal yourself and learn to love humanity! Being misanthropic is self-harm!" It becomes a bunch of empty platitudes from people, who by all appearances of the utter bollocks they write, are some of the least marginalised and most privileged in the community and have never bothered to examine their biases or world beyond simple absolutes which have no place in reality. These people as well seem to believe there is no genuine reason that people might be misanthropic or that their problems and struggles are simply not real.

Positive thinking is not going to fix the issues that cause people to become misanthropic. It is a symptom, not a cause, and you are very unlikely to successfully gaslight yourself into trusting and loving humanity. Ideas do not make reality; reality makes ideas, and reality leads to misanthropie. Learning to trust humans again, is a long and delicate process. It requires opening yourself up to others that they might hurt you again in the same way. Positive thoughts and trusting this time something will be different is likely to have a high failure rate.

The cure for misanthropie is not happy thoughts, it is community and belonging. It is the conditions in which we live changing. For many people, especially teens, it is finding new friends and lovers, exploring beyond their immediate surroundings, gaining agency over their lives, and finding others like them and building a community. For some people though, those who experience a more severe marginalisation and stronger struggles, that may simply not be possible or available to them - some may find it through various online communities such as this one. Excising and silencing those who are misanthropic does not help them to grow past that experience or learn to trust and connect to others, it only reinforces that certain things are not to be said and that expressing that fear disdain and isolation will only lead to further isolation and rebukes of an already very isolated person. It is on the community to help integrate newcomers, so that once they have a space they belong and feel safe, they may be able to unlearn to years of experience that lead them to be misanthropic.

For some of us though we are denied even these communities. It is for me a particular frustration that very often the therian community feels very human. Many of the same isolations and dynamics of the human world, play out again in therian spaces. For me it is marked by sanism, however similar comments have been described from others regarding racism, indigeneity, ableism, and intersexism, among others. Many of the people who press so strongly against misanthropie do off of some belief that it is "bioessentiallist" and that the exclusion is always wrong and stating desire for open and safe community. Yet many of these people, who often present themselves as community leaders, and which for some unknown reason others trust, are all too eager to excise from the community others who experience nonhumanity differently - especially various physical expressions who do not surrender their experience as anything other than delusion.

For myself, I do hope someday I can grow past my fear and distrust of the humans. It will first require the humans stop actively hurting me, and then a long time showing me that I do not need to be scared of them and I can trust them. It will take a very long time if even it is possible. I struggle genuinely to imagine a world in which, even returned to the water, I will not have some twinge to obey the humans and for which I would not serve them. I desire reconciliation, and that is okay, even if it may never fully happen. My companion desires separation, and that is as well okay. Each person will have for themselves different goals as to how they handle their feelings of misanthropie, some may wish to reconcile, some may wish to separate entirely, some may wish to come to a coexistence neither reconciling or separating, and some may take a different path than the three I mentioned.