[lbo-talk] misanthropy [was: Chavez to Speak in NYC's Riverside Church on Sep. 16th

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Sep 9 07:47:37 PDT 2005


John Lacny:


> Wojtek -- despite his relentless and often tiresome misanthropy -- is at

Not that I lose much sleep over it, but what makes you (and others, I gather) think that I am a misanthrope? The lexical definition (Webster) of misanthropy is "hatred, dislike, or distrust of humankind." I do not hate the humankind i.e. people, even those whose views I find disagreeable. In fact, I like people and hold very few personal animosities.

For the record, what I intensely hate is what HL Mencken called the "mountebanks" - i.e. impostors, people making themselves into bigger than life characters or pretending to represent other than themselves, holier-than-thou characters, etc. But these are not real people but cartoon characters - so hating them does not amount to "misanthropy" - it is mere dislike of certain genres and cultural tropes.

Wojtek



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