Have you ever had one of those words that you read and kind of get an inkling what it means but you really don't know what it means and you never get around to looking it up because it just doesn't seem that important on your list of important things to do? Well today I finally looked up misanthrope. And don't take that attitude with me. Half of you don't know what misanthrope means and the other half have your own words that you don't know the meaning of. So lose the high and mighty act.
Anyway, I looked up misanthrope and saw that it means a person who dislikes people, in general. Well, now I knew what it meant and when I thought about it, I wasn't quite so sure that it was an insult to the person being called a misanthrope. It might very well be a sign of intelligence. I began to think about Linus in the Charlie Brown cartoon and his famous quote, "I love humanity. It's people I can't stand."
All of this musing about misanthropes soon set me to musing on a more personal level and pretty soon I found myself wondering aloud, "Babs, do you think I'm a misanthrope?" Babs got a very surprised expression on her face and by the way she held back her answer and looked at me with that "Oh you shouldn't have asked me that," expression on her face, I knew the answer before it was even uttered. Then she very carefully said, "Yes," and she looked at me to see if I were offended, and qualified her "Yes," with a "Well borderline."
For the record, I wasn't offended. I sort of already knew the answer to that one before I asked it. Just needed a little confirmation from the outside. Got it in short order. Of course, then I had to obsess about it and question whether I were really a misanthrope or not and what were the implications if so, etc., etc., etc.
Turns out it's not so much people that I don't like as stupidity. Trouble is that a large portion of humanity is stupid, or at least they do lots and lots of stupid things. So when you dislike stupidity and the majority of humanity does really stupid things and you dislike those stupid things, it appears as though you are down on humanity (misanthropic) when in all truth you are down, not on humanity, but on stupidity.
This reminds me of Forrest Gump who famously said, "Stupid is as stupid does." Thought about that and came to the conclusion that there is a lot of stupid folks out there because they surely does a lot of stupid stuff. You are no doubt wondering at this point "Just what makes this sucker think he's so all-fired smart, calling the majority of humanity stupid and all?"
Oh no! I didn't mean you per se. You are obviously a really smart person who doesn't engage in stupid acts on a regular basis. I was talking about all of those other people out there, the stupid ones, the ones who run around doing stupid stuff day and day out. You know who I'm talking about. You're one of us, the ones who are well read and smart and who people really should listen to. There's a word for people like us. It's misanthrope.
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