Forgive the navel-gazing, but it just occurred to me that I'm a misanthrope; or at the very least show strong misanthropic tendencies.
From Wikipedia:
In Western philosophy, misanthropy is connected to isolation from human society. In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates defines the misanthrope in relation to his fellow man: "Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable...and when it happens to someone often...he ends up...hating everyone." Misanthropy, then, is presented as the result of thwarted expectations or even excess optimism, since Socrates argues that "art" would have allowed the potential misanthrope to recognize that the majority of men are to be found in between good and evil. Aristotle follows a more ontological route: the misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god, a view reflected in the Renaissance of misanthropy as a "beast-like state."
In short, it's a condition that stems from an acute level of idealism and expectation.
I honestly don't know what's more depressing: the fact that I recognise all the symptoms and causes in myself as evidence that I hate people, or that I'm so easily defined by a blummin' Wikipedia article.
Of course, it goes without saying that I'm disappointed that none of my so-called-friends told me this already. I guess that would have been asking for too much.
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