Misanthropy and game

This is a more detailed follow-up to yesterday’s post. Go read it now, if you haven’t already.

A little over a week ago, MisAnDrope e-mailed me asking about the highlighted bit on my About page:

Conservative in politics, anarchist in nature, libertine by necessity, misanthropic by choice.

He didn’t think my writings were misanthropic enough to merit a poetic mention. Well, I am here to prove I am not a poser, but a full-bore, credentialed misanthrope.

First, a definition, from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

Main Entry: mis·an·thro·py

Pronunciation: \mi-ˈsan(t)-thrə-pē\

Function: noun

Date: 1625

: a hatred or distrust of humankind

There are two varieties of misanthropy, differentiated from the feelings from which they spring. The first, and most common form of misanthropy springs from fear. It is an active form of loathing that comes from being a loser in life. These misanthropes are glorified whiners who are bitter at the world for not giving them their due, recognizing their genius, or whatever petty contrivance they can whip up in their demented brain-boxes. A not insignificant number of them are social retards. Even worse, these mental pygmies expend energy and emotion on the misery of their fellow man. Alex Birch sums up this breed of misanthropy perfectly:

Misanthropy, while some of the motivations might have factual backing, is a sentimental attitude adopted by people who share more fear than hate for humans, because if they really saw people as useless, they’d thrive socially to at least make some use of them instead of just complaining like alienated losers.

A real-life example of this sort of misanthrope is “philosopher” Slavoj Žižek (hat tip: Martin Regnen), who was interviewed in the Guardian back in July:

What makes you depressed?
Seeing stupid people happy.

What do you owe your parents?
Nothing, I hope. I didn’t spend a minute bemoaning their death.

What does love feel like?
Like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.

What is your favourite smell?
Nature in decay, like rotten trees.

What is the worst job you’ve done?
Teaching. I hate students, they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
That life is a stupid, meaningless thing that has nothing to teach you.

I admit not knowing a whole lot about Žižek, but reading this interview makes me want to not know about him at all, as he comes off as a loathsome, pathetic insect. The man is transparently invested in other people’s misfortune, delighting when the most dejected of humans are suffering and becoming depressed when they aren’t. I’m not fond of idiots or fools, but I don’t walk around rubbing my palms and cackling with glee when I see one slipping up. The rest of the answers are slightly gussied-up cries of angst, the sort of thing you’d expect from an emo teenager who, despite living in a wealthy suburb and having well-off, doting parents (as all emo punks do), listens to My Chemical Romance, slits his wrists with a boxcutter, and bitches and cries about how horrible his life is and how existence is pointless. You’d wonder why Žižek and all of these clowns who think life is “stupid” or some variation thereof don’t just off themselves and save us from having to listen to their complaining, if it weren’t for the fact that they’re collectively as yellow as a bowl of piss.

Mr. Regnen sums up his opinion of Slavoj Žižek thusly:

To begrudge stupid people what little happiness they get in their lives and then get depressed over it yourself takes a real fucking shithead.

Gregory House is a stylized, cleaned-up fictional version of this variety of misanthrope. Depicting a real misanthrope on national television would be impossible because, as is shown by Žižek, they’re unpleasant creatures. As a result, House is given redeeming characteristics – he is a ludicrously gifted doctor, and as Bhetti noted, many women find him attractive in spite of his assholery. However, House is certifiably socially autistic, an unfortunate side effect of having a high IQ. That, combined with his bad leg, makes him into a resentful, spiteful individual who toys with, bullies, and manipulates people for the thrill of it. As Wilson remarked at the end of the first episode of Season 5:

You spread misery because you can’t feel anything else. You manipulate people because you can’t handle any kind of real relationship, and I’ve enabled it. For years, the games, the binges, the middle-of-the-night phone calls…

And as Obsidian remarked, House goes without romantic companionship due to his antisocial personality:

Which brings me to House himself. Yea, he’s brilliant-he’s also ALONE. No one wants to be around him anymore than they absolutely has to, including his obstensible best friend…And as we who learn and study Game know, House-types rarely if ever get laid in real life-theyre too smart to get away with being the kind of assholes Women actually want, much less like. His only option is the Bunny Ranch.

Put simply, these types of men are poor in character, and not in a sexy way.

Now we come to misanthrope type number two, the group in which I claim membership. These misanthropes are rarer, and saner. Our misanthropy is derived from calculated indifference, not fear. Individuals like myself don’t go around fantasizing about the various ways in which we’d like to see humanity fail, because we simply don’t give a damn about those small-minded things. Furthermore, this misanthropy isn’t the product of being an outcast and a failure, but merely being alive and observant. It comes from being punched in the face, both literally and metaphorically. It’s the result of realizing that the world in its state is out to screw you over in more ways than one, and reacting accordingly.

An example of a misanthrope in this mold is France’s most reviled man of letters, Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Anyone who knows the literary origins of my pseudonym, either by reading Céline’s novels (and shame on you if you haven’t) or by Googling, has an idea of what I’m getting at. The overwhelming majority of Céline’s fiction was based on his life experiences, though like any worthwhile storyteller, he was a master bullshitter and knew how to exaggerate things in a way to captivate people. Journey to the End of the Night was a retelling of Céline’s early life, told through his author surrogate Ferdinand Bardamu, relating his adventures in World War I, French West Africa, the U.S., and post-war France. From Alex Birch’s excellent review:

The novel is a half-fictional, half-biographic work, starting out in an increasingly nervous France, where the main character Bardamu lives. Living a quiet university life, indifferent to the world around him, Bardamu one day sits at a café with his friend Arthur, joking about and demeaning the every day life in France, when the two gentlemen suddenly hear the sound of a military parade outside. Bardamu, excited and stoked from the lively conversation, decides to join the parade in an attempt to mock its pretentiousness. The absurdity of the situation appears when Bardamu finds himself caught in the event, not able to escape. The next thing he knows, he’s standing at the frontline of war, crouching under gunfire from angry Germans. Suddenly Bardamu is at the very center of a World War.

Bardamu’s tone throughout the novel is one of wry indifference. He is a normal person, capable of interacting with others on a normal level, and even falls in love with a woman during his time in America (a prostitute, to be sure, but I never held him up as a model of alphatude). While misanthropic, he remains above the targets of his derision by leavening everything with humor, such that the book is a hysterical read. Additionally, rather than picking on the weak and defenseless, as fearful misanthropes do, Bardamu aims his scorn at the insane, nonsensical sociocultural configuration of the post-war West. An example from the novel that I posted earlier:

There was quite a commotion. Some people said: “That young fellow’s an anarchist, they’ll shoot him, the sooner the better . . . Can’t let the grass grow under our feet with a war on! . . . But there were others, more patient, who thought I was syphilitic and sincerely insane, they consequently wanted me to be locked up until the war was over or at least for several months, because they, who claimed to be sane and in their right minds, wanted to take care of me while they carried on the war all by themselves. Which proves that if you want people to think you’re normal there’s nothing like having an all-fired nerve. If you’ve got plenty of nerve, you’re all set, because then you’re entitled to do practically anything at all, you’ve got the majority on your side, and it’s the majority who decide what’s crazy and what isn’t.

It is this that distinguishes the second type of misanthrope from the first. The Slavoj Žižeks of the world are chickenshit pansies who, as Riff Dog might say, “kick around cats” – the Louis-Ferdinand Célines kick around the people in power.

But what does this have to do with game? Trumwill recently posted a lengthy analysis of Funny People that had this perceptive passage:

On that last one, excessive passivity is a problem. If you play a good doormat, people will see you as a doormat. If you never ask a girl out, you’re almost never going to go out with a girl. If you never make the move for sex, you’re rarely going to get sex. Unfortunately, a lot of passive people read things like this and think, in a self-congratulatory sort of way, that the problem is that they’re too nice. Or that if they were less nice that they would have more success. At that point, it depends on what you consider “nice”. But most guys that can’t get laid being nice and passive also have problems if they decide to become jerks. I know a lot of romantically lonely jerks. At this point in my life, far more lonely jerks than nice guys. [emphasis mine - ed.]

As I wrote over at Hit Coffee:

That’s the money passage, Trumwill. The thing here is that a lot of those “nice guys” were nice solely out of a desire for sex. These men are prone to becoming jerks out of spite, and no one finds spite attractive. New wrapper, same core.

Additionally, back in January, Roissy posted on asshole game, writing this:

There are genuine assholes who are loved, and there are spiteful assholes who get nowhere. The difference is crucial.

Uncaring asshole = success with women.

Caring asshole = failure with women.

When women say they don’t fall for assholes, they are thinking of the second kind. A caring asshole comes from a place of bitterness and spite. His assholery is reactive rather than proactive. He is poor at calibrating which women will be responsive to his dick attitude. Caring assholes are crassly insulting and transparently invested in the outcome of their game.

Uncaring assholes are assholes as a consequence of their indifference. It is the aloofness of the man she loves that drives women crazy with obsession*, and that aloofness is manifest as asshole behavior. An uncaring asshole demonstrates clearly in his body language and tone of voice, not to mention his dearth of words, that he could take her or leave her.

Being a misanthrope is basically taking assholery to its logical conclusion. The question is, are you a mean-minded, spiteful cat-kicker, or are you an indifferent, aloof, confident a-hole? Learning the core principles of game, with its demolition of lies about male and female sexuality, is already a big step in the direction of Céline. Cat-kicker thinking has no place in game, and will result in your failure in the mating dance. Being a misanthrope and successful with women requires you to stop being a small-minded dickhead and aim your ire at bigger, worthier targets.

For concrete examples of “positive misanthropy”, here’s some excerpts from the first part of Martin Regnen’s brilliant guide on how to be an asshole:

Practice your laugh. You need to be able to both smirk and cackle obnoxiously without coming off like a B-movie villain or the fat kid from the Simpsons. This is very important. You don’t want to be a gloomy miserable asshole who never smiles, but a happy asshole who loves being better than everyone else.

Pick your targets. Don’t be an asshole to your grandmother or to small children. Don’t be too much of an asshole to people you have actual power over. The best people to use your full range of asshole skills on are your bosses and attractive young women.

Be confident. You want people to know that you’re an asshole because you’re so great that you can get away with it. Confidence is key. Without confidence you look like an angry basement-dwelling loser who might as well be an asshole because no one ever liked you in the first place anyway.

And from the second part:

Never show irritation. You irritate other people. Other people amuse you. Even if this is not true, make it look like it is.

Look good. Good-looking people get away with much more. Of course there’s only so much you can do, but be in good physical shape and dress like someone successful. If you don’t want to dress like an adult, this is where I suppose expensive thugwear can come in handy.

And with that, I bid you adieu.

Tagged as: Chateau, House, Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Martin Regnen, MisAnDrope, Obsidian, Slavoj Žižek, Trumwill