Hermit life looks good as world tries to make me a misanthrope

By David McElroy · July 10, 2013

Do you ever have days when you feel like ditching the “civilized world” and moving to a remote cabin without leaving a forwarding address? I’ve been feeling that urge lately — and it’s getting stronger.

The more I know and understand people, the more I dislike most of them. I wish I could like more of them. I really do. There are a few who I care about deeply, to differing degrees, but the vast majority of people seem determined to present themselves in a way intended to make me hate the entire human race.

I’ve become sick of the vicious and nasty hatred that I read and hear from people simply because others have the temerity to disagree with them. I see it more online today than in real life, but I suspect it’s just because people feel anonymous enough online (even on Facebook) to vent their real feelings instead of hiding them as they do when they’re face to face with people.

I’ve become heartsick about the almost complete inability of a large percentage of people to even attempt to understand each other. So many people lash out in anger if they even suspect that someone disagrees with them on political or cultural issues.

It’s getting to the point that I can’t read the comments on many articles. I have to read them here, and I’d say that we have a much better-behaved crowd than most places. (I appreciate that.) But reading comments on news articles and on Facebook is like stepping into a bath of mud and hate.

It’s not just about politics. People hate each other over which brand of phone or computer they prefer, for heaven’s sake. On tech sites, the nasty battles between fans of the iPhone and fans of Android are sickening. You can lose IQ points just reading their garbage. They’re like especially mean-spirited children who have joined clubs and want nothing in the world more than to hurt the people on the other side.

We like to think we’re civilized today. We look back in history and see inhumane things that people have done to one another, and we like to pat ourselves on the back about how much better we are. I think we’re fooling ourselves.

I think the civilization that we’re so proud of is just a thin veneer on some very ugly parts of ourselves that we prefer not to look at. Last year, I was listening to a podcast about history (which has become one of my favorites) and I was getting into a four-hour episode about the Dark Ages when it struck me that I didn’t see as much difference between the people of that day and the people of our day as I’d like to see.

I think we’re still a lot more similar to those “savages” who fought vicious wars with one another than we want to be. You can find examples of great heights of civilization back then. Despite the pattern of wars, the people of some places — such as Rome — lived in peace and civilized tranquility for much of their time. And then they threw it away to enter the Dark Ages.

I fear a new Dark Ages ahead for us. I sense that things are less stable here than we believe, and I can see us falling into chaos and despair — not just political anarchy, but real chaos and lawlessness. Maybe not next year or even the next decade. But sooner than later. I’d like to be wrong, but that’s what I sense. And it makes me want to hate a people who could be so stupid and selfish and blind as to thrown everything away just so they can experience the rage and hatred that are so obvious in their hearts.

Some would say that humans are simply crazy if they do this. I’m sure there could be all sorts of interesting and complex sociological theories about why it happens — assuming I’m right. But I have a simpler answer.

We all have lurking in us the core of the same people who existed thousands of years ago. If you want a simple materialist explanation, you’d simply call it genetics or you’d point to the reptilian brain that’s said to be at the core of what we use today. But I’d say it has more to do with what we Christians call original sin. Every one of us has that hate and meanness — sin — at the core. Some of us are a bit better than others, but none of us can overcome it on our own. For some of us, the Good News is that there’s a God who wants to help us overcome it.

Whichever explanation you accept, the reality is that humans aren’t much different today than they were thousands of years ago. We’re hateful, mean, vicious and nasty. Yes, we have good qualities, too, but those evil things can sometimes override everything else.

I’ve been seeing those things more in people lately. They seem calculated to make me into a misanthrope. And they make me want to escape — away from the hatred and heartache of what I see.

I won’t actually do that — not entirely, anyway — because I believe I have a responsibility to find a way to make the world a better place. I might not like most people, but I’m trying desperately to love them anyway. It’s not easy.

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Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

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