Misanthropy – Traveling Mark

Mother Nature Is a Wicked Old Witch

I enjoyed my stay as a recluse in a remote Canadian wilderness profusely but anyone who thinks three months in the wild were a romantic dream come true is as detached from reality as those who say that Cambodians are hospitable, Thais smile all the time, Filipino have tasty food and Brazil is not any more dangerous than London or New York. Whatever was the agenda behind all this crap is irrelevant – we live in the 21st century so it’s time we pulled out heads from our behinds and put an end to this fabrication.

Photo: Mother Nature Can Be One Wicked Old Witch

Mother Nature, albeit beautiful and awe-inspiring is also harsh and unforgiving. We have evolved to romanticise life in the wilderness and perceive it for something it is not. Fiction presented by books and movies portrays wilderness and people who dwell in it as peaceful and merciful but reality is quite a ways different. Real mother nature is a wicked old witch.

If you want to have a warm and cuddly wilderness experience, go to see a movie or risk getting killed. I got to spend a significant amount of time in Mother Nature’s embrace and grew to respect and admire her. It showed me how small and insignificant I am and how she’ll carry on being the same wicked old witch regardless of whether I live through my encounter with her or die.

This important understanding that Mother Nature is a wicked old witch is one of the primary reasons why so many hikers die in the wilderness. Their fear of reality prohibits them from seeing the whole truth. They see beautiful surroundings and mighty elements, but refuse to acknowledge the very thing that makes Mother Nature tick – the inherent cruelty.

I have, since the inception of this blog, offered nothing but whole truth. I don’t have a huge fan club because my reality is not partial and majority of people are not able or willing to accept unskewed facts. And I know most people are not ready to hear that Mother Nature is anything but majestic so I don’t anticipate much positive response here either.

Do not get me wrong, though. I was out there, I speak from experience yet I will be the first to defend Mother Nature’s beauty and show her respect. I love her more than I love people and enjoyed few short months living side by side with her more than years living side by side with people. There are no words to describe how much I love nature and how much she means to me, but that is not an excuse to leave out the part where Mother Nature is a wicked old witch.

While I was in the wilderness, alone and vulnerable, Mother Nature threw some mighty difficult shots at me and when I responded by bouncing back, she threw another one and then another and another. I came to understand that I exist within nature, not the other way around. Mother Nature has long been here before a sequence of events I had no influence over resulted in my creation and will long be after I and all of my achievements perished.

I am naught but a powerless, unworthy drop in the ocean of life and whether I like it or not, I’m finite. All I was given were a few short years of existence yet I was also granted the freedom to roam the nature a free man. Free to think, free to understand, free to make my own judgement. Free to do things no other creature I encountered had the privilege of doing.

It was this ability to think that set me apart from other inhabitants of the wilderness and provided me with a tool that made survival in an environment dominated by cruel Mother Nature easier – imagination. For no matter how harsh the shots that Mother Nature threw at me had been, I was always able to look forward to what my dreamed of future would hold for me. To be comforted by a thought is to gain solace where there is gloom.

Mother nature is cruel, but she’s also fair. She does not seek out her victims. She throws shots completely oblivious to whether they bring you prosperity or suffering. Her actions are unconscious and uncaring and will come down by the same force whether you worship or curse her. I respect Mother Nature’s power and admire her beauty, but I understand she’s as much my best friend as she is my worst enemy.

Let this be the lesson to you. To enter Mother Nature’s realm is to expose oneself to both the good and the bad she has to offer. Be prepared, or perish. There is heavenly beauty to be seen and endless knowledge to be gained out there, but Mother Nature is as much of a wicked old witch as she is a beautiful bride, a shrewd healer, or a guiding spirit. She’s not out to get you – she’s not out to get anyone. She’s just there, following her own course to which we respond. Sooner or later, you will be recycled. Are you prepared?

The Bliss of Solitude

Solitude is bliss. It is one of the most empowering feelings I’ve ever experienced. Life as a recluse taught me that solitude and loneliness are two very different experiences and that being alone does not necessarily mean being lonely. As a matter of fact, I found that loneliness is much closer to alienation than it is to solitude and alienation is experienced when there are other people around. If you go recluse on the society, you’ll give it no opportunity to single you out and make you feel isolated which in turn eliminates any chances of feeling lonely.

Henry David Thoreau, great writer and philosopher who spent 2 years living in voluntary isolation by Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts said it best:

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

As you shun society, you are compensated with peace and develop appreciation of it. The abundance of time and beauty that surround you will inspire peaceful inner experiences which are laced with incredibly uplifting spirits. I found that time away in solitude is very rejuvenating and boosts both health and happiness.

Allow your mind to quiet down and you’ll see your heart grow more than it ever did before. When you are alone, there is nobody there to judge you and point fingers at you. You can be yourself the way you’re meant to be. Solitude is a great way to awaken your inner child and open up to wonderment you last experienced when you were little.

Feel your soul awaken to health, purity and harmony and let your internal energy sources catch new breath. It will force you into solidarity with yourself and give you a fresh new passion to live and make use of your time. And in the end you’ll understand that being outwardly deprived is very inwardly enriching.

My experience with solitude helped me become more humble and come to terms with many of my life’s issues. I haven’t completely settled down with myself yet, but this was just me getting my feet wet. I now understand how many lessons one can learn from a lifestyle of simplicity and purity and I’m not gonna stop learning after just one chapter.

When you are alone, when you are standing there face to face with yourself and nature is the only thing to judge the duel, you are reminded of birth, death and interdependence. The modern society obstacles that prevented you from manifesting your true self no longer exist. You gain complete immunity to the inner tension forced upon you by the world you used to be a part of.

Here in the wild, you are not judged. Being alone does not mean you’re lonesome, having nothing does not mean you’re poor, letting go does not mean you’re weak. Here in the wild, whisper can roar as loudly as thunder. The best way to dislike someone is to live with them. So go out and experience the bliss of solitude for yourself.

Justified Misanthropy

Psychologists are people who get paid big bucks to invent fancy names for common human traits, such as laziness or ignorance.

— self

I keep asking myself – is it possible, in this day and age, for a reasonably aware person, to not be disappointed with mankind? World leaders make promises to end wars in order to get the office and when the office is theirs, they go right ahead and expand the war. And general public, instead of calling for impeachment and worldwide condemnation of these war criminals, goes out of their way to worship them. Indeed, when it comes to going out of their way, the public goes twice the distance justifying their idols and defending them when faced with people who retain a reasonable level of sanity and virtue.

Photo: Justified Misanthropy - Follow the Way of People or the Way of Nature?

My whole life I was looking forward to the day when we as a people embrace one another and the world will once and for all live in peace. They sing about it in songs, they write poetry about it, and by right, considering how advanced we got as a civilization, you’d expect us to grow up and make killing for money and power history. Sadly, it ain’t happening.

Our existence in the universe is almost exclusively detrimental with no redeeming qualities to it. We destroy even as we create. We consume, we multiply, we lay waste. We pollute the air we breathe, we poison the water we cannot be without, we choke the very planet without which we perish and on top of it all, we treat one another with prejudice, egocentrism and selfishness and desire power to dominate and humiliate the other person.

True enough, I did live my life looking forward to the day when we as a people embrace one and another and the world starts to live in peace but it didn’t last long. I realized early on that throughout thousands of years of documented human history, there has not been one decade without war. How foolish of me to think that after millennia of embracing war we would magically turn around and embrace peace… How foolish of me to raise my voice against war hungry leaders and violence craving citizens.

Still, things seemed to have been different only a couple of decades ago. Most people opposed unjustified wars, such as that in Vietnam and condemned soldiers for their (whether voluntary or involuntary) participation in slaughter of innocent civilians. Back then people rallied to protest wars (hippie movement) – nowadays they rally by the millions to celebrate murder (alleged killing of Osama bin Laden). It would seem we have not evolved one bit since the time of the Romans when people flocked to watch men slaughter each other in coliseums.

Peace loving pacifists are a minority so small that compared to the war-happy killing-supporters, they literally do not exist. I would know, because being one of them, I get trampled by the hatred-spewing war zombies left and right like there’s no tomorrow, with voice of peaceful sanity nowhere to be found.

War is the way for sick-in-the-head individuals to go on a killing spree and get away with it. The wars of today are as unjustified and immoral as they were 40 years ago, but the people changed. Instead of condemning each and every killing machine out there, people of today “thank them for their service” and some even go as far as saying that these war criminals “protect our freedom”. Honestly, is this really how far we’ve descended as a species in a matter of a few decades?

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell!

Psychologists have all the answers as to why there is such a high occurrence of suicides among veteran soldiers yet they seem to fail to see the bigger picture. Perhaps the premise of consciousness has not made it to their textbooks? It’s simple, really – being able to kill and get away with it gives the soldiers a god-like status. While they can’t give life (and could care less), they have the power to take it and they’re more than happy to put that power to use.

Must be hell of a rush to handcuff a one year old and shoot it in the head just because you can. All your soldier-buddies pat you on your back as you entertain them by addressing the frightened civilians with offensive names. You look forward to your next kill but as the years go by, the screams of your defenceless victims start hunting you and flashbacks from your days of “glory” turn into spooks that never leave your side. You’re left to live with it and get slowly consumed by the ever growing remorse until you can’t take it no more.

It makes perfect sense that so many veteran soldiers respond to their immoral past by hating themselves to the point of no return. As it goes among soldiers, they do not ask, they do not tell. What really happened on the battlefield is a secret those who were not there will never be disclosed. But upon return to “normal” life, when the roaring of the falling bombs quiets down, and their soldier buddies are no longer around to laugh with them at people they’d murdered, the screams of their victims take over. In order to keep the secret a secret, they silence the screams by taking their own lives. And if they don’t, someone will take it for them and make it look like suicides. The secret must remain a secret.

Justified Misanthropy

If you got to the very underbelly of your problems, you’d realize that it’s people who are the root cause of them. The negative emotions you experience are almost exclusively the response to something somebody did. Something a person, or a group of people did. If you feel angry, it’s because a person did something you disagreed with. If you feel betrayed it’s because a person backstabbed you. If you feel left out, it’s because your friends turned to someone with prettier face than yours.

Remove people from your life and many negative feelings or experiences will be alien to you. That could include fear, sadness, broken heart, isolation, disappointment, back stabbing, betrayal, foul play, or other.

Certain unavoidable events or circumstances, such as passing of a loved one (human or not) could also evoke the feeling of sadness or loneliness, but they don’t happen out of spite and are often a natural part of life.

This leads me to a conclusion that misanthropy is not only justified, it is the only feasible alternative for anyone who’s reasonably intelligent and upright. Misanthropy is a natural reaction of decent, honest people to deplorable behaviour and the inherent corruption of the human species and the society they’ve created.

Those who resent misanthropy either lack mental capacity to comprehend the bigger picture, or succumb to hypocrisy in fear that it would affect their status among peers. This self-delusional cowardice tricks others into falsely perceiving them as all-loving mankind apologists, but it also tricks themselves by robbing them off honor and integrity.

Those who put their hearts into seeking truth, find it. Those who find truth but suppress it to avoid the negativism labels are cowardly hypocrites. Therefore to get the whole truth, one must seek negative people.

Is it possible to really love mankind if you don’t even understand it? Is it possible to love mankind if you seek truth? Is it possible to love the seeker of truth?

Misanthropy and Repentance

We the humans have so much potential yet we’re using most of it for the wrong purposes. People are not merely evil, they are as evil as can be and will readily go over and beyond.

An expression of disappointment in mankind, is an expression of care. We can only move forward as a people if we take notice of the reality for what it truly is and take appropriate action. Without it, we could be doomed to follow the wrong path and as the saying has it, it matter little how hard you paddle, if your boat is facing the wrong direction.

You can’t have good without evil, you can’t have devil without god, you can’t have love without hate. In a world dominated by two types of people – those who are evil at heart and those who support them – misanthropy is justified.