Desiring Machine

I try to avoid becoming a misanthrope. I resist the urge. I recognize its corrosive effect on the soul. But it is difficult to keep out the clamor of the world. I read too much Huffington Post which has turned into a remarkably trashy online rag. It infuriates me even as it informs me. Reading it is kind of a bummer because it exposes important political information but there is also a lot of junk as well. For example, reading and watching how the health care debate has become kind of notorious. It saddens me to see the whole media scene reduced to mindless and baseless spectacle of the pseudo-violence of town hall meetings. I hear nothing about how to improve healthcare itself. Just fear mongering, misinformation on one side of the debate, and a sense of entitlement on the other side that seems to only articulate that they want more of the same just cheaper and preferably free. Not much discussion of what we should remain suspicious of in the current healthcare system, and specifically what should be improved. It is difficult to see democracy in a throng of maltempered ennui induced by the indifference of the media to the meaningful concerns. Elsewhere, I read that police in New Jersey picked a suspicious looking Bob Dylan for wandering around a neighborhood. The cops asked him (a 68 year old man) for his ID and even after he mentioned his name they didn’t know who he was. He was escorted back to the venue where he was performing. I think sometimes it is better to force oneself in isolation and just close off the world.

These are moments where we must remain on guard against a will to misanthropy. For it is so easy to fall into the cycle of disgust for the world. But I recognize that unless you separate yourself from time to time it is not always easy to overcome this tendency towards misanthropy. I am reminded of the words of Hunter S. Thompson after the end of his trip with the Hell’s Angels.

It had been a bad trip…fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz’ final words from the heart of darkness: “The horror! The horror!…Exterminate all the brutes!”