Mysanthropy, or why I hate my species.

Since I have a job interview tomorrow, it would be good to get to bed soon. (While it's almost a certainty that I will be hired for the newspaper job, I technically haven't been hired until I do the interview.) So it is only natural that I should run across a really fascinating book on the web, and get absorbed into reading it way past what should be my bedtime tonight.

The Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen.

If I had any remaining doubt as to whether humanity is the most loathsome and disgusting species imaginable, reading the first two chapters of this piece erased it. (I'm tempted to read more, but I need to go to bed, and I want to post a tiny rambling before I do so.)

However, depressing as it may be, the theory expressed in the book goes a long way to describe, in bleak Darwinian terms, why our culture is so insane in many regards.

A few choice quotes from Chapter 1, which talks about the evolution from savage to barbarian tribal cultures (which eventually evolve into industrial modern economices):

Those employments which are to be classed as exploit are worthy, honourable, noble; other employments, which do not contain this element of exploit, and especially those which imply subservience or submission, are unworthy, debasing, ignoble. The concept of dignity, worth, or honour, as applied either to persons or conduct, is of first-rate consequence in the development of classes and of class distinctions...

When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory phase of life, the conditions of emulation change... The activity of the men more and more takes on the character of exploit; and an invidious comparison of one hunter or warrior with another grows continually easier and more habitual...

Aggression becomes the accredited form of action, and booty serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression. As accepted at this cultural stage, the accredited, worthy form of self-assertion is contest; and useful articles or services obtained by seizure or compulsion, serve as a conventional evidence of successful contest. Therefore, by contrast, the obtaining of goods by other methods than seizure comes to be accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. The performance of productive work, or employment in personal service, falls under the same odium for the same reason. An invidious distinction in this way arises between exploit and acquisition on the other hand. Labour acquires a character of irksomeness by virtue of the indignity imputed to it.

The second chapter becomes even more sickening....

The earliest form of ownership is an ownership of the women by the able bodied men of the community...

The ownership of women begins in the lower barbarian stages of culture, apparently with the seizure of female captives. The original reason for the seizure and appropriation of women seems to have been their usefulness as trophies. The practice of seizing women from the enemy as trophies, gave rise to a form of ownership-marriage, resulting in a household with a male head...

Wherever the institution of private property is found, even in a slightly developed form, the economic process bears the character of a struggle between men for the possession of goods...

The motive that lies at the root of ownership is emulation; and the same motive of emulation continues active in the further development of the institution to which it has given rise and in the development of all those features of the social structure which this institution of ownership touches...

Gradually, as industrial activity further displaced predatory activity in the community's everyday life and in men's habits of thought, accumulated property more and more replaces trophies of predatory exploit as the conventional exponent of prepotence and success...

In any community where goods are held in severalty it is necessary, in order to his own peace of mind, that an individual should possess as large a portion of goods as others with whom he is accustomed to class himself; and it is extremely gratifying to possess something more than others. But as fast as a person makes new acquisitions, and becomes accustomed to the resulting new standard of wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciably greater satisfaction than the earlier standard did...

The end sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the rest of the community in point of pecuniary strength. So long as the comparison is distinctly unfavourable to himself, the normal, average individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his present lot; and when he has reached what may be called the normal pecuniary standard of the community, or of his class in the community, this chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a restless straining to place a wider and ever-widening pecuniary interval between himself and this average standard. The invidious comparison can never become so favourable to the individual making it that he would not gladly rate himself still higher relatively to his competitors in the struggle for pecuniary reputability.

I hate my species. The fact that it makes all-too-perfect sense, and is supported by reality is all the more infuriating. I want to retort by saying, "No, humanity is better than that. Deep down inside, we're full of lovey-dovey goodness just waiting to get out. Just watch some good old TNG episodes. That's what humanity is really about."

Oh, for the niave optimism of youth.

In moments like these, I feel like breaking into song. At eardrum-piercing volume, loud enough to obliterate this entire sorry little planet.

I've been reading Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat. In true Anne Rice style, it manages to be grotesquely beautiful, heartbreaking, and oddly inspirational all at once. When I imagine the scenes I am reading, the face of Lestat has become forever inseparable from that of Tom Cruise in my mind. But like most, had I not seen it onscreen first hand, I would never have guessed him to be such a fine fit for the role.

(I imagine Gabrielle alternately looking like Julie Benz and Renee O'Connor. The former image pops into my mind because... well, described in vampire form, Gabrielle seems a lot like Darla. Maybe slightly older though. The Renee O'Connor association comes only during mental lapses, because of my almost-hardwired reaction to see her when the name "Gabrielle" appears, not because of any real resemblence in the description of the character. Can't help it.)

Blah. I'm up too late. Goodnight.