There has been a growing trend where you would find someone proudly describing themselves as someone who does not like people. And this seems normalised as I have noticed more people begin to describe themselves as such.
These kinds of people suffer from what is called misanthropy. It is defined as hatred, dislike, or distrust of the human species, human behaviour and nature. Therefore an individual that has such feelings towards humanity is called a misanthropist.
Some define it as a personality trait, others as a defence mechanism; either way, it is irresponsible of society to accept misanthropy as normalcy. Whether it is a personality trait or not. Narcissism is a personality disorder and some call it a trait but it is never encouraged or seen as normal.
So, why does it seem as though misanthropy is okay? People proudly and boldly describe themselves as anthropic with no fear of recourse and despise from others.
To make it worse, the general society aids this by not seeing it as a flaw - which abets the danger these people pose. This is why even when someone who does not have a misanthropic personality disorder can have a first encounter with others and introduce themselves by proclaiming the 'I don't like people' statement.
As it is defined as hatred, or dislike for humanity, it is actually heavily embedded in racial, gender, ethnic, religious, class, and cultural divides rather than humanity as a whole. That is where the danger lies.
When someone claims to dislike people, they fundamentally mean they don't like a certain group or kind of people. They use the term people as a shield to hide whom they are actually referring to.
When a white person says I don't like people, they probably mean, I don't like black people.
When a black person says I don't like people, they probably mean - I don't like white people.
When a rich person says I don't like people, they probably mean - I don't like poor people.
This is why you would see a white man in his bakkie with no canopy on a rainy day with his dog in the front seat and black workers at the back taking all the rain to their bodies.
Not to say his dog should be at the back bearing the rain, but this means, an animal life takes priority over human life in this person, hence hatred or dislike for humanity. But in such a case, this dislike is specifically to a black person.
And this is the danger misanthropists pose.
The more there are, the more we are likely to find ourselves in a genocide or even civil, racial, ethnic, and religious wars.
Columbine High School shootings of 1999 can be something we regularly see worldwide because of misanthropists.
This poses a danger to everyone, whichever race, ethnicity, tribe, class, and culture you belong, you can easily be at the receiving end of misanthropists who have gotten together and decided to put their hatred and dislike for you into practice which can result in death.
Next time you hear a person saying "I don't like people" as a description of themselves, assess and analyse whom exactly they are referring to because they aren't referring to everybody. That is where you will detect who the person really is. Furthermore, the good thing is that, unbeknownst to them - they are exposing themselves to the racist, classist, tribalistic, and religious discriminatory nature they are.
Importantly, we need to discourage people from misanthropy. We ought to stop normalising this growing trend that people are not even ashamed of.
Before you know it, the group where you belong (you included) will be wiped out by your friend who told you "I don't like people" when in fact they were referring to people of your religious belief, ethnicity, race, country of origin, or culture.
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