Okay, so this will be fun, or ignored, or not fun.
Two people:
Person X: The Misanthrope
Jerry Terry dislikes people - a lot. He doesn’t really have friends, and treats his acquaintances with barely concealed contempt. He is very much an equal opportunity despiser – he dislikes men, women, straights, gays, blacks, whites and one-legged people all with an equal intensity. He is aware that his misanthropy is a problem, so he keeps himself to himself as much as possible. Nevertheless, he is certainly a negative force in the world, subtracting rather than adding to the sum total of human happiness.
Person Y: The Racist
Oswald likes (most) people – a lot. He has many friends, and treats almost everybody he meets with respect and kindness. However, he’s a racist – he just doesn’t like black people. He is aware that his racism is a problem, so he tries to avoid black people as much as possible. Nevertheless, in his dealings with black people, he is certainly a negative force in the world, subtracting rather than adding to the sum total of human happiness.
Further facts about Terry and Oswald
1. Terry treats black people worse than Oswald even though he’s not a racist (he dislikes them (a lot) not for being black, but for being people);
2. Oswald treats everybody better than Terry treats them;
3. Terry does not discriminate, whereas Oswald does (so, for example, Terry would be upset if a family moved into the empty house next to him because he’d rather it were empty; Oswald would be pleased if a family moved into an empty house next to him - unless they were black, in which case he would be upset, but less upset than Terry, simply because they were black).
4. Yes, I’m aware that you might find the characterisation of Terry and Oswald psychologically implausible. My advice is that you assume there has been some very peculiar conjunction of events in their childhood, plus star sign alignment, plus periodic exposure to death metal, which explains how they’ve ended up this way.
So what is worse, Terry’s misanthrope or Oswald’s racism? Who is morally more suspect and why?
My suspicion is that we tend to think racism is worse than misanthrope – I think this will remain my suspicion, even if it is denied here – so the question is why?
I suppose between the two, I would bolster your suspicion by classifying the racist as worse.
The misanthrope “keeps to himself”, acknowledging the lack of cohesion between self and society. So, even though Terry systematically is unkind, this is addressed through self-isolation.
While the racist tries to maneuver away from a certain group, Oswald will inevitably experience encounters. There is also the unaddressed issue of whether Oswald passes or encourages racist ideology. It should be taken into consideration if Oswald is generally kind and respectful, but works and socializes with publishers of KKK pamphlets with Confederate flags on their car.
I think people will say that racism is generally worse than misanthrope because there is a clearer victim of prejudice.
“I think people will say that racism is generally worse than misanthrope because there is a clearer victim of prejudice.”
I’m not sure that’s true though, and certainly in this case it isn’t. In this scenario, it’s specified that Oswald treats black people better than Terry treats them. In other words, Oswald is prejudice but the ‘victims’ of his prejudice do not suffer as much as the ‘victims’ of Terry’s misanthrope.
As humans we’re highly sensitive to inequality and unfairness, so it’s no surprise that the racist will be deemed the worst by most people (unless you are racist yourself, or can judge as objectively as possible).
If you were an alien watching Earth from above, how would you view it? Would it be better to have a world where everybody hates everybody else, or a world where everybody just hates a certain percentage of others?
If hate is considered a bad thing then a world with less hate is better than a world with more hate. This brings us to a conclusion that a racist world is less hateful than a misanthropic one and judging the world on that thing alone you would have to pick racism as the better.
In isolation, however, misanthropy is the lesser evil because while the misanthrope hates everyone, he’s at least upholding the morals regarding equality, which is something we should all strive for. Where equality can be considered bad (which brought me to the conclusion that on a worldwide scale racism is better) is when that equality is used in a negative way. A totally misanthropic species that bases life on equality would become extinct much more quickly than a species that tolerates inequality and prejudice as long as there’s more kinship and solidarity than there is hate.
So the real question is is a world with hate and equality better than one based on inequality and friendship? As a social animal we have to pick friendship at the expense of equality and in reality it’s how humanity has gotten to where it is today. Equality didn’t get us to the point of chatting about this in the here and now, kinship did.
Interesting thought experiment. Based on your description I would definitely choose the misanthrope as being worse. However, I also agree that there is a strong intuition that the racist is worse. I concur with Sam that part of this intuition stems from the sense that Jerry, I mean Terry, is an equal opportunity hater, while Oswald is being arbitrary, even though no good reasons are given for Terry’s hatred of all persons. “Where you draw the line” is definitely part of this equation and bears some reflection. However, I think part of the force of the intuition trades in our cultural aversion to racism because of the long and difficult histories associated with it whether that be the holocaust or slavery. What if Oswald hated not black people but people with red hair and glasses? What if it was absurdly arbitrary and specific and did not trade in on aversions we tend to have built in as a function of our cultural histories?
I also do not think that people take the misanthrope seriously enough. You try to make this clear in your thought experiment by emphasizing that Oswald would actually treat black people better than Terry. But I think people are just going to skip over that and think of Terry as some amiable fellow who thinks rather cheekily with a delicious dolop of irony that “people suck.” This is not the Terry I think you are imagining here.
I do wonder about Terry’s psychology. It’s hard for me to imagine a misanthrope that doesn’t have serious psychological problems. As a person presumably he hates himself. If not, why not? Also, given his hatred, why does he think this is a problem? Obviously neither individual is content with their stituation given that they ‘realize there is a problem” and take steps to protect the object of their hatred from it. That’s pretty generous for a hater.
In sum, if I had to live next door to one of these fellows, I’d prefer to live next to Oswald, though he and I would have a pretty substantial disagreement about a certain issue. Perhaps this is a good way for people to think about the question: who would you rather have as a neighbor. The question becomes particularly interesting for people who are black as it becomes, by your hypothesis: would you rather have someone living next door to you who hates you because of the color of your skin? Or who hates you because you are a human being? Particularly if the latter person would actually treat you worse than the former. On a cold calculus it seems that even in the case of a person who is black, Oswald is the better bet.
“so the question is why?”
Because we don’t believe you about the misanthropist? You’ve kind of set it up so that we don’t.
Because Oswald’s view is meritocratic and Terry’s is impartial, and meritocratic seems worse. All the more so since we disagree with the grounds of the merit, but even if we didn’t - it seems worse to like people only if they ‘earn’ it in some extraneous way. Terry’s impartiality is colder (obviously) but less invidious.
To put it another way, Terry’s attitude seems like a matter of temperament, and its universality makes it impersonal; Oswald’s seems more cognitive, thus more of a judgment, thus more personal and wounding.
Faust
I think your point about us not really imagining the misanthrope is on the mark. We tend to think of characters such as television’s “House” - where their wit and brilliance make up for their anti-social persona.
I’m not so convinced about your points about the psychology, etc. I certainly think it is possible for a person to be committed to a moral framework that they are aware they’re unable to live up to.
I concur about being committed to a moral framework that one is not able to live up to. I suffer rather terribly from that myself. Weakness of the will in spades.
In what sense however, do the frameworks that Oswald and Terry opporate in have a moral dimension? Or is this non-cognitivist morality we are talking here? BOOOO people! BOOOOO blacks!
My point was if you “hate people” and you are a member of the set [All People] then don’t you hate yourself? I don’t really get misanthropes I guess. Whenever I feel in a people hating mood (and I def get in that mood) a throrough self-examination generally reveals that I am also doing some self-hating as well. In the case of a committed misanthrope I thinking he would probably eventually off himself. Perhpas this is what you mean by “moral commitment he cannot live up to?” He is committed to hating people as an ideal, but he just can’t get around to hating himself?
I suppose I think these things are simultaneously possible:
a) A person hates people/black people;
b) It’s an emotional state that “infects” intellectual judgements;
c) They fight against it because they’re committed to a moral framework that says they shouldn’t hate people;
d) They are unable to live up to this framework because of the fact they have this emotional thing going on, which infects the judgements they make (i.e., they fail in their fight);
e) But it doesn’t really affect their meta-ethical commitment to utilitarianism, or whatever, (i.e., the thing which tells them it’s wrong to hate people/black people), since this is more abstrac, more cognitive;
f) As a result, they condemn themselves for their emotional makeup and the lower level (more concrete) judgements they make;
g) But it won’t necessarily translate into self-loathing because this might be relatively unrelated to particular cognitive judgements (i.e., it seems possible to condemn oneself intellectually, and for it not to translate into feeling - just like it doesn’t the other way around: this person doesn’t start liking people just because they think they ought to).
Ok that’s helpful, I’ll chew on that.
Let me give a further example that will help emphasize what I was getting at though which is more about that category that the hate is directed towards: Let us say that in addition to Terry being a person who hates people, Oswald is racist towards blacks…but he is himself black.
Jeremy,
What an off-the-wall example to site, “House.” House is pure evil and no amount of wit and brilliance could make up for his persona, which is totally anti-social. Of course, as a fictional character this persona is not only acceptable but sometimes vicariously pleasing.
That said, I have a hard time seeing the immorality of either of your characters as long as they don’t purposely try to hurt anyone. It’s action that counts here.
In the misanthrope’s case this appears to be impossible unless he totally insulates himself from the world. This person is obviously sick and deserving of some consideration as such.
As to the racist: most people (if not all) have some bigotry towards some group. If you don’t act on it, no problem, otherwise, yes I’d say it’s immoral.
There is something deliciously ingenuous about such thought experiments. You didn’t mention whether either of these individuals vote, or who they vote for. That’s another way of harming people; in fact, it constitutes one of the greatest harms that people do to one another. Your little example plays to the right-wing propaganda that liberals love people in general but hate them individually. Presumably, conservatives are just the opposite, though they don’t characteristically draw that conclusion. There is something incredibly myopic about viewing attitudes as applying to direct interpersonal relations only and not at the big picture. Actually, I’ve known both types of people, and the racist is far worse.
Ralph S
I don’t agree at all that House is pure evil.
Also, I’m not sure it is the case that immorality is necessarily confined to actions. I think there is something to the idea that certain kinds of thoughts can be immoral (I’m not sure that it is okay to hate all Jewish people, for example - even if you never act upon it).
It’s complicated though. I have another thought experiment that pumps the opposite intuition - that the person who hates but doesn’t act upon it is in some sense heroic.
After further reflection I’m more convinced that there is a problem with Terry being a person who hates people. and Oswald being a non-black who hates blacks. There is a difference in logic here that seems a likely candidate for the intuitions this pump is pushing.
So I think this experiment needs to be re-run with Terry exactly the same, but Oswald now cast as a black man. So Terry is a person hating person. And Oswald is a black hating black man. All other elements remain the same (thus Oswald is a really good guy to be around if you are not black…like Oswald.
To my mind this really takes the push out of the pump. Generally speaking we have a good idea of people of any race that are “self hating.” People wonder about log cabin republicans for instance…don’t those guys really hate themselves on some level since they seem to be working against their own political interests? And so forth.
I think part of what our intuition of the racist being worse consists in the fact we find someone other hating to be very credible while a misanthrope is less credible because he by definition would be a self-hater. This self hate does not proceed (I don’t think) as a result of his beating himself up about not living up to his moral ideals, but rather as a result of the fact that he belongs to the category “people” and thus he hates himself. If this is NOT desired and you want to change the experiment to “Terry hates all people that are not himself” then you would also change Oswald to “Oswald is a black man who hates all black people except himself” for parity.
As for your argument about the intellectual compartmentalization I think this line is the crucial one:
The word “condemn” emptied of “feeling” almost seems like a contradition in terms. When I condem something I find it repugnant by definition. I’m trying to think of something I condemn that I have no feeling towards…it’s pretty difficult. The picture you create is of someone who finds something intellectually compelling but with no corresponding emotional content. Possible? I’ll buy it I guess. But definitely strange. I would say the vast majority of things that I find compelling intellectually also have an emotional aspect. I admited above to having problems with weakness of the will. And I do condemn myself for that. But I suffer as a result of the condemnation. I don’t like this aspect of myself, and find it very troublesome.
I admit that my ‘gut’ reaction is as you predicted. I was already trying to rationalize a way to deny it before I finished reading the post. Terry is created as the obvious greater evil, but Oswald is simply more believable.
Being quite solidly middle aged myself, I suppose I have seen more real change in attitudes and actions in my lifetime than some, and considerably less than others. It is hard for me to even imagine anyone who hasn’t at least witnessed racism though.
A real, live misanthrope is a much rarer beast isn’t it? I suppose I may have seen one but not known. After all, a racist can be known from a single remark, but even the biggest jerk I’ve ever seen might have a soft spot for someone.
In the end I think the question is set up along the lines of ‘who would you trust more, a unicorn that never lies, or your own parents who have been known to fib to you (for your own good, of course)? The “correct” answer is so implausible that nobody will intuitively accept it.
I’d judge the racist worse as well. Violating the principle of equality is pretty bad. So even though he doesn’t treat people as bad as Terry, Oswald is probably the worse person…
That said, there have been experiments in which even animals will dislike the principle of equality being violated. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97944783 so we might be hardwired to make this judgment.
Faust
I’ll have a think about your post, but I think there is some confusion in there between, on the one hand, what I think you’re claiming, which is that there’s a problem with the thought experiment, and, on the other hand, what I think is the case, which is that you’re offering the beginnings of an explanation for the different way we see the people in the scenario I outlined.
But I’ll give it some thought!
I’ve got to say I don’t find the misanthrope particularly implausible. But the thought experiment still works with a “toned down” misanthrope. All that’s required is that somebody’s misanthropy causes more harm in the world than somebody’s racism (where the “victims” of the racism and misanthropy are the same category of people). That’s not implausible. Well not to me it isn’t!
I’m a bit of a misanthrope myself, so knowing how the misanthropic mind functions, I don’t find your portrait of the misanthrope to be entirely convincing.
For example, the misanthrope prefers that the house next door be empty. That fits me: I hate neighbors, noise, loud parties, electric drills, family quarrels, cute children, pets. I don’t hate them in the way that a racist hates blacks. As long as they”re not around, I never think about them. That is, the misanthrope does not want people around him: they irritate him, but unlike the racist, he doesn’t enjoy or cherish his dislike. The racist gets his kicks hating blacks, while the misanthrope just doesn’t want to be bothered. Think of Melvin in As Good as It Gets. Unlike the racist, he doesn’t univeralize his dislike: that is, he does not try to convert others to his creed of misanthropy. The racist needs blacks around in order to hate them, while the misanthrope really would prefer to be bothered by others as little as possible. I suppose that the misanthrope of your thought experiment could exist somewhere, but a misanthrope in general is not an equal opportunity hater, but a person who prefers not to be around other people.
Amos. Hmmm!
I’m not convinced either by your portrayal of a misanthrope (well, of course, that is one kind of misanthrope, but not the only kind), or a racist (I think there are racists who much more like the misanthrope you’re describing than the KKK version you’re talking about).
I’m inclined to say that the misanthrope is ‘worse’, but because I would consider the misanthrope as having a more serious mental deviant condition than the racist, so in a sense, the misanthrope has less freedom->responsibility for his actions/beliefs. The racist has more choice, which makes his decision to believe/act ‘worse’.
I’m inclined to think that the misanthrope must have a problem. Human relationships are good things and he is deliberately denying himself these. This leads me to believe that he is confused or has some kind of cognitive dysfunction.
The racist, on the other hand, is not harming himself by his behaviour (except that he is denying himself the friendship of a certain group of people), but he is seeking to deny something good to others (this is bad whether he succeeds in it or not).
It seems to me that whatever it is that made Terry the way he is goes some way to being a mitigating factor for his behaviour.
Jeremy,
I think I’m claiming both, though the assertion that there “is something wrong with the thought experiment” is sort of up to you to decide because you’re the one who came up with it and only you know what its ultimate purpose is!
But I think you you have shown me how to further refine my point. When I suggest that the experiment be re-run I am really interested not in the correctness or “rightness” of the thought experiment, but rather in gathering evidence. IF on making Oswald a black man the responses you get switch from an intuition that the racist is worse to an intuition that the misanthrope or even a 50/50 split or general neturality on the question then you know that closing that valve on the intuition pump is significant and that you have discovered something. But you have to “re-run it” to gather that evidence. I’m convinced that I”m on to something because if I imagine Oswald black then my intuition about him changes. Now I kind of feel sorry for the guy because he seems confused to me, just as I sort of feel sorry for the misanthrope because he seems confused to me. Of course, I could be wrong and people might not respond the way I expect in which case my intuition about this intuition is not quite right.
So in this respect the thought experment as stated is fine. It highlights something and then we can show by a small shift what it was we were responding to when it pushed us towards a conclusion that seems at a certain level not to make sense. If you started with the thought experiment the way I describe people might find the experiment uninteresting because it would be far less counter-intuitive in the way it pushes our intuitions (if I am right).
Clarification needed, please. About this “equality” argument. Do I understand its application correctly? Is this another correct application : if I go postal, it’s better that I shoot 50 random people than just that one guy who’s been gettin on my nerves for the past 20 years (just because I don’t like his face)?
And from another direction :
As has been suggested by others, doesn’t the matter of how “rational” their hate is have a bearing here? If their hate is irrational, it becomes a medical (psychological) problem. I would think that the misanthrope’s affliction is worse, given that it is generally more harmful. The principle of equality doesn’t apply if it is not a moral problem.
If their hate is “rational”, what are the odds of getting them to change their minds? The racist has to be convinced that black people are not inherently inferior. This seems like a conceivable task, considering that he already knows that there are plenty of people who are not. But for the misanthrope, the possibilities are less encouraging :
- How do I get him to listen to me if he trusts no one and hates everyone, including himself? (Taking pessimism to new lows!)
- How can his position be “rational” if he trusts himself and no one else? Doesn’t his own trustworthiness imply that other people may also be trustworthy?
Furthermore, assuming that the “trust myself but no one else” situation could be “rational”, doesn’t that make it an even bigger violation of the “principle of equality” than the racist’s?
There are a few more rational vs irrational vs racism vs misanthropy mix and match options, but I’ll leave them to someone else.
The misanthrope is not sufficiently interested in others to convert them to misanthropy nor does he want to spend sufficient time with others to convert them, while a racist almost always tries to convert others to racism. Thus, racism, since it proselytizes and reproduces itself, is more dangerous.
Jeremy,
Are you suggesting a person can be immoral for the way he feels or even thinks? That sounds suspiciously like being told it’s a sin to have impure thoughts. Can you give me an example of immorality which has no action connected to it?
racist is a part and form of misanthrope, has it ever occured to you?
Ralph:
1. Coveting is one such example.
2. Coveting impure thought? Yes, as one has subconsciously entertained the idea of desiring for not belonging to them.
+ 2: But why wanting to get sth. not belonging to oneself is impure thought? Who sets this criteria? This law written into human nature? written into some book? –this is an obvious fact, but I want to get an answer to it.
3. If the thought is impure, how to prevent it? Is there a proper way out?
4. The way out: can knowledge of immorality help one avoid immorality? If so, all moralists will be moral and all religious will be holy, but we know this is not the case.
5. So ^4 shows knowledge is not necessariy an effective way to preventing unwanted thoughts or action.
Correction:
2. [desiring for not belonging to them]
should be
“desiring for sth. not belonging to them”
Because Oswald’s view is meritocratic and Terry’s is impartial, and meritocratic seems worse. All the more so since we disagree with the grounds of the merit, but even if we didn’t - it seems worse to like people only if they ‘earn’ it in some extraneous way. Terry’s impartiality is colder (obviously) but less invidious.
To put it another way, Terry’s attitude seems like a matter of temperament, and its universality makes it impersonal; Oswald’s seems more cognitive, thus more of a judgment, thus more personal and wounding.
Jeremy,
Let’s take coveting. Say I covet my neighbor’s wife. I’m taking “covet” here to mean desire. Now, I could do one of a number of things, one is to take absolutely no action, and this includes augmenting or perpetuating the desire through different scenarios in my head. All the other things require action on my part and become open to the possibility of immorality.
As to impure thoughts which you define (in 5.) as unwanted thoughts. I fail to see how an unwanted thought could be immoral. Let’s say Joe doesn’t like Jewish people. Every time he meets a Jew he has immediate negative thoughts towards the person. The thoughts are unwanted. He’d rather not have the thoughts; he might even know how irrational they are. If by just having those thoughts he’s considered immoral, then he’s “doomed” to a life of immorality. And so is practically everyone else. Hence, morality would be a rather worthless concept.
Perhaps I should have written in the next to last sentence: So is practically everyone else ( since practically everyone has some irrational bias).
Are you suggesting a person can be immoral for the way he feels or even thinks?
Thoughts can easily change the morality of an action (or inaction).
For example, what is the difference between someone who punches a person because they want to hurt them, or who punches because they are not looking where they are moving their arm? The action is the same, but the intention is different.
Or, in the case of inaction; imagine someone who does not help a person who has fallen over because they are enjoying the person’s suffering, compared to someone who thinks that the person is simply reclining. The inaction is the same, but the intention is different.
In the case of Terry perhaps the immoral thing is that he does not go to therapy, or seek to reform his character. However, this inaction is only wrong if he is having the thoughts he is in fact having.
Okay, it’s quite hard to keep up with all this, so let me make a general point about the thought experiment.
This business of whether or not the misanthrope is psychologically plausible: there are a few things to bear in mind.
1. The thought experiment only fails (immediately) if the conception of the misanthrope is logically impossible. It doesn’t matter - in and of itself - whether such a person actually exists. The conception isn’t logically impossible. Faust’s argument above about the misanthrope could have been employed to that end, if there were some reason why this person could not be a self-hater, but there isn’t any such reason here.
2. The psychological implausibility of the misanthrope - if indeed the conception is psychologically implausible - does matter if it is part of the explanation for why we see the misanthrope and the racist differently. In other words, one possible response here is that the reason we tend to think that racism is worse than misanthropy is because all actual existing misanthropes are a good deal more palatable than my misanthrope.
3. However, the thought experiment has been constructed partly in order to challenge that particular response (even if it hasn’t exactly been forthcoming). My view is that even in this imagined scenario, with the misanthrope every bit as bad as specified here, we still want to say that racism is worse. If so, this suggests that in real world cases there is something more going on than just consequentialist calculations (there is something about racism - probably something to do with the way we view equality, etc - that we find repugnant beyond its outcomes).
4. There has been some talk here about whether the misanthrope and the racist are strictly analogous. Again this doesn’t matter unless the way that they are not analogous explains our different intuitions about their behaviour. So, for example, taking Faust’s self-hatred point - this only becomes significant here, if the (claimed) necessary self-hatred of the misanthrope is a factor in why we think racism is worse than misanthropy.
Hey Kyle,
Thanks for responding to my offering.
I like your examples, but I don’t feel entirely convinced by them.
In the first example, clearly the accidental punch is not immoral, unless you want to argue along the line that the person was not showing enough care in where he flung his fist. I won’t consider this possibility since it doesn’t seem what you were driving at. As to the willful puncher, obviously he acted on a malevolent thought and is immoral for his action, not his thought (by my reasoning.)
The second example, again the 2nd person is okay; it’s the first person’s lack of action that is of concern. Here, you have me unless you allow that the first person’s ‘inaction’ is a form of action (double-speak.) But the important thing is not the meanness of the thought but what comes after it. It’s not the thought that counts.
Ralph: Life is full of situations where the intention, that is, the thought counts. There’s a big difference between killing someone accidentally or intentionally.
What’s more, from the point of view of character ethics at least, a person filled with hate, but who never acts out his or her hate, has a less virtuous character than someone who is not hateful. Wouldn’t you say that a Hitler who never got farther in life than raving his antisemitic hatred in a Munich beerhall was less virtuous than a Martin Luther King who never was able to act out his dreams?
Good sum up I think. And one way to test 4. is to imagine Oswald as black. I really am curious if people find this changes their calculus.
To reiterate my point (at the risk of being annoying but this is more for non-Jeremys that I would like to weigh in)
Terry is an X (person) hates all Xes (Persons)
Oswald is a W (Non-Black) that hates only Bs (blacks).
IF we change the above to:
Terry, an X, hates all Xes
and
Oswald a B, hates only Bs
Does this change how people think about Oswald? Does it make him more palatable? If so then 4.
The thing about your position Faust is that it kind of requires that misanthropes hate themselves. But I think the term misanthrope can quite meaningfully be employed to describe somebody who hates almost all people (not including himself, and perhaps one or two significant others).
And such a definition doesn’t undermine the thought experiment (because the misanthrope can still come off badly in terms of the effects of his behaviour when compared to the racist).
By this same token can’t we have a black racist who hates almost all blacks (not including himself, and perhaps one or two significant others)?
It seems to me that anything you can claim for the misanthrope we can analogize to a racist who is also of the category that he is racist towards. The fact that you seem disinclined to cast Oswald as a balck man (who hates blacks in precisely the way that the misanthrope hates persons) seems significant to me.
Hi Amos,
Of course, Hitler would be less virtuous than King. But let’s not compare but just look at the Hitler you’ve presented. He’s full of hate. Hate I believe requires nurturing, It’s far different than dislike being or feel uncomfortable around a certainf people. Hate needs inner-convincing. It needs inner-support. These things require active considerations. Even if Hitler is managing to avoid openly expressing his hate he is working towards hating which I believe is immoral. A person who dislikes all Martians and can’t get beyond that, so shrugs it off, in my opinion, is not immoral.
Jeremy,
” . . . the reason we tend to think that racism is worse than misanthropy is because all actual existing misanthropes are a good deal more palatable than my misanthrope.”
In reality, I haven’t come across too many, if any, real misanthropes, so I can’t get away from not taking your mis. too seriously, but racists are real, plentiful and, in a sense, scary, in my experience and to be taken very seriously.
I wonder also, if we, in general, believe a racist can get rid of his racist feelings and by his keeping them engenders less sympathy?
Faust
Well it’s not significant in the sense that this thought experiment is about comparing a certain recognisable, and fairly commonb phenomenon (misanthrope), with another recognisable, and fairly common, phenomenon, racism (against a group to which you don’t belong).
Of course, it’s possible to complicate this, but unless by doing so it sheds light on the original thought experiment, there isn’t any need to do so.
Your thoughts about possible variations might be interesting (in terms of the original thought experiment), but I’m yet to be convinced!
I do apologise as I haven’t had time to read any posts but the initial. But if we’re consistent, isn’t it a form of prejudice to dislike a racist more than a misanthropist?
Ralph
Sure, but the thought experiment isn’t asking you about whether you take racists (or misanthropes) in this world seriously. It’s asking you how you see the morality in the situation depicted.
Of course, as I noted above, this will likely be affected by real word considerations, but… and this is the key point, my suspicion is that even accepting the terms of this thought experiment, people will think the racist worse than the misanthrope.
If this is the case, it shows that there is more going on than mere calculations of malign consequences.
Katie
Well it’s only *prejudice* if it can’t be justified. (In other words, disliking a person for reason x is not prejudice if reason x is a good reason to dislike them).
I am sorry I don’t get the nature of the problem. I ask you: What is worse, hating Caligula or Nero? What is worse, hating Hitler or Socrates? Pick any two persons you want, and I still don’t see the difference. In any case, there is something odd about hating unreal beings who have not done real harm. Your two antagonists are just keeping busy hating and that is fine with me so long as neither of steals candy from a baby. Once one steals candy and the other sends nasty notes to his new black neighbor, we can talk about which of them is worse.
Well then your moral compass is defective. Hitler was responsible for the deaths of six million people. Socrates wasn’t.
Racism is more dangerous.
I could imagine a tyrant coming to power and eliminating an entire group of people in the name of racism. But, I couldn’t imagine a tyrant coming to power through misanthropy. People just aren’t self-loathing.
Would this be different or the same if the original question was posed as which was better?
I am thoroughly enjoying this thought experiment, Jeremy!
I’m curious, why was the name changed from Jerry?
To Gregory: I get the impression you’re seeing Terry and Oswald as political leaders, which is interesting. I think it’s possible for misanthropes to power through inheritance or other technicality…or someone above also brought up Nero…
There’s that cliche, “It’s lonely at the top,” which might be nice for some misanthropists.
Ok now I understand your reticence:
If we are talking about a “fairly common phenomenon” of misanthropy which does not necessarily include self-hatred (but might), vs the certainly common pheonomenon of racism then our concept of misanthropy is going to have a lot more wiggle room in it than our concept of racism. Misanthropy may or may not contain self hatred, may or may not exclude a certain number of quality relationships with humans, may or may not hate human beings for simply their DNA, may or may not hate humans for reasons that have to do with their imperfection next to a moral idea.
I submit that the fact that it has some ambiguity as a concept, that it is kind of an umbrella term, allows people to let the misanthrope off the hook much more easily than the racist. That is why you have people that either insist the misanthrope be self-hating (me), or is kind of unbelievable (several commenters), is difficult to pin down etc. While the racist seems very concrete and familiar and just plain bad.
By definition a racist hates the OTHER (at least by the definition quoted above) while by definition the misanthrope may or may not hate himself.
You try to make this misanthrope a particularly bad version of misanthropy, but I’m not sure that by doing that you don’t depart from misanthropy as a “fairly common pheonomenon.” I don’t see anyone agreeing with that assertion (that M is common) in this discussion, while certainly everyone would agree that racism is quite common and very much a part of world history. Misanthropy doesn’t fit into world history this way because it is self canceling. Even if it doesn’t involve self hatred, the kind of isolation that the misanthrope employs is not at all threatening because he has no tribe. He rejects all forms of assocation, whereas it is entierly open to the racist to join other racists in a war against the other. This is the value of “equal distribution of hate” that some are emphasizing. If you hate everyone equally, you will have trouble starting wars.
Thus if we do make Oswald black, he becomes a “localized misanthrope,” who does not hate mankind, but just “blackkind” and the same self-canceling phenomenon proceeds.
Boy that was messy. I think I made several different points there that weren’t necessarily related. But hopefully they aren’t too hard to suss out.
Yes, I do. But my argument is that our response to the uncommon type tells us something about how we view *racism* (not necessarily about how we view misanthrope).
Basically, if we think racism is worse than the kind of misanthrope that leaves the world worse off than the racism (however uncommon that kind of misanthrope might be), then that tells us something about how we view the ethics of racism.
Well if the golden rule, one of our best rules of thumb, that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves is any guide, then the racist might in some sense more seriously be in violation of said rule. Because it is possible for the misanthrope to hate himself as much as he hates everyone else then there is a sense he is in alignment with the golden rule . He is “loving” (i.e. failing to love) his neighbor as he loves (does not love) himself. The racist on the other hand is in compliance with the rule up until his neighbor is of the wrong race at which point he violates the rule.
Jeremy, you say “Sure, but the thought experiment isn’t asking you about whether you take racists (or misanthropes) in this world seriously. It’s asking you how you see the morality in the situation depicted.”
Seriously / figuratively.
Realistically / metaphorically.
Denotation / connotation.
I suspect that it is the way I relate to the words that is driving the intuition towards the racist as opposed to the misanthrope. My primary use of the word misanthrope is as a metaphor. Naturally, intuition will always rank a real threat over a metaphorical one.
Take away the labels and express the same dilemma in set theory and Terry’s position seems obviously worse.
What I have learned from this is that I have very strong negative associations with racism, and I may have been naïve about misanthrope and some of the folks I share this world with.
Grendel’s Dad
Well it was that set of issues that I was partly thinking about. Plus a whole thing about whether or not we have ideas about “fairness”, “justice”, etc., that go beyond anything that can easily be justified in terms of a consequentialist calculus (and whether we’d want to rethink these if they’re brought into focus by a thought experiment such as this).
“I may have been naïve about misanthrope and some of the folks I share this world with.”
Yes. I’ve altered my view from yesterday. If the misanthrope hates everyone but himself and one or two other people, and makes that explicit and public - then I think the misanthrope is worse than the racist (unless the racist too makes his hatreds explicit and public, but it was stated that he is nicer to people across the board).
Actually, in the real world a misanthrope generally dislikes people because of certain traits, for example, their greediness, their blindness, their
aggressivity, their self-deception, their lack of sensitivity towards others or towards beauty. Thus, the misanthropy often is a kind of ethical protest. Misanthropes are frequently disillusioned idealists and have unrealistically high ethical standards. That is very different from racism. Now, one can say that the misanthrope, as outlined above, has a distorted perception of the myriad virtues of humanity, but he comes to his position by a very different road than does the racist.
Interesting Wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy
Check out the quotation from Freud.
In judging what is worse, is it not important to consider whether the targets of hatred by Terry / Oswald are deserving of such condemnation?
For instance, it seems far less problematic to suggest that humans in general are unlikeable because they are human than it is to say black people in general are unlikeable because they are black. There are certain morally relevant drives, beliefs, intentions, emotions, instincts etc which correlate very highly with being human. There seem to be no morally relevant states or traits that correlate with skin colour.
Indeed, there may be many relatively fixed aspects of human nature which could be enough to justify at least avoidance if not active dislike by someone who becomes aware of these… For example, one reasonable response to the well-observed and deep-runnning human capacity for cruelty might be to limit how much time one spends with humans. Deciding what to do seems to depend in large part on whether a person feels the benefits of being around humans outweigh the risks. I’m not sure if there is an immediately obvious correct decision here…
But is it even possible for a person to be justified in condemning human nature? The misanthrope forgets that the standards he or she judges humans by are provided by that same human nature he or she loathes… Does judging the human species as a whole therefore involve taking the ‘view from nowhere’?. I’m not sure; it certainly seems possible to judge humans in general as failing to meet awkwardly high standards. I think this is an argument for adjusting the standards, but the misanthrope (an idealist at heart) probably disagrees.
PS. A couple of people have questioned the sanity of the misanthrope. Like pretty much all judgements of mental illness, there’s a distinct danger of circularity and the dressing up of value judgements as fact:
“Terry doesn’t like humans because he or she is mentally ill.”
But why does this mean he or she is mentally ill?
“Why? Because they don’t like other humans of course!”
Sorry but it doesn’t really add anything, apart from tricking us into assuming, without further investigation, that Terry isn’t responsible for his opinions. This may or may not be true, but we should be careful not to form judgements about responsibility merely on the basis of his holding views we find abhorrent.
Yes but the setup now is that the misanthrope Terry hates everyone except himself and two other people. He doesn’t just avoid everyone else, he doesn’t just dislike everyone else, he hates everyone else.
That’s difficult to think about.
Yeah. But that doesn’t seem to work so well for across-the-board hatred.
It doesn’t work all that well for treeating all acquaintances (he has no friends, so that’s everyone execpt self plus 2) with barely-concealed contempt, either.
Terry makes me acutely uncomfortable.
I don’t think that real world misanthropes hate everyone. It would be hard to imagine a person who hated everyone, except himself and two others. I don’t even think that real world misanthropes have contempt or scorn for everyone. Misanthropy seems to involve two factors: 1. a low level of sociability, that is, the misanthrope feels more comfortable when alone. He does not even like to spend long periods of time with significant others. 2. the idea that human beings in general and their professed ethical standards have little to do with one another; that most human beings have numerable unrecognized negative ethical traits, which makes dealing with them not particularly worthwhile or interesting; that social rites and customs mask so many injustices, self-deceptions and hidden power games that participation in them makes no sense . I would suspect that some misanthropes at least are acutely sensitive and become misanthropes because of a sort of unrequited love for humanity. I’m not claiming that misanthropy is a logical philosophical position.
True - but I think hatred of all humans by virtue of their being human is an extreme version of the acceptable human tendency to judge the rightness or wrongness of human nature. We may disagree strongly with the final judgement, but we might agree that the question (”are humans fundamentally evil and therefore worth hating?”) is as morally acceptable to ask as the question “are humans fundamentally good and therefore worth loving?”.
On the other hand, hatred of all black people by virtue of their being black is an extreme version of an unacceptable tendency to make judgements of worth based on irrelevant characteristics (i.e., skin colour). We disagree with the judgement but moreso we disagree that the person believes the question (”are people of skin colour X worth hating?”) is morally acceptable to ask.
Paul,
If you take the categories to the extremes you describe (and I think this is a valid move) then I think this gives support to my argument that a more extreme misanthrope is likley to involve some kind of self hatred.
Part of the difficulty of the thought experiment is that it is quite clear why the racist hates black people. He hates them because they are black. On the other hand to say that one hates humans because they are human results in a sort of open question. Does Terry hate humans because they are a member of the species homo sapiens? Because of their genetic code? OR Because as many have suggested, because of their “failing” whether those are moral or otherwise. The question of whether humans are fundamentally evil would seem to fall under the latter category.
“Are humans fundamentally evil (or good) and therefore worth hating (or loving)?” If the misanthrope concludes that humans are evil then presumably the misanthrope thinks that, being a human, he is also evil. If not then it would be good for the misanthrope to give an account of why he is the only non-evil human. On the other hand if he concludes that he is also evil but does not hate himself then it would be good to have an account of how he hates evil humanity but does not hate his own evil self.
In any case Jeremy has been explicit only in stating that the misanthrope HATES on an EMOTIONAL basis, humans. I think many people are simply refusing this characterization at first blush since, as Ophelia notes, this is very difficult to stomach.
My conclusion is that it is in part the difficulty in imagining this vision of the misanthrope as well as the ambiguity in the object of the misanthropes hate (i.e. physical or moral properties of human beings) that pushes the intuitions to find the racist more unpalatable (since the racist is much simpler to contemplate). If one takes the thought experiment’s rules completely seriously then logic dictates the the misanthrope is worse as basically the misanthrope is a global racist, or rather, a global speciesist who happens to be a member of the species that he hates.
Faust: As the token misanthrope in this discussion (and isn’t it significant that I can describe myself as a misanthrope without fear of being harshly criticized, something I could not do if I were a racist?), perhaps I can help. I see myself as member of the human race, with exactly the same basic defects as others: I neither love nor hate myself, although I would not say that I suffer from overly high self-esteem. My virtue in my eyes might be that I lie to myself less than most people do about who I am and what my motives are. Of course, I may be mistaken and others may lie to themselves less than they seem to. In that case, they are dishonest about how they explain themselves to the world, while I am more honest, although far from totally honest. I certainly don’t find the majority of my fellow humans to be evil: certainly, I find them generally to be less ethically scrupulous than they claim to be, more aggressive towards others than they claim to be, more power hungry than they claim to be, less loving than they claim to be, less concerned about others than they claim to be, etc. Actually, I may be less of a misanthrope than you are: do you really like your fellow humans all that much?
I do think it’s significant that you can describe yourself as a misanthrope. It signifies how generally sympathetic people are to a “soft” misanthropy. Heideggers Dad Man, Kierkegaards crowd, even Platos cave, philosophers often despair over the ignorance and stupidity of mankind. So obviously we are going to have some sympathy for a a certain kind of misanthropy. However, that’s not what this thought experiment is proposing, and I do not believe you are the kind of misanthrope described here. If you were, you probably wouldn’t frequent this board.
That’s why I maintain that people are not actually responding to the thought experiment as presented, that they are “filling in” their own version of misanthropy, and generally those versions are more palatable than racism. Taken seriously, however, Terry is “serious business” and is a hateful viscious SOB, a speciesist who hates his own kind. As such he is, I think, worse than Oswald who only hates a sub-section of humankind.
Amos,
Of all the things I’ve read of yours I like this last comment the best. I certainly don’t think you’re a misanthrope. I believe you when you say you lie to yourself less than most people do. I like to think that one of my finer points.
Faust: Why then would a “soft” racist be the object of sharp criticism in this discussion?
Ralph: Thanks.
Quite; all this stuff about what real world misanthropes are like and ‘what kind of misanthrope I personally am’ seems entirely beside the point of this particular thought experiment.
Okay Jeremy,
In the end, how are we going to evaluate the morality of these two people? One possibility: who will be missed (in the positive sense) more when he dies? Obviously, Terry won’t be missed at all except, perhaps, as of the passing of an interesting character. On the other hand, Oswald probably will be missed by many people. Using your own terminology, Oswald added to the sum total of human happiness more than did Terry.
Another possibility suggested by someone earlier: What would be better, a world of Terrys or of Oswalds. Well, we have a world of Oswalds now and at least one thing positive to be said about it is we can derive some relief from our troubles through contact with other people. It’s practically impossible for me to picture a bearable world made up solely of misanthropes.
I suppose I lean towards the misanthrope being the morally more suspect based on the above but also from something I suggested earlier. Oswald’s racism, strictly as described by you, is fairly latent and as such benign. Terry’s disorder is very much prevalent.
Amos: Well I think that people are projecting “hard” qualities onto the racist Oswald.
Based on the rules Jeremy provides we can, fuly within the rules of this experiment, I imagine the following:
Oswald is a kindly old white man, living in the American south. He is loved by his family and friends, donates to charities, is wonderful with his grandchildren. However, he just can’t get over his deep distrust of black people. In fact, he hates them and blames them for all sorts of things that are “wrong with America.” He’s aware that these kinds of feelings are socially unacceptable, and maybe even not quite justifiable on a rational basis, but he feels them anyway. So he tries to avoid black people because he doesn’t want to both a) shame himself by current cultural standards and b) vent poisonous hate any more than he has to.
Terry is a bitter, crotchety fellow. He avoids all people. He hates them. He thinks humanity is a waste of f-ing space. He frequently has fantasies of wiping humanity off the face of the earth he hates them so much. He’s not sure why he doesn’t feel this way about himself, and he knows that hating humanity in this way is certainly not socially acceptable, and maybe just plain wrong by his own standards. But he can’t help himself, he is consumed by hate. So he stashes himself away with his wife and son, who somehow he manages to love, and his wife is very worried about him (she doesn’t hate people, that’s how she gets the groceries to bring him). There he lives behind closed curtains avoiding all people except his immediate family lest he spew his poisonous hatred on whoever he meets.
Now which one of these two individuals is worse?
Faust
Yeah, something close to that is what I was imagining. Though you could probably tone down the misanthrope a bit (I didn’t use hate in the original posting). Basically, the thought experiment works if the misanthrope leaves the world worse off - and black people worse off - than the racist (though obviously that notion of “leaving the world worse off” is complex, and can be cashed out in a number of different ways).
Ok replace hate with despise per the original posting. I’m glad I got the gist of it right. I think it does help to try and concretize it in this way.
And by the way if people still think Oswald is worse on my examples then I will agree you really are on to something here!
Well it was “dislike a lot”, wasn’t it?
But anyway, yup. I do repeat, though, it’s only about setting the balance between the misanthrope and racist so that the misanthrope leaves the world worse off than the racist.
If that’s the case, and people decide the racist is worse, we have something interesting.
Tell you what, I might turn this into an online activity, and test it.
That’d be interesting. Then we’ll have data.
Despise is the word used here.
But I agree I went a bit overboard with Terry. I wrote that he “wants to wipe all people off the face of the earth” well in that case Oswald has to want to “wipe black people off the face of the earth.” Basically whatever emotion or disposition we attribute to one, we have to attribute to the other. If Oswald occasionaly has fantasies about lynching black people, then Terry has fantasies about lynching black, white, yellow, and purple people. Etc. I think people have difficulty doing this because while it’s easy for people to imagine horrible racists, it’s very hard to imagine someone quite as horrible as Terry is.
And there might well be some further values that go beyond a utilitarian/consequentialist calculus, but I’m not sure yet. I can sort of get myself to toggle back and forth based on what I think are mostly emotional repsonses that having nothing to do with really taking the logic of the thing seriously.
Not anymore! :-)
Well, in principle, we could make the racist less horrible than the misanthrope, we just can’t make him more horrible. (Because it’s even more interesting if the racist is a lot less horrible than the misanthrope, and yet we still think the racist is worse.)
:D
I hate to keep bringing real life into this, but I doubt that we can abstract our judgments from what we know and feel about misanthropes and racists. Here’s two more reasons why we tend to prefer misanthropes to racists. Misanthropes tend to isolate themselves, while racists don’t. A misanthrope, who despises humanity, is much less likely to harm anyone than a racist who despises blacks. A person who hates humanity enough to harm persons qua persons is called a psychopath, not a misanthrope. Racism is a political force, while misanthropes by their nature don’t organize or form groups like the KKK or the neo-Nazis. Therefore, we fear racists more than we fear misanthropes and our fear leads us to condemn them more.
There’s no problem with bringing real life into it when it helps elucidate the tension under consideration. It’s a variation of my point 2 above ( April 22nd, 6:31 am post). How we think about real life misanthropes becomes relevant if it affects how we judge this abstracted situation. Of course, that isn’t to say that we’re rationally justified in making any particular judgement on the basis of such real-life considerations, but obviously that’s part of what this thought experiment is testing.
True. Both Oswald and Terry, however, have enough self knowledge that they want to avoid hurting anyone. Terry is a worse than normal misanthrope (but will try to avoid hurting anyone) and Oswald is a better than average racist (and will aslo try to avoid hurting anyone). The thing is, we aren’t comparing misanthropes and racists. We are comparing Terry and Oswald as specific variants of general themes. One argument is that Terry and Oswald are so divorced from reality that it’s not worth considering them, but I think the experiment highlights some interesting aspects of “dislike” if not outright hate.
Do we know that Terry will try to avoid hurting anyone? Has that been stipulated? It was stipulated that Terry treats his acquaintances (everyone he knows, since he doesn’t have friends) with barely concealed contempt. It was also stipulated that Terry knows he does harm (is ‘negative”), so he keeps himself to himself, so that seems to mean he will try to avoid…well, being negative, at any rate, but if he treats everyone he knows with barely concealed contempt, is he really trying to avoid hurting anyone? Barely concealed contempt means contempt that is detectable by anyone paying real attention, or contempt that is no longer concealed any time irritation breaks through. I assume ‘barely concealed contempt’ was chosen carefully, and that Terry is meant to be fairly poisonous.
Yeah…it’s not working that way for me, at least. I thought that at first (and said that), but the more you say about the misanthrope, the more horrible he sounds (and you’ve stipulated that Oswald is always less horrible than Terry, including to black people). He sounds malevolent. (He’s not what I mean by misanthropic, either; I’m with amos on that. I’m a misanthrope, but I don’t have universal contempt or hatred.)
But you say at the beginning that you won’t believe it even if we say we think the misanthrope is worse. Well - you should believe it, because I really do think that. He creeps me out.
It seems to me that the consequintialist position is the only reasonable one to take here. Even if neither one of the persons is committing actual atrocities, in the way Jeremy set up the experiment, Terry seems to be a worse person by far. Except for those of you who might label yourself a misanthrope, it shouldn’t matter (for the experiments sake) whether or not Jeremy used the term a little loosely.
A lot of this also seems to be cultural. In an era where equality seems to trump every other consideration, (at least for the more liberal minded), I also expect to see people be more forgiving to the guy treating everyone equally horribly as opposed to the more selective fella, even if he’s treating a lot more people much better.
Seems to me that a person who treats black people poorly isn’t near as bad as a person who treats red, yellow, black and white people worse.
Maybe the targets attract the ‘hate’ of the misanthrope and the racist, they the targets are not passive and may even be complicit in their status.
One terry is worse than one oswald. But two or more oswalds are much worse than the same number of terrys. because racists cooperate to cause evil but misanthropes hate each other too and thus don’t cooperate in their evil.
And, because there already are a lot oswalds out ofthere, for all practical purposes is oswald worse
Off-topic and prob raised previously but is there a connection between liking philosophy and misanthropy? If so, are misanthropes drawn to philosophy, or does reading / doing philosophy lead to misanthropy? Or are there other hidden variables which account for both?
Also, is there an alternative word to suit people who feel cautious about humans in general, rather than disliking them?
The difficulty with this judgement is that it is coloured by our own images of both Jerry, oops I mean Terry, and Oswald. My immediate image of the two was of some middle aged/elderly men and as such made them moderately threatening. In real life I would be judging them according to their gender, race, religion and age among other things. this of course makes me an horrendous bigot (or maybe not and it is just being culturally sensitive) but these things have a huge bearing on our judgement.
If Oswald was for example, an 8o year old dear who is your lovely neighbour (assuming you are white of course) you would perceive her racism as a product of her age and not be too bothered by it. If Terry was for example an adolescent male with dilated pupils and and a crazy look his misanthropy would be doubly threatening.
These are the clues we use to make judgements and our moral outrage is linked to our level of fear.
Instinctively i chose the racist as the most terrifying based on my mental image of what he is like, not on an absolute moral judgement.
A lot of people on here seem to be conjecturing and adding on their own bits of information to rationalize their choice. I did it in my first reply.
It really is a hard one to answer without thinking up a scenario where your initial gut choice is the worst.
For instance, a few of you have mentioned that the racist is the worst because a misanthropist would avoid people all together. This seems logical but this fact is not put to us in the original scenario; it’s conjecturing.
Becky, above, bases her choice around the mental images she’s made up in her mind (which seems a little illogical because that’s really the core of prejudice if you think about it!).
So, without conjecture, it comes down to the basic morals surrounding equality (the racist) and hate (the misanthropist). The misanthropist has more hate but treats people more equally; the racist treats people unequally but has less hate. If inequality and hatred are deemed equal in badness then the misanthropist and racist are equally bad/immoral.
As fellow humans living in the current world we have more experience and knowledge about the effects of racism. It’s much more common than misanthropy. Slavery, the Nazis, ethnic cleansing, everyday prejudice when it comes to salaries in work or job opportunities, etc, etc… People choosing the racist as the worse are much more likely to have these things at the forefront of their minds when making their conclusion. We have no experience of a world full of misanthropy and so it seems less harmful, but I believe it would be far worse.
For me hate is a bigger evil than inequality. Inequality is a glass that’s half full, while hate is a completely empty glass. A world full of racism can -in the worst case scenario- decide to segregate itself into numerous racial parts; a world full of misanthropy would mean no cooperation, kinship or love at all. Everybody would want to kill everyone else, no one would have anyone else to turn to -and wouldn’t want to- and we’d just become extinct. A racist world would be horrid, but it would at least have hope.
If the basis of morality is to do good, and if doing good means giving your fellow man/woman a better future (or at least hope for the future) then the only conclusion is that misanthropy is the worse evil.
I agree with you Sam, misanthropy is the worst evil if you look at the situation through a simplistic view, i.e. that misanthropists are potential killers or haters of a greater number of people than racists. Simple mathematics would solve that one!
Real life is vastly different of course. We are not automatons yet, these creations do not suffer from fear.
The Misanthrope.
The Racist only hates blacks, and most of the time, he will deal with non-blacks. We do not know how he deals with non-blacks. Does he provide a postive increase in happiness? Is the happiness The Racist provides in the world when confronted with non-blacks outweigh the unhappiness he cause to blacks? We don’t know.
We do know however that the The Misanthrope provides no such chance of ‘redemeption’. He hates everyone equally. He will always continue to produce unhappiness. Therefore, he is worse than The Racist.
I think people only act as if misanthropes are better than racists when it comes to public personas and fictional characters. In real life, both of these people are bad; also, in real life there’s no real point in deciding who is ‘worse’ than who except in certain contexts.
Where you do get the ‘misanthropes are better than racists’ vibe is in the media, but it’s a simple case of heightened reality; it’s okay to like a fictional misanthrope, but not a fictional racist. Misanthropes in fact seem less ‘real’ (simply because there just are less of them), so characters like Blackadder and House, comedians like Charlie Brooker and Frankie Boyle provide a fun diversion from reality. Characters and comedians who are ‘just’ racist are worse because they are more real, and we feel that it is more likely that they show the actual beliefs of the comedian or writer.
In fact, I’m pretty sure misanthropes of the kind described do not actually exist.
An interesting note on the Racist, though; assuming he’s white, the likelihood is that it’s not just black people he has a problem with, it’s everybody who isn’t white. It’s quite likely that he’s also not a fan of white people who appear ‘ethnic’ culturally either; if he’s British, for example, he probably hates Eastern Europeans. He’s probably not a fan of white people who have interracial marriages, relationships, children, etc either. So in fact, in terms of the whole human race the list of people who he will actually be nice to is not a much bigger percentage than the Misanthrope.
The racist is looking like the more unpleasant of the two with every comment. Imagine you had a dinner party: inviting the racist would most likely aggravate some, if not all of your guests, at best seeming strange, at worst, downright offensive.
the misanthrope looks like quite amusing company, is probably full of dry ascerbic wit and wont suffer fools gladly. He is likely to amuse rather than offend the majority of people. He would most likely put the racist in his/her place quite quickly.
I think I would choose to invite the misanthrope to dinner first, especially if his name is Jerry!
I hate veery person in world and i hope a males drop dead and die. i hate people
Interesting question. I’d say that the racist is clearly worse.
People are social animals. Social connections and acceptance are a form of power, particularly in employment or democratic situations where promotions or rights are acquired at least somewhat by consent, if not concensus.
When considering the damage in the real world, the racist would be worse, as his social acceptance of non-blacks would advantage them. Thus his disapproval and avoidance would cause blacks to not be hired, promoted, elected, rewarded etc.
The misanthrope does not cause any social disadvantages because it’s all a relative scale. Rewards are conferred on a relative basis not absolute. If Terry hates everyone in the department, it effectively doesn’t influence the decision of whom to promote because there is no relative advantage for others. In Oswald’s case, the black person is less likely to be promoted, because he is acceptable to one less person than everyone else is. Oswald the racist is making the playing field unfair and uneven, but Jerry the Misanthrope is not.
If you look at what people do to combat racism (affirmative action and so on) it shows you what some of the most egregious effects are which they care about. So clearly this “relative social ranking” is important insofar as it influences rewards.
Well, to say that the Misanthrope would go on and cause a criminal act is preposterous. Obviously a Misanthrope would avoid all contact with people as a cardinal rule, making any vicious crimes such as murder, rape, or Mass shooting impossible for a Misanthrope to commit. Misanthropes are weird fellows but the only harm they would ever cause is to themselves. I think if one were to avoid him just because he acts “different” or “strange” than the rest of us is giving a misanthrope more reason to dislike humanity even more, It is not like he’s going to kill you at any given moment. Just my two cents
As an aspiring misanthrope myself though am not proud i must agree that “Racism” is the more negative topic, not only out of personal gain, but for the fact that the mere connotation of the word “Racism” is loathsome in it’s own
on behalf of the racist and out of experience i must also say that misanthropy is an offensive idea\ology and as far as the overall happiness of the world we are the worse discrimination more than racists against all humanity and it’s fake and masked “kind” and selfish gestures
I’d say the posting did seem to take off. Perhaps the only problem is that, experimentally, it rather exploded in flight. This makes it no less interesting and informative, but changes the nature of the information.
You have elicited a bundle of responses which jump loosely amongst ranking (and implicitly accepting the possibility of ranking) the goodness/badness (and evilness) of:
•the two people
•their feelings
•their thoughts
•their actions
•the effect of their actions on other people
•the effect of their actions on themselves
•their contravention or otherwise of Principles
•their degree of responsibility (for, presumably, any of the above).
The last of these considerations, the possible sickness/evilness distinction, leads us into a whole ‘nother bundle of psychological assumptions about the nature of misanthropic and racist people, feelings, actions etc.
In the responses, it seems to me that the bundle that shouts least (if bundles can …) is the collection of psychologies of correspondents, apart from those directly given by opinions on the above. We do see glimmerings of religious and cultural roots ranging from the Catholic to the stereotypical New York, Jewish psychotherapy culture (or do other groups go in for self-loathing?)
Your specific question is “what is worse, Terry’s misanthrope or Oswald’s racism?” My specific answer is that I think Terry’s misanthrope is worse because it is clear from the conditions of your experiment that his particular misanthrope is worse for all people, including the victims of Oswald’s prejudice.
However, you asked about what is worse and went on to speculate about what we think is worse. You did not ask what we feel is worse.
I am british, white, broadly middle-class and broadly old. For geographical and sociological reasons I have had even less contact with black people than these categorisations would suggest. With (black) people I don’t know, I do notice their race. Indeed the bulk of social psychology suggests that we (the species) are well-tuned to noting differences. I have long given up any feelings of guilt if I happen to smile more at a new black face. Or be more polite to an Asian woman. Or to speak to the new kid in school.
I do notice that I am particularly prejudiced with regard to race: I am more angered by racism than by other prejudices. It may reflect the influence of my, predominantly, white liberal teachers, or of both distant and recent cultural history, or of my personal feelings about people I have met, or fashion. It certainly reflects a feeling I have that racism (and not just black/white) is particularly dangerous because of the ease with which it is turned to hatred and thus to large scale political use.
So yes, I personally have a strong negative emotional reaction to racism which I would expect to colour my real-life moral judgements. Moreover, I suspect that this feeling is shared by my namby-pamby, left-wing, liberal peer group. You might say it’s a large part of what characterises us. And I suspect few of your post’s readers are non-members.
Both are of course, wrong. Terry is the most wrong, in my opinion. Terry obviously has some kind of personality disorder that he will not ever overcome. Oswald, on the other has time on his side. He very well may learn a valuable lesson someday and time. The lesson being learned judgments can be changed. The other facts need not be included.