There is a particular personality type that I have come to really dislike: that of the dog-loving misanthrope.
This kind of person believes that dogs are superior to humans, at a moral-spiritual level. They believe that dogs are more loyal than people, will never betray you, and are not cruel in the manner that humans can be. They look on dogs as faithful companions, who love unconditionally, unlike the fickle, incompetent, and malevolent human.
I have always found this personality-type to be un-self-aware, and as a result, ungrateful. One can imagine a kind of self-hatred in their ungratefulness — after all, they themselves are not dogs (much as they might wish to be).
But there is a deeper naivete in their canophilic misanthropy, which is this: the dogs they love were made by humans.
Human nature, with all of its “virtues” and “vices,” is the product of pack-existence. Our ancestors functioned in a manner very similar to wolves — or, perhaps more aptly, like crows, but the group hunting/scavenging character traits still apply. Wolves in nature are as ruthless, as status-positioning, and as cunning as any human — they only lack the intelligence to actualize their intention in the manner of their hominid cousins.
A relatively recent example: ten years ago in Montana, three wolves killed 120 sheep in a single night. They did not eat anything. They simply killed them for sport:
They were running, getting chewed on, bit and piled into a corner. They were bit on the neck, on the back, on the back of the hind leg. They’d cripple them, then rip their sides open.
– Jon Konan, Rancher
Exempting the chihuahua, all modern dog breeds are descended from wolves. What made domestic dogs so loyal, so friendly, so unconditional in their love and devotion?
Humans.
Domestic dogs were the creation of man, reflecting all that he thought desirable in a companion. They are, in other words, reflections of man’s better self.
The dog-loving misanthrope believes he is seeing something other than man in his domestic dogs, which are uncomplicated in their character — simpler to understand than humans. But what he is really seeing is dog created in man’s image. One might even say he is seeing man as he imagines himself, and this is no more true than it is of the dog-loving misanthrope in particular, who seems to imagine that he or she embodies all of the virtues of the domesticated dog, but none of the vices of man.
The judgmental frame which looks down upon man and deems him essentially morally “bad” is, incidentally, also an imperfect creation of mankind, but that is a discussion for another time. Suffice to say for now, the dog-loving misanthrope is himself an immoral creature, un-self-aware, ungrateful, and perhaps delusional in their virtue. They shrug off the challenge and the obligation to understand other human beings as humans, in favor of a simpler, easier alternative, custom-designed by the humans they hate for their own gratification.
Jesse
27 May 2020I’d say the feeling is mutual but it’s not, I hate you ya dumb kids your parents who should have had an abortion and given the choice between a cockroach and your entire family well it’s that beetles lucky day I only hope someone out of from that cesspool you call genes finds a way out a window preferably 10 stories up after all the Lord knows prolly gonna fail at suicide only human after all can’t expect them to do anything right besides breed consume and make the cancer more terminal heres to hoping a famicide incident occurs to correct the mistake of your hairless ape ancestors breeding
C.B. Robertson
27 May 2020Jesus… you think going hairless was THAT BIG of a mistake?
K
13 Oct 2020Not sure how I ended up here, but I think you could expand this observation to *all* of the natural world, for a certain sect of committed, misanthropic nature lovers. If you feel victimized by the world or have a mental illness like Jesse, you can project all of your frustrations into a perfect, innocent animal or environment and imagine yourself a perfect being in some antediluvian past where nobody can bully you or disappoint you. I don’t think it’s that nature or dogs make people misanthropes – I think misanthropes are drawn to nature and dogs because they provide the illusion of unconditional love and put the person in control of the relationship.
C.B. Robertson
18 Oct 2020That’s a good point. I guess dogs are kind of the most natural object of affection just because they’re nearby and so well domesticated, but there is a certain kind of nature-worship that is just misanthropy in disguise.
That said, I enjoy being in nature too, and I don’t think of myself as particularly misanthropic… maybe there’s a distinction in kinds of nature love to be made somewhere?