To Hell With People

Lately I’ve been accused, more than once, of being an introvert. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—some of my best friends are introverts. My wife is an introvert. I fully support the rights of introverts. It’s just that I’m not an introvert.

I take those tests—you know the ones I’m talking about, the tests that indicate whether you’re more inclined toward intuition or logic, toward decisiveness or discussion. When I’ve taken those tests, I’ve always come down on the side of extroversion, which is to say that I draw energy from my interactions with people. These are multiple-choice tests on the Internet, people: there’s no subjectivity to them whatsoever.

I’m an extrovert and have the documentation to prove it. So why do I present as an introvert? Well, I’ve thought about it some, and decided that it’s mainly because I’m a misanthrope.

You know what I’m talking about. Misanthropes hate people. Let me quickly add, in case I’ve made you uncomfortable, that misanthropy “does not necessarily entail psychopathy.” This according to Wikipedia: there’s no subjectivity to that whatsoever.

I’d like to get slightly more specific about the nature of my particular blend of misanthropy. It’s not that I hate people per se; I regularly enjoy interacting with people of all types of backgrounds and life perspectives. I even seek out new relationships on a relatively regular basis—as regularly as anyone with the static social structure of a suburban American context can interact with new people. It’d be more accurate to say that I hate PEOPLE—the category that all of us fall in, myself included.

It’s probably more accurate still to say that I don’t hate PEOPLE but rather distrust and am easily frustrated by “other people’s silent consensus about reality.” (Thanks again, Wikipedia.) PEOPLE get in the way of people, I think. The social structure we’ve devised for ourselves makes us relate to one another not so much out of the center of who we are but by some consensus opinion of who we ought to be in the moment. So I’m expected to defer to people who have accrued deference to themselves; I’m expected to respect the office of people in their official capacity as PEOPLE, regardless of the impression I’ve made of them personally. I’m expected to indulge the social gymnastics that bring my role into contact with someone else’s role, so that I am to be oppositional toward people who would be my best friends in a social vacuum, and I am to show solidarity with people who in another setting would drive me to drink to excess.

I’m with Jean-Paul Sartre, I think: “Hell . . . is other people.” I think he just got the capitalization wrong. Hell is filled with PEOPLE, and people need to be saved from it—myself included.

These exoskeletons that each of us wear are assigned to us, but in general we gladly take them on, because they make us look so pretty. They also serve us well in a fight, or even when we’re accidentally put at risk. Have you ever found yourself playing nice with someone—enjoying the fellowship, as it were—and suddenly the conversation doesn’t go your way? It turns out your friend is more conservative than you or doesn’t share your convictions about what direction your boss should take your department or compliments your brother’s sense of humor shortly after laughing insufficiently uproariously at your one-liner. Never fear: appropriately suited and armed, you are a rock—you are an island.

This is what PEOPLE do to us. They make being people more difficult, and they make us treat one another as less than people. How inhumane we humans can be!

So, I distrust and am easily frustrated by PEOPLE—myself included. But I like people. I know because those people I’ve gotten to know I’ve really enjoyed. And that’s the secret, I think: getting to know one another, we discover that while Hell is filled with PEOPLE, it’s people that make heaven so heavenly.

Getting to know one another is a discipline, a craft. It demands empathy: a resolute act of seeking to understand others. When we limit our encounters with people to the meeting of exoskeletons, we don’t really get to know them, but when we take off our own masks and gently pry our friends out from behind the armor they occupy, we come to discover that they’re interesting even at their most mundane, that they’re likeable even in their sins and shortcomings.

This, I think, is part of the ministry of Jesus’ incarnation. By taking on flesh Jesus became vulnerable—even unto death, you may recall—and made it possible for God and people to relate face to face, person to person. Jesus, you may recall, fiercely opposed PEOPLE—being no respecter of persons, he took official PEOPLE to task and challenged his followers to forgo role and office in their relationships with one another. But he fiercely loved people, seeking out those whom his own office would distance him from. The incarnation of Jesus is the supreme act of empathy: God seeking to understand his creation completely.

So, to hell with PEOPLE. We can do better, yes?