Misanthropy, Solitude, Fiction and the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything

He could hear the rain drumming on the roof as he sat back in his seat and relaxed. The window was open an inch so he could smell the freshness of the grass and bushes as they danced in the steady breeze as the waves of rainwater rolled off the roof and down over the windscreen. He'd turned the radio off so he could enjoy only the sounds of nature, the sound of peace, the sound of solitude. No one to moan and groan about how bad things were, about what someone, anyone (but them), should do to make it better, complaining about every little thing while never actually doing anything them self to fix what they were moaning about.

He just sat there and relaxed, watching the bushes and tree branches dance a merry jig, a pair of wet wood pigeons huddled together on a tree branch trying to keep dry, and only partly succeeding.

If only life were always this peaceful. If only there were always so few annoying humans around to bug him. He took another bite of his bacon sandwich and savoured every last little bit of fat dripping from it - stuff the cholesterol, the taste of the bread, the smell as it wafted up his nose, the gentle aroma of coffee in the background from his cup sat on the dashboard.

This was bliss. This was what life should be like - not some headlong rush into the distance, always pursuing more. Just sitting savouring the moment and extracting the maximum pleasure from now, rather than pursing the misery of more.

No doubt someone would shortly come rushing along and ruin the moment, but until they did he was going to enjoy it, enjoy being alive and revelling in the simple pleasures of peace and harmony. A distinct contrast to the conflict riven state most humans seemed to want to live in. And when conflict didn't exist they created it for entertainment. A crazy species. No wonder he was misanthropic. Not that he hated everyone, he just had a healthy distrust of the majority who he found largely predatory and self delusional and so simply avoided as much as possible. No, he reserved his loathing for MPs. Most people thought it stood for Member of Parliament - he had it down as standing for Malicious Psychotic. The misanthropic fundamentalists of politics who wanted to slaughter everyone they came across and made him look like a little lovable misanthrope. A misanthropic moderate.

No wonder he enjoyed reading, and re-reading, Thoreau's Walden. One of the few books, one of the few authors, who 'got' solitude. The sheer pleasure of being alone: one person, one moment in time, one small oasis of tranquillity amidst the insanity of humanity.

That would be his perfect life. A small retreat somewhere, just him, solitude and the peace for solitary reflection and harmony instead of communal conflict and strife. Of course, a retreat required the money to fund it which was where his dream foundered. Having to earn the money destroyed the very solitude he craved which meant he rarely kept any job long, which in turn meant he never put together the lump sum he could retire on. It was a vicious catch-22.

A cheap car was the closest he could get to a Thoreauesque hut in the woods, his own mobile retreat. Far from perfect but it was the best he could do for now. Most of his reflection was on how to fund solitude, and he had yet to find a way. He knew he wasn't the sharpest knife in the draw, but then he didn't need to make millions, in fact he could probably have just about managed to fund seclusion on what he had earned so far if the government hadn't stolen most of it from him.

Ah, The Government. The worst institution in the world. It seemed to exist for one reason only: to destroy. The insanity of human selfishness and self delusion writ large. It was a foolish person who talked happily about 'the state' near him. They were likely to find their head being unscrewed and inserted up their own rectum. It wasn't that he particularly objected to them having their state. The problem was most of them, his fellow humans - God, what a depressing thought - seemed far more interested in imposing their state on everyone else. And when you objected to their attempts at exploitation and abuse you got the: 'How dare you be so selfish as to not live your life entirely for my convenience?' line. Their own act of selfishness in expecting you to never seemed to occur to them.

A crazy species.

The state: egotism in action. It didn't really matter whether it was a political state, a religious state, a military state, a corporate state, or even a state put together by artists or scientists, they were all based in the same underlying human philosophy of selfishness. The vast majority, the masochistic masses, expected you to do the things they were to scared to do themselves, and at the other extreme the sadistic elite expected to not only live their own life for their own benefit, but also that you should, too. The sadists not only wanted everything they produced but everything you produced as well, and then some. There could never be enough for the rapacious predators of the sadistic elite.

He was quite happy with enough. Whereas most humans seemed to have external egos and were always comparing what they had to what others had and invariably finding their own life lacking in someway, he simply looked at what he wanted and set about achieving it. (Apart from solitude, the one thing he really wanted that he was struggling to create.) He couldn't care less what other people had, if they had a bigger house, a faster car, so what? It seemed to him most people created their own misery by comparing what they had to what others had rather than to what they actually wanted themselves. Something they often seemed too scared to even think about. If someone else has something you don't care about why try to achieve for yourself? It seemed crazy to him. But then, so did most humans.

Always looking for 'The answer to life the universe and everything', to steal a line from Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy comedy sci-fi novel. Most people spent their time looking for 'The Answer' when all they had to do was look in a mirror. (Their search reminded him of the old Bob Dylan song about dignity.) Their search concealed the very thing they were looking for, the physical act of looking stopped the mental act of creating their own answer.

Life is personal, not social. Individual problems are just that: specific to the individual. So the solution also needs to be specific to the individual. Letting someone supply you with 'The Answer' only ensures that they get what they want. You have to create your own solution to your own problems to resolve them properly, and ignore all those 'leaders' only too willing to offer to supply you with 'The Answer'. Too many individuals simply use the search for 'The Answer' as a form of nihilistic prevarication. Each question simply led to another question, never to a decision.

Now if only he could come up with an answer as to how to fund his solitude in the long term.

The rain had actually increased, and it looked more like late evening although it was actually mid-afternoon. If it had been an urban setting he would have expected to see Humphrey Bogart walking those bleak, rainy, windswept streets, with Lauren Bacall in the distance and Peter Lorre's corpse in the background. Ah, he was the world's happiest misanthrope. The joy of bleak dispair. He loved going to the seaside in winter when the day was so grey you couldn't tell where the sea stopped and the sky started, and when you walked down the sea front in the early morning the whole place was deserted. Like one of those so-bad-they-are-good 1950s black and white science fiction movies where everyone had disppeared. Great days!

He had finished his sandwich, but not his misanthropic contemplation of life. There had to be a solution to his problem of funding solitude. Perhaps it was the content mills on the Internet. Yeah, that was a potential solution. He decided to give it a try - action speaks louder than words. Although he wasn't to sure how that worked out when you were a writer where action was words. Before he buried himself under anymore platitudes he cranked up his laptop and plugged in his 3G modem and had a quick search...

Aha! There we go - Squidoo. He wondered if they had a 'misanthrope' section - not to bother. If they didn't they soon would have when he signed up.

Yeah, he'd give Squidoo a go and see if that was the solution, 'The Answer', to his financial problems.