I hate it here.

Seriously. This planet is hell.

So far I've only found two ways to mitigate the suffering: First, hiding. The smaller the space the better, nothing bigger than a small flat. Preferably smaller. Somewhere high up, where a chap can peek out suspiciously at the hateful world. Going outside is to be attempted only after long planning, properly equipped and fully armoured. For sleep, an even smaller space is needed. Something about the size of a coffin.

The second way is to get as much visible distance between me and any other human. This requires being outside, in the woods, camping. So I'm not agoraphobic. “Phobic” implies fear, unconquerable, unreasoning fear akin to the terror of some ancient otherworldly tentacled fiend manifesting through your dreaming mind to devour your eyeballs from the inside and then wear your skin like a coat, all the while preserving your shredded, screaming psyche in a nightmare state of consciousness neither alive nor dead.

Going outside doesn't make me feel like that. I'm not afraid of the big wide world. I'm not a timid person: I'm an angry one. It doesn't show, I keep a lid on it. But really I'm a seething pressure-cooker of radioactive fury quivering for release. Seriously, I can boil water with the pure power of my rage. I just glare at the pan and... well, I haven't owned a kettle in years.

Blogging is a completely insufficient outlet for my rage. The copious drinking of tea and smoking of many cigarettes (lit by the slightest enraged inbreath of my contained fury), are the only things that help. And meditating. Lots of meditating. Calmly. Under trees. Perhaps smiling faintly at the zen wossname of the nirvana thingy. That helps a lot.

What I'm really trying articulate is that I have no particular focus for this blog other than to rant angrily in a sustainably amusing manner about things that annoy me. I'm starting on a broad canvas with “I hate everything” and focussing in from there. It's a blog about misanthropy. General hatred of humanity, as a spiritual position and potentially a political force for the greater good.

The first proposition is that “Everybody Is A Bastard”. Everybody. Misanthropes know that they're bastards too. But it's okay. It's alright to be a bastard. The question is, what kind of bastard are you? It's not okay to be a lying bastard, for example, or a thieving bastard, or... well you see where I'm going there.

Other worldviews reluctantly admit the need for incrementally sterner measures against persistent problems in human society. Misanthropes address this from entirely the opposite perspective; let's pick some problems and run through the solution.

We've been Saving The Rainforest for at least twenty years, but we're also still burning thousands of acres of it a year for beef grazing. The conservationists, for all their multi-million pound worldwide fundraising network, can't afford to buy enough rainforest to preserve an area worth spit. Now, if I'd been in charge of a job and given untold millions to fix it, I'd expect to have some serious questions asked if it still needed doing two decades later.

So here's a solution: These people trashing the rainforest are greedy, malevolent bastards. Peaceful means aren't working. Let's hire mercenaries. What? It works for animal conservation; we hire “game wardens” to shoot poachers in Africa. Doesn't solve the problem but it thins the bastards out while simultaneously giving a boost to the local economy. So let's just hire mercenaries to carve out a protected area of the rainforest. Nothing like an actual armed conflict to bring world attention to an issue.

How about those adverts begging for money for Africa? Hasn't that campaign to dig wells been running over ten years now? Call me a bastard, but I smell a rat; let's do some numbers here... there is probably no way of knowing precisely how many villages there are on the entire African continent. Nevertheless, it is a finite number. Therefore, there's a finite number of pickaxes, spades, and booklets of instructions needed to provide every village with the kit and knowhow to dig their own damn well. And there's a finite amount of time that it would take for a finite fleet of trucks to trundle all over Africa, delivering these things to every village on the continent.

As with the rainforest, one would think that by now, we'd have seen some improvement in the ratio of wells to villages in Africa. But we haven't. I suspect that the money doesn't go on picks and shovels; I think it goes rather to local warlords and corrupt officials. I further suspect that the people who pay this money over, the charity people who spend so much more money guilt-tripping us to keep bankrolling them, know perfectly well that our money goes to corruption and murder. At least, I'm sure they've worked it out by now.

So here's a solution; instead of asking for money, ask people to donate stuff. In particular, picks and shovels. I'm sure any charity able to afford TV spots and massive junk-mail shots can arrange a run of well-digging how-to booklets.

We arrive at these elegantly simple solutions through misanthropy; there is wisdom in the universal hatred of mankind. Drought in Africa? You people don't need handouts, you need digging implements. Weapons down, stop your whining, shut up and dig. To get there though, we first have to confront the bastards currently mismanaging the job: the charities. It's long overdue that we acknowledge that the people who undertook to trade on our collective guilt are not holding up their end of the bargain. They are, in fact, greedy, conniving, two-faced heartless bastards of the foulest water. Only a minute portion of the money they raise even reaches the corrupt officials and warlords of Africa; most of the money goes straight back into supporting the ever-expanding fundraising machine.

Billboards, mail-shots, TV adverts... an endless bombardment of wan, starving children and emaciated dusty people... I suddenly realise that I don't even know for sure if there even are starving children in Africa. I know various tribes occasionally slaughter each other, but I'm fairly sure that Egypt, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Congo, and goodness knows how many other African countries routinely appear on the news with stable government, a growing economy, cities, schools, electricity, cars, and all the other trappings of functional society. Everything is bit sun-bleached and dusty, but there are plenty of people in Africa who are not only not starving, but also not at war and indeed gradually doing better day by day. This would appear to be by their own efforts, since the charities focus their attention on the remote wilderness disasters.

Not that these things don't happen, but I've never heard of one being fixed. What about that famine in Ethiopia? Or indeed in Somalia? What happened, did they get food, did they all just leave, or what? We see all these pictures of starving people slumped waiting to die, but really; how many people actually just sat in the desert and died? And what were the charity people doing all this time? Didn't they have time to bring in food or move people out and get their pictures? I suspect perhaps the pictures were what they were after.

I offered to volunteer abroad once. What, you thought I got so cynical just sitting in here all alone? Why do you think I sit in here? I've been out there, man, I've done things, I've seen how shitty it all is, that's why I hate it and all of you so very much.

One thing I did was try to volunteer for charity work abroad. Volunteer. The point being I give my time and labour; that is my charitable contribution. I'm sure it's a life-enriching experience, but I call that a perfectly fair reward; we're not talking about a holiday here, we're talking about leaving the prosperous and comfortable West, and going to some dusty impoverished hell-hole to do menial labour that all the world's charitable contributions can't seem to find money to pay for.

I thought it a bit damn cheeky, therefore, that they expect volunteers to pay their own way all the way. You know, I don't actually need a charity backing me if that's the deal. Yes, I'd like to see the Himalayas, and working for free among starving yak-herders seems fair enough if I can get a lift out there with bed and board provided. I mean really, even Mexican melon pickers working illegally get a lift in and out of work; some of 'em get accommodation on site and some even get paid! That's actually a better deal than a charity volunteer gets; I'd go for it, but I don't want to see Mexico quite that much.

So yeah; another exciting instalment of “Why I Hate You All So Very Much”, one bastard to the whole bastard bunch of you out there; TTFN.