I feel like I’m slipping further into misanthropy every day, and it’s a hard thing to admit. It goes against what I want to believe, and it certainly clashes with the Stoic principles I try to live by. Marcus Aurelius says we’re made for each other, that we should have patience with people, but I’m struggling to feel that connection lately. Between the political divisions and the ideologies behind them, I’m finding it harder to hold on to hope.

I’ve always leaned center-right, but every time I engage with politics or society at large, my position shifts, not toward a stronger allegiance to one side, but right back to the middle, feeling like I don’t truly belong anywhere. The more I look, the more I see how human nature plays out in ugly, predictable ways on all sides. Both camps, whether left or right, seem to thrive on the same vitriol, the same snark, and the same need to silence or ridicule anyone who doesn’t align with them perfectly. If you express even a slight disagreement or nuance, they treat it like a betrayal. It’s not about conversation anymore; it’s about winning, dominating, or belittling.

I find myself wondering how to express rational, centrist, or independent thoughts when the loudest voices are the nastiest ones. It feels like society has made it a sport to tear people down, rooted in this false moral high ground that each side claims. Everything has to be sarcastic, snide, or cruel, and it’s wearing on me. How long can we live like this, tearing at each other for every perceived difference? It feels like we’re approaching some kind of boiling point, and I don’t know if we have the resilience to pull back.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know I don’t want to lose myself to this bitterness completely. Each day at a time friends. Stoics works in one hand, Bible in the other? 

Or as I have heard so often by my parents  when I was a kid and by my NCO’s in the Marine Corps, “wish in one hand and shit in the other” lol