Hatred for humanity

[Emiya24]

Has anyone written a human character with deep hatred for humanity? Im not saying like Edgy emo kid hatred i mean full on hatred "I will eradicate humanity!" Kind of hatred

What would be the possible motivations for this kind of hatred and/or what would make some truly despise humanity?

Personally no matter what happens i dont think i will resent humanity but that might just be me being too open minded and optimistic :v

This is really something i need for my story since the villain will most likely take this stance against humanity

It doesnt have to be humanity btw it can be trust issues or something else... it just has to make a character want to eradicate humanity xD

[Parataxis]

Hatred of any group begins with dissociating yourself from their personhood in an us and them way. Assuming that this is simple (say, the character is not human to begin with) look at what makes the two groups different. If I am a rabbit, I can hate humanity for their dull senses and lack of awareness, I can resent them for living so loud and carefree having forgotten the fear of the wild that you feel in your bones. They're slow and flat footed and are neither graceful nor seemingly clever. And yet still somehow they find ways to murder rabbit kind without even the contest of the chase. They're cowardly and they set traps rather than actually expose themselves to danger. Humanity is therefore much worse even then foxes because they don't play fair Etc etc.

On the more supernatural side, a spirit who lives forever might see humanity with a wide lense and just watch them kick problems down the line instead of solving them, over and over. Eventually they grow tired of this endless sliding game and bitter that the species never seems able to properly clean up its own mess. Etc etc

I think the trick comes from being able to close off your perspective of all humanity for a bit and think about specific things that would bother your character. So for instance, my (human) main character struggles with cynicism and anger over the course of the story, and events that that occur in the final chapters are all about bringing those feelings to a peak. Her seed of despair is the hypocrisy she sees in people around her, and so, watching her friends fail to live up to the good people they initially appear to be she falls deeper and deeper into darkness. Now, she does not, I am glad to say, become a genocidal maniac. But you can easily see how one in a similar situation could. After all, if even the good people she knew were tainted by the inevitability of evil, then was not the whole of humanity devoid of truly good people? I can easily imagine a character who, in a similar situation make the demand "show my one good man and I will believe Humanity is worth saving." And then never find their one good man.

These are just some ideas I spun out over the course of like 10 minutes. It's not too hard to come up with a plausible reasoning if you just take a moment to think about where your character is coming from and exaggerate one or two main points into a philosophy.

Being open minded is great, but I think that an important part of being really truly open minded is being able to understand even exotic and toxic world views without having to believe them yourself. Keep in mind that you don't have to hate humanity to write a character who does, because it's perfectly fine for your character who hates humanity to be limited in their thinking or straight up wrong. I write mostly humans who grew into their hatred or apathy or despair from a place of powerlessness or envy or dehumanization, but there are plenty of other flavors out there. Try to pick the one best for your story.

[Katy133]

I'm actually in the process of writing a misanthropic protagonist for a future visual novel. But since I'm still in the process, I unfortunately can't hold up this character and easily point out what makes them who they are (but feel free to PM me and I can try my best to describe this character in more detail).

Like Parataxis, I'll also note that misanthropic people generally have a mindset of "me" versus "others." A misanthropic person may be someone who was naturally antisocial at an early age, or someone who has had so many bad interactions with others, to the point where they don't like strangers in general.

Socrates describes a misanthrope as follows: "Misanthropy develops when... one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable ... and when it happens to someone often ... he ends up ... hating everyone."

However, I'd like to also point out two very important things: 1) It is possible for a misanthrope to hide their true feelings about other people. Some can do this better than others. They can still be genuinely friendly and kind people. They simply don't like/trust other people. And, 2) A misanthrope doesn't have to literally hate everyone. They can still have a small circle of friends/family that they deeply care about and trust. Again, it's the misanthrope dividing the people they care about with the people they don't ("us" versus "others").

H. L. Mencken wrote, "A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin." If that's the case, a misanthrope is someone who, when they're on a crowded bus, wonders why so many people smoke. Why do healthy people throw their life away like that? Why do they get dibs on the clean air? Don't they care?

Misanthropic characters are filled with irony. People tend to generalise misanthropes as people who are uncaring. But in reality, they may care too much...

[Emiya24]

This is the first time im writing something of this genre so i cant help feel a little shaky and nervous about motivations.
Parataxis if you dont mind can you give me a sample character you have written before or do you have any completed games that i can perhaps try out with this theme

[RotGtIE]

Bear in mind that although there can be several rational - if unpalatable - reasons for developing a misanthropic outlook, there's no particular reason you have to create a well-reasoned, internally-consistent psychological construct within the mind of your villain.

Arguably the most beloved villain of the entire Final Fantasy series was motivated by nothing more than mere insanity. This made him completely impossible to negotiate with as well as terrifyingly unpredictable in his behavior. Here was an antagonist who would kill someone not for any reason involving a risk/reward assessment or any personal agenda, but just because he was curious to see what they would say, do, or look like while they were bleeding out. A villain who would poison his own POWs because he was bored with a standoff. A monster who would strike villages with apocalyptic destruction just because he felt like it. And in the end, that was his whole reason for his seemingly random efforts to annihilate the world and everything in it - against all reason, he just plain felt like it. He decided he just didn't like humanity, or anything else for that matter, and opted to destroy everything in the hopes of building a monument to nothingness, all on a whim.

There are other irrational reasons for acting on misanthropy or developing it in the first place. Neither villains nor heroes need be self-aware. Take Elliot Rodger as an example. If you read his manifesto and watch his videos, you can see a consistent theme of extreme narcissism combined with a complete lack of self awareness - he believed himself to be so naturally superior to others that he considered it a crime for women to have rejected his advances, or perhaps even failed to make advances upon him, all while recording cringe-worthy videos of himself complimenting his appearance in the reflection of a car window, stuttering and stumbling over his words as he uncharismatically skulked around in parks looking for young couples against whom to direct and narrate his envy. Sometimes people are just like that: so stuck in their own minds and so hung up on their own perceptions of the world around them that they can't see the obvious flaws in themselves which a casual observer would be able to detect in minutes if not seconds. There's no rule prohibiting a person who seethes with resentment and hatred toward humanity from simply being short-sighted, hypocritical, and just plain irrational.

While you can certainly have a misanthropic character whose outlook is reached by observation and analysis - such as Agent Smith of The Matrix - there's no reason you can't make a misanthrope out of a character who arrives at their position through a much less robust thought process. If nothing else, it's certainly believable.

[trooper6]

A particularly often used reasoning is one where the villains believes destroying humanity is for the greater good.

-Humanity is destroying the planet. The only way to save the planet is to destroy humanity.
-Humanity is weak, the only way to make humanity strong is to destroy it by infecting it with a creepy virus that will make it stronger.
-Humanity hurts animals. I care more about animals than humans...to save the animals I must kill the humans.
-The present world is suffering. But after death it is paradise and joy. I don't want humans to suffer anymore so I will kill them all...thus sending them off to a better place where there will only be paradise and joy.

[MoonByte]

I have, but then again, those characters had not been human
One character had been a plum tree that was reigning over the part of the planet that was dead (he was feeding the souls of the deceased so they could be reborn) while his brother, an apple tree, was caring for the living and fed them on his side. And humans simply went, declared the Plum Tree as malicious and killed off his saplings, leading to him being on the brink of dying. Plus, over 70% of all souls in his care cease to exist since he is too weak to feed them, bringing great disharmony in into the entire system.
In agreement with his brother, he starts overtaking parts of the living world to get enough nutrients so he can rebuild his realms and replant his saplings which of course gets obstructed by the humans which believe he is attacked. It is one big devils circle of misunderstandings and ungrounded bias on the humans side which quickly leads to the Plum Tree deciding that humans should be taken out of the system as they disturb it (he literally lets all human souls in his care that did nothing wrong starve).

So in this case, one example for the hatred is the arrogance of humanity that they have the right to declare who deserves to exist and who doesn't. As is normal for most villains, the Plum Tree is of course hypocritical, since he comes to a similar conclusion when he declares that humans have no right to exist themselves, but that's part of the fun.
The anime "Arjuna" had a similar case with aliens trying to heal the earth from waste and disaster, yet getting constantly obstructed by humanity, so they simply outright attack them in their attempt to finish their job and save the planet.
The manga "X1999" is literally about the conflict between humanities will to survive and the planets will to survive (and thus get rid of the species that is ruining it in its selfish ways).

Of course you can always have a villain that is selfish, downright stupid or has some personal issues, but especially the latter is usually hard to pull off since you need to explain why that character comes to the conclusion that EVERYONE deserves to die.
It is possible as can be seen in "Breath of Fire 4" (one character is constantly targeted, attacked and in the end just has a major breakdown when being attacked by the most cruel thing one might imagine), but one needs to think of one big Humilation Conga Line to justify why the villain doesn't just think "New York should go to shit" or "All death to the Russians", but literally believes that EVERY human deserves to die.

[try10]

I think someone could despise humanity if:

Nobody ever showed him kindness from the bottom of their hearts without expecting something in exchange. He feels used and sees people as liars and exploiters incapable of being honest and kind.
Doesn't have loved ones to care about him sincerely/incapable to love since nobody showed him love. Or maybe he lost his loved ones by the hands of wicked people in some horrible way.
Has seen or lived through some gruesome things that he's simply disgusted by them all. Being a victim to some sort of dreadful abuse/someone kidnapped him and he was locked for years, dunno and having seen only the ugly face of humanity.
He can be a very sensitive soul that can't find his place in this depraved world. He can't stand suffering and corruption. He feels that he doesn't belong here with the rest of the world. He is too good for the world, so the world should just die and he should be the only living person.
He could be insane. Wants to be like a God by exterminating humanity/Or he is a creepy religious fanatic.
He could have a disturbing hero complex thinking that he is doing something great by killing them all.

That's all I could think about.
Good luck!

[trooper6]

He could also just be a sociopath.

[SundownKid]

What would be the possible motivations for this kind of hatred and/or what would make some truly despise humanity?

They could have lost their faith in humanity due to something terrible happening to them in their past, either perpetrated by one, or many people. Something that made them believe that humanity is, by nature, evil and must be destroyed.

They could just be brainwashed by an alien race or being who wants to replace humanity entirely.

They could be a religious fanatic who wants to initiate the "apocalypse" of whatever religion they worship and send everyone to the afterlife.

Or, they could be flat out insane and simply doing it to watch the world burn, because they have no reason for themselves to live and want to take everyone with them. Sociopathic is also a possibility for the reason that they wouldn't care if it happened or not. But I would hesitate to make them sociopathic unless absolutely necessary, because it feels like spreading fear about psychological conditions.

It is certainly possible that if the wrong person had enough power they could desire to wipe out humanity, even if the typical person would never dream of doing such a thing.

[OokamiKasumi]

Has anyone written a human character with deep hatred for humanity? ...
What would be the possible motivations for this kind of hatred and/or what would make some truly despise humanity?

Hating humanity in general is easier than you think. All you have to do is look at how humans have destroyed the environment; strip mining, deforestation, pollution of the oceans and lakes, and caused so many types of animals and birds to go extinct purely from hunting them to non-existence. From there, it's a simple leap of judgement to equate humans with a literal flesh-eating virus upon the world.

[RotGtIE]

From there, it's a simple leap of judgement to equate humans with a literal flesh-eating virus upon the world.

Or the children of an abusive mother.

[Taranee]

What would be the possible motivations for this kind of hatred and/or what would make some truly despise humanity?

I'm a misanthrope I'll try to explain my views, it might help you write your character.

Humans have started countless wars, invented torture methods that give me nightmares when I just think about them, committed genocides, formed oppressive dictatorships, etc... It's also unbelievably common for humans to abuse their own children in the name of "discipline" or "religion". And no matter what horrors a human suffers from, he or she will almost never locate the real cause of the problems, and instead wants to find a scapegoat who has nothing to do with the problems.

I believe love exists, but it's very rare. Most people experience primitive desire based on shallow things such as appearance (youthful -> fertility) or wealth (resources for raising the offspring) and mistake this for love. Even though people aren't consciously aware of it, the reproductive instinct motivates them. Few people care about personality or long-term compatibility. The popularity of shallow apps like Tinder, and the short-livedness of most marriages are evidence for this.

I also don't believe most people have a true sense of right and wrong. I think most people believe everything the media, their parents, or their favorite politicians say is good. Basically people believe in anyone who has power. They're like children who want to get the approval of their parents, stuck in the conventional moral stage of moral development. But nobody likes to admit it, so they rationalize some "logical" arguments so that they can pretend they came up with the opinion by themselves, instead of getting it from the media.

Another thing that frustrates me is how submissive people are to the authorities who oppress them. So many people don't want freedom, they just want an owner who will make all the hard decisions for them. Most people won't rebel against injustice, unless they're on the brink of starvation and have nothing to lose.

To me it looks like humanity is running towards a cliff and is going to fall off like lemmings, but everyone keeps screaming "it's not my fault", "it's not the fault of anyone I like", and "this is good for us, because the government/media/religion/family says so".

I don't hate everything about humanity. If there weren't some things about humanity that I love deeply, I probably wouldn't care that people are destroying them. I love children. Knowing how much children suffer in the world hurts me a lot. I also love art and science, they're humanity's greatest achievements, but so few people appreciate them.

[karenbubblegum]

Bear in mind that although there can be several rational - if unpalatable - reasons for developing a misanthropic outlook, there's no particular reason you have to create a well-reasoned, internally-consistent psychological construct within the mind of your villain.

Arguably the most beloved villain of the entire Final Fantasy series was motivated by nothing more than mere insanity. This made him completely impossible to negotiate with as well as terrifyingly unpredictable in his behavior. Here was an antagonist who would kill someone not for any reason involving a risk/reward assessment or any personal agenda, but just because he was curious to see what they would say, do, or look like while they were bleeding out. A villain who would poison his own POWs because he was bored with a standoff. A monster who would strike villages with apocalyptic destruction just because he felt like it. And in the end, that was his whole reason for his seemingly random efforts to annihilate the world and everything in it - against all reason, he just plain felt like it. He decided he just didn't like humanity, or anything else for that matter, and opted to destroy everything in the hopes of building a monument to nothingness, all on a whim.

There are other irrational reasons for acting on misanthropy or developing it in the first place. Neither villains nor heroes need be self-aware. Take Elliot Rodger as an example. If you read his manifesto and watch his videos, you can see a consistent theme of extreme narcissism combined with a complete lack of self awareness - he believed himself to be so naturally superior to others that he considered it a crime for women to have rejected his advances, or perhaps even failed to make advances upon him, all while recording cringe-worthy videos of himself complimenting his appearance in the reflection of a car window, stuttering and stumbling over his words as he uncharismatically skulked around in parks looking for young couples against whom to direct and narrate his envy. Sometimes people are just like that: so stuck in their own minds and so hung up on their own perceptions of the world around them that they can't see the obvious flaws in themselves which a casual observer would be able to detect in minutes if not seconds. There's no rule prohibiting a person who seethes with resentment and hatred toward humanity from simply being short-sighted, hypocritical, and just plain irrational.

While you can certainly have a misanthropic character whose outlook is reached by observation and analysis - such as Agent Smith of The Matrix - there's no reason you can't make a misanthrope out of a character who arrives at their position through a much less robust thought process. If nothing else, it's certainly believable.

I agree. A character that hated humanity for the sake of it, without digging himself up psychologically looking for an excuse (it doesn't have to be put into a plot - but if the author assumes this digging could've taken place, the reader will catch that), is usually insanely charismatic. He's not feeling guilty for who he is and what he feels - that's magnetic, even if that's hatred for the whole humanity.

[puppetbomb]

I believe that there is a not insubstantial number of people who believe the human race is and overall destructive existence. The difference, IMO, between those who go on a murderous rampage vs. those who don't, are people with a massive issues with entitlement and control.

"The world is terrible, therefore I will dictate who lives and dies."
"Humanity has failed me so as its punishment, I will destroy it."
"Society is harmful, so I will purge it of evil."

The first half of these statements can actually be held peacefully. The second half is a person whose entitlement is so strong, they believe the world should exist to fit the role they have made for it.

No matter what justification is used, it comes down to "I will have my way no matter what." An example of that can be found in a group that starts with N and ends in Azi and stereotypical two-year-olds.

That's my two cents.