On Hatred
A Poison Tree, Blake Project Mosaic, Centaur Street
Hatred is like anger. It’s an emotion and a choice.
As an emotion, hatred happens to us. We have little say in whether we feel or don’t feel hatred in the first instance. We also bear little or no blame. Certain people and certain situations incite my hatred, and certain people and situations–perhaps different ones–incite yours. Our background or our temperament play the dominant role when hatred is an emotion.
And yet we also choose to hate. I said “we have little say” when hatred is an emotion, but we do have some say. We can’t change our background, but we can change the stories we tell ourselves about it. We can’t change our temperament on a dime, but we can mold it with our daily practices and decisions. The company we keep, the culture we consume, our willingness to challenge our perspectives–those all do a certain work on us.
After the first instance, hatred becomes an intellectual choice in two ways. The first is, we choose to hold onto or nurture the initial hatred. The second is, we take an inventory of our values and match them to the situation that is in front of us. Even if our first inclination isn’t to hate, we can choose to hate that which goes so strongly against our deepest values.
I said above that hatred is like anger. Up to this point, you could replace my uses of the word “hatred” and “hate” with “anger” and arrive at my opinion about anger. However, hatred is different from anger. Anger, in my view, can be a spur to right action. While it’s possible to go overboard with it, anger is not essentially harmful. Hatred is. It’s a sickness that can and will eat each of us from the inside until that’s all we are. As a bonus, it’ll enable us to take others down with us.
All of this probably sounds preachy, sanctimonious, and self-serving. It sounds that way because it is. There be elephants in this blog post which I decline to name but about which I’m thinking and about which some of you might be thinking, too. Just rest assured that when I say “we” and “us” above, I include myself.
Photo credit: Jessica Mulley, A Poison Tree, Blake Project Mosaic, Centaur Street. Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The appeal of hatred, much like the appeal of anger, is that it let’s a person feel strong, and powerful, and protected (by being able to protect themselves).
Past the initial adrenaline rush, however, it’s all an illusion. Anger and hatred are like napalm, burns fast, burns hot, burns indiscriminately, and must be constantly refueled, and when the fuel finally runs out, you’re left with naught but devastation.Report
Thanks for the comment, Oscar.
I should point out–not in response to your comment but in response to a possible objection I anticipate–is that I intend no particular judgment against people who choose to hate. I mean, if I think hatred is wrong, then I guess I am saying people who choose to hate are choosing to do wrong. In fact, it’s almost (always?) impossible to say something is wrong without also judging those who do that something. But I should strive not to judge. That’s hard to do, and I’ll always fail.Report
Hate isn’t necessarily wrong. It may be useful, or even necessary, in the moment. But it bears a price, which is why many claim it’s toxic.
And like all toxic things, the poison is in the dose.Report
Excellent post with which I largely agree.
I used to agree with you that there are no uses for hatred.
However many years of long self examination have led me to believe that hatred was as necessary to my youthful survival and eventual escape as anger was. Perhaps more so. Hatred let me preserve my sense of self against an incredible amount of battering.
Hard to explain why but it feels quite certain these days, funnily enough perhaps easier to see it now that I have a lot less hatred inside me, that I needed it then.Report
Thanks for the comment. It gives me a lot to think about, for at least three reasons. One is that “hatred is always toxic” is kind of a cliche, or the “right answer” whenever one is talking about hatred. The second reason is that I respect your perspective.
The third reason is that when I started out writing this post, I wasn’t prepared to say hatred is always toxic. I was more prepared to say it was like anger, something often toxic but not necessarily toxic and sometimes useful. (And I note the inconsistency that that Blake poem I cite in the image talks about “anger” and “wrath” and not about “hatred” per se…..maybe they’re instances of each other?)
This post was prompted by another thread where a commenter said he had always despised Trump. I realized, when I read that, that I don’t despise or hate him, even though I probably should, given the values that I claim to believe in and given his actions. But I’m well aware that I despise and hate others who have done much less harm than Trump has, or perhaps who have done no real harm whatsoever, beyond the harm we all do as persons. Often it’s a choice but usually in the first instance it’s not a choice.
That’s a long winded way of saying that maybe after reflection, I might come to agree with you.Report
Another excellent post.
It is unclear to me the functional difference between long standing anger and hatred.Report
Thanks, Joe. To be honest, having read your and Maribou’s comments, I think you may be right.Report