What triggers Hate? Do you embrace it?
What triggers Hate? Do you embrace it?
Is hate a good or evil attribute for us to have?
Is it a Yin that we must have, to go with our Yang, --- to be at our best?
We have biases to protect us. Should we not embrace and celebrate them all, be they good or evil?
Jesus said to love ourselves. That would include embracing our evil side.
Do you embrace your hates?
Regards
DL
P.S
I have had to.
Born with a criminal mind and a delinquent attitude, I have likely worked harder to learn why I should love myself than most.
Is hate a good or evil attribute for us to have?
Is it a Yin that we must have, to go with our Yang, --- to be at our best?
We have biases to protect us. Should we not embrace and celebrate them all, be they good or evil?
Jesus said to love ourselves. That would include embracing our evil side.
Do you embrace your hates?
Regards
DL
P.S
I have had to.
Born with a criminal mind and a delinquent attitude, I have likely worked harder to learn why I should love myself than most.
Comments (283)
Like any emotion, I think it is neither good nor evil, however, like any emotion, if it is left uncontrolled it can be destructive. If it is understood and channeled it can be constructive.
If we use our hate to recognize the imperfections in ourselves, we can use it to grow.
So yes, embrace all your emotions, whether they be negative or positive, and seek to use them to become a better person.
I don't understand why you framed your question like "what [i]triggers hate?"[/i]. It implies that you know what is hate.
I'm struggling to understand the emotion itself. Not that I haven't felt it myself. I ain't a saint. However, an interesting fact or factoid, if you haven't already noticed, is that the things that trigger your hate are rather obvious truths about reality. Don't you hate it when you can't find the keys to the car and you're late for an important meeting? Murphy's law says if something can go wrong it will. Not exactly scientific but you get the point.
We can now wade into human territory - the domain in which hate can reach it's most hideous form. Here too, the causes are rather obvious truths about, in this case, human nature. Psychology and sociology may be able to help us understand the origins of hate, what abets and perpetuates it. Presumably most explanations will invariably point the finger at human nature.
Given this is so, it's liberating to realize that this "negative" emotion (evolutionary theorists may disagree) is irrational because the world and human nature aren't going to change anytime soon. Why hate a truth? Should you embrace it? Do you like truth that much?
I don’t find that love and hate mutually necessitate each other. Up and down, or left and right, these are dyads where the presence of one necessitates the presence of the other; the two are in truth two aspects of the same given. However, if hate is extreme dislike - that can lead to enmity and, in turn, hostility toward that which is hated - then hatred will always necessitate some type and degree of self-love from whose reference point the dislike commences. In other words, it is impossible to hate in the complete absence of love.
To first clarify: One’s love of oneself – of whatever type or degree – is a requisite for the living of life. Devoid of any iota of self-love, life would terminate – be it out of apathy or due to more forceful reasons. This same self-love can, via empathy and the like, be to varying extents then expanded to include others ... I'd say almost as an extended self, such that love of other, imo, is itself impossible without some form of love of self. While this is debatable and can easily lead to complexities, my main point here is that even egotistic love is a form of love. Albeit, a rather base variant of it.
That said, take any particular moment of one’s life. When one has hated some given one has always also loved some other given. Even self-hatred stands in relation to an ideal of one’s self - of what one's self should be - that is loved, here broadly speaking. However, there are at least some occasions when one has loved some given in the complete absence of any sensed hatred. Love can exist just fine in absence of hatred and, depending on perspective, can be argued to best thrive when hatred is absent.
So, in short, love devoid of hate can be experienced. Hate devoid of love cannot. The two don’t necessitate each other as do the dyads of, for example, up and down.
To the first question: Hatred then is triggered from a desire to defend that which is loved. This typically self-defense doesn't need to be physical; most often it is not. As an aside, one can well defend oneself physically against a physical attack in the absence of experienced hatred.
As to embracing hatred – here solely interpreted as extreme dislike – if one doesn’t embrace an extreme dislike for injustice, for instance, one will more likely than not be or else become unjust. So, to me, the merits of embracing hatred are very much contingent upon what hatreds one holds.
I don't embrace hate, it is very hard for me to hate. I don't think I've ever felt hatred or have the potential to. For me personally, that'd require a prolonged delusion disconnected from reality for too long. Most people that truly suffer from "hate" require extended periods of CBT. I don't buy anyone else trying to cough up religious or unethical rationalizations for hate or make up some unnecessarily complex response for it, either.
It is pure stupidity and a product of the most primitive part of the brain; (which are usually the stupid parts).
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Hate is self-defeatist. It is not good for the participant nor does not make anyone's life easier to live. "Evil" is just Christian stuff. The opposite of good is not evil.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Embracing biases is almost like embracing willful ignorance. If you have the means, the options, and the tools to mitigate, lessen and reduce certain biases, why "embrace" them...?
As for celebrate, I mean, sure. You can still support the reduction of biases while enjoying how pretty the blue sky looks.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Also, go easy on yourself. Criminal minds are not "born" and biological positivism is controversially not that popular among many Criminologists. Criminals and delinquents are not the same. I don't know what you mean by 'delinquent attitude' - maybe you meant 'deviant'?
You sound well beyond a minor/teen.
Do you not embrace your own bias against hate?
I think this depends. When does the hate come up? Is it habitual - iow are there other emotions we have a harder time facing, so we convert fear or grief or confusion to rage? Is it a response to rage? I do believe it is good for me to accept my rage and hate, though often I am looking to see what may be underneath, if it seems like I am avoidng something I find more unpleasant.Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
I agree with the spirit of this, but I don't consider hate evil.
I wouldn't say that there's just one type of hate or just one thing that triggers it.
I also wouldn't say that it's something to be neurotic about when you feel hatred towards something. Acknowledge it, analyze it, express your thoughts about it.
What I have a problem with is certain negative actions connected to hate, such as the initiation of nonconsensual violence.
Just take a PSYCH class. This is not complex stuff. The word is overused, anyway. Most things are just preferences, dislikes and semantic twaddle. Hate might as well be about as meaningful as a curse word.
Oh, come on. Really? I don't believe that for a second.
Since the emotion of hate exists, it must have some kind of useful survival value. Just like all emotions, however, you will need to remain in control of them, because otherwise they could end up controlling you.
SOMEthing must be evil. Or else it's a word coined by evil-minded people who wanted to release the evil of meaningless concepts on mankind.
I guess I had slipped into a pre-post modernist stance. Yikes.
True.
I learned a long time ago, and taught many people this (at least two people internalized it):
"Never attribute to malice what you can explain away with stupidity."
True.
Or take an English Lit class. Or just simply listen to what people say.
"I hate it when the streetcar cuts off my left leg."
"I hate it when the ambulance driver sounds the siren more than s/he should."
"I hate it when people don't pull over when they hear an ambulance."
"I hate it when I have to pull over for an ambulance."
"I hate it when they put celery in my stew."
"I hate celery."
"I hate it when people put a space after a word before an immediately following dot, semi-colon, period, or other marks."
I hate it when people don't listen to and ignore the nuances of the language.
But whether or not you do hate is an entirely different question to whether or not you should hate. And Swan is completely wrong to think that she's never felt hatred or even has the potential to. That's so unrealistic as to be incredible. You would have to be delusional to actually believe that.
And a lot of stupidity. For example, I once encountered someone who suggested that it would be true that the shape of our planet is hexagonal, so long as the theory was useful enough in terms of predictive power and so on.
Give the guy some credit, S. He wasn't too far off the mark -- after all, the planet's practically all gone hexadecimal.
No can do. I'm too full of malice, you see.
Perhaps love is only possible if we understand what hatred is--which doesn't mean we have to indulge in it. To feel hatred may be enough for most of us, without having to perform it.
And let's not pretend that we can't reduce biases. That is literally all my post said; you're the one saying I'm the superhuman immune to biases, not me. I claimed no such thing. I claimed if you have the means, the tools, and the resources, you should probably aim to reduce biases. If you don't, then you don't. But don't go around making dogmatic statements like "willful ignorance" is all we've got going for us or something, since that's obviously not true.
Yeah, sorry. Some people genuinely have other things to do than feel intense hatred for foreign objects, TV shows and random people they don't even know. If you seriously hate television I suggest getting some therapy; it's only a matter of time before a heart attack via stress takes you, and to be honest, it's not worth it going out over a TV show.
He's, reliving his childhood.
Exactly. There is nothing complex about anger or rage. It's the most primitive knuckle-dragging ape-like thing there is. There is definitely nothing intellectual about it. Trying to gloss up random hatred as some complex philosophical preponderance of thought is just complicated what it is.
Most people that genuinely feel hatred are behind bars for crimes of passion, performing ethnic cleanses or going through intense CBT - they are not Zen meditating about it through intellectual discussions. Yeah, no person here probably actually hates anything, seriously. Hating a color or the flavor of a food is not even remotely close to hatred. The word "hate" these days is barely even meaningful anymore.
That guy claiming disliking alphabet soup is "hatred" is actually laughable and OP is probably some sweet guy that did a thing and thought something terrible once.
Also, noted, S, that you have to be that guy calling people with different opinions and diverse ways of going about life and dealing with emotions (that needn't result to "hatred"), on a discussion forum for philosophy "delusional" ... what a way to be.
I have noted a tendency among certain members of this forum simply to react with agression and thinly-veiled insults to statements with which they disagree that must, somehow, trigger some kind of trauma. This is the bane of human existence: to have to manifest hatred against whatever threatens one's sense of security.
The attempt to feel in control of the situation by venting agression and derision of what someone else states is destined for failure. It's the same situation as staring at a mirror on the wall and asking over and over, who is the most brilliant of all. It's pointless. But those who believe that they hold their world together through an insistence upon their own superiority (shades of Aryanism), and the use of agression and violence do not understand this, which is why they may very well destroy the world.
Okay, sure, I get the general gist of that. That's not controversial. But let's be honest. There's no way you haven't once, in your entire life, hated anyone or anything, even if just for a relatively brief period of time.
But I get it. You're being that gal who feels a need to give a novel answer, and I suppose redefining hatred as something entirely out of reach for the average person is one way of doing that.
I wonder what Elie Wiesel would tell us the opposite of hate is.
Yes, because I already know the answer. It's me.
Anyway, I have other things to be getting on with. The world isn't going to destroy itself now, is it?
If anything, I'm probably one of the dumbest users here, none of my answers are supposed to be "brilliant", and that bothers that guy that I don't walk around like an armchair pseudo-philosopher calling other's delusional on affairs that don't even concern them. Imagine that. Not surprised at all he calls himself the "brilliant" one. I needn't even have to construct a coherent argument for his own show of stupidity, just merely exist. Self-righteous people usually take the most offense.
Duly noted, but there is nothing "aggressive" about my answers, I just don't go around virtual signalling as some voice of reason or psuedo-philosopher. I guess people with personalities that don't act like zen Buddhist know-it-all's are considered aggressive..? Who knows.
Confusing "disgust" and "hatred" is a common thing; doesn't require a "novel" answer, and pretty sure none of my answers have been "novel".
But since you're the one trying to add complexity to where there isn't any, it's quite evident you're projecting on my answers.
Whatever floats your boat, bud.
I'm not confusing disgust and hatred. If I had meant disgust, then I would have used that word instead. And your answer is definitely novel because no one else has answered in the way that you've done.
Quoting Swan
I'm not trying to add complexity. I rarely am. I usually try to do the opposite by simplifying matters. And the simple common sense fact is that everyone has hated at one time or another, except, like, babies and some severely disabled people, and it's very unlikely that you fall under that category. Although...
It's much more likely, as I said, that you're redefining the term to render it largely inapplicable, even though that clashes with common sense and ordinary language use.
Right.
I posit that there are no meaningful distinctions between "hate" and "disgust" via your usage of the words (and the cultural usage of the words); and the attempt to make it seem so is "novel" just for that fact alone.
There is, however, a meaningful distinction between "hatred" and "disgust" (one being a duration of time and intentions (i.e. behaviors) following - which is what I personally only find interesting enough to discuss. Had you pondered that, instead of discussing my character and challenging my self-integrity, my response might be more fruitful, but instead you rather foolishly pound your chest like a gorilla about an answer that doesn't even concern you.
Your personal issue with how I responded is your own business. You are free to think whatever you want, but going around calling others "delusional" just because you don't readily understand or misinterpret something from your own nonsensical feelings doesn't look good.
I'd suggest getting off your high horse.
Quoting S
More projection.
What's new, hun?
Okay, well posit away, but there is a meaningful distinction. I'm not talking about those, "I hate Brussel sprouts!" moments where there isn't one.
Anyway, it's funny how easily triggered you are. I definitely don't believe that you haven't ever hated anyone. The evidence is against you. If you don't hate me already, I reckon I could get you to hate me in just a short period of time. And you've probably encountered worse than me. There was almost certainly someone in school that you hated. Have you tried being honest with yourself?
Genuine concern for other sentient beings?
In a good way, though. Right?
Welp, same repetitive underwhelming response (points flying right over your head..) as I expected.
¯\_(?)_/¯
....
Pretty sure I quoted neither of you first with a problem.
Okay, fine, you're right. You have never hated anyone in your life. Not even that girl you hated at school.
I tend to see it as a malignent (in the most evil sense of the word) cancer poisoning and rotting humanity. Hostility is like bloody stool: not a good sign.
And this for the last, oh, I dunno, 50 or 60 thousand years? After that, my memory gets too blurry.
S, how old are you?????
Quoting uncanni
Twelve.
Submission. To the will of an other.
Hatred gets borne from the lack of control. Submission gets borne from the willing giving up of control.
That's what Elie Wiesel would say.
How old is everybody?
Or how old is nobody here?
Not a good start.
15
Not 66?
That too.
Nothing in my post is saying that nor does that have any relevancy to what I am actually saying. Just stop quoting me period until you learn how to read.
Oh, hey. It took me awhile to figure out how to properly quote here, too. Apparently if you hover over the text block a little arrow shows so you can quote the user, and if you want to quote a specific text you can highlight the text until the quote option shows up. That might make it a bit easier mentioning someone. :smile:
Quoting iolo
American politics is an absolute shit show. It hasn't gotten better in the past few years, either. Politics is everything emotion; and for a majority of people it is filled with nothing but emotion and ideological zombies.
I mostly stay away from it and only gauge in it so far as it is impossible to ignore for well-being and necessary study purposes; but just to spend my leisure time investing emotional energy into politics, I rather not and I avoid those people. It's just not productive, I rather go stuff my face.
Yeah. Which is why I brought up most people that genuinely feel hatred are undergoing intense CBT (if not, likely require it) therapy, and left untreated.. (violently harms themselves), if not anyone else - and "embracing" that is just moronic when there are ways to mitigate it.
There are plenty of people that don't have time for that kind shit though, nor feel "hatred" - or even get to that point. And I find fleeting feelings of 'hate' indistinguishable from fleeting feelings of revulsion, disgust, or distress - to or of something/someone - which is not meaningfully or interestingly telling me anything; since the use of the word "hate" is more so a cathartic release of emotional stress or strain in that moment - reaction to something - like (fuck, shit, damn, ouch!), and etc.. in that way, sure, "hate" is everywhere, and everyone "hates".
So yes, a great deal of people find all kinds of things frustrating and repulsive; doesn't explain much about "hatred" which I view as a prolonged (state) driven by a series of self-defeating/undressed emotions, feelings and habits/practices - either addressed - or unaddressed agony - that usually is released in a number of unethical ways (e.g. deliberative, premeditated, rationalized - or quick, and violent - harmful practices that distinguishes the two is action), as you say, "back-stabbing" and so forth - intent to cause harm or restrict someone else harmfully, one way or another - to someone, or another.
And then there are distinctions between how childhood psychology sees "hate" (and how children behave and resolve, address, deal with conflicts at a different developmental level from more developed humans - and adult hatred which I think is a mistake to compare.
So, the word is weakly, poorly, used in my view if not trivializes and distract from - actual hatred, without saying anything meaningful to me (personally).
So, I don't think OP is some evil guy filled with "hatred" or whatever, think he's just being hard on himself. And yeah, there are plenty of people not walking about "filled and bubbling over with hatred" and manage themselves and emotions just fine. Just seems hyperbolic.
So, you define it a way that makes you think it is not so common, but disliking someone or something very much is very common. And I actually think there are much stronger feeling of rage and anger that we tend to suppress.Quoting Swan
I meant socially backstabbing. The way hatred comes out via gossip, betrayal, office political maneuvers. The types of feelings that come up in close relationships where teenager in relation to their parents or spouses in relation to each other feeling intense rage. Quoting SwanI don't think I said all or most people are bubbling over with rage, but most people do experience hatred. It's not an abnormal feeling. I mean look at the poltical divisions in the country and tell me that hatred is not common. It doesn't mean it is all the time. People smile at the their kids, help strangers who felll, down but mention Trump or Hilary and their supporters and you find hate fast. Bosses who mistreat their workers, and that is not uncommon. Ask waiters and bartenders if they ever feel hate at their customers, or anyone is a service postion: hotels, for example. Anywhere where one just has to eat being treated with disrespect.
And of course most of these workers do not snarl their way through life. They have other reactions to other things and people. But they feel hatred, in any sense of the word I have seen.
And so I. It is one of the many emotions I feel, now and then.
If they aren't undergoing it, they likely require it or should (and not just be CBT has at least somewhat proved itself as being a superior and effective method of mitigating negative thought-processes and emotions), but because any prolonged negative emotion or negative feelings/moods demonstrably puts stress on the body - harming the person and others around them depending on "hatred" is vented into the environment, which is not good in the long-term, and it is always beneficial to mitigate that stress if you have the means, resources and tools as oppose to embrace, like OP is saying.
It isn't a "statistical" question, it's an ethical answer.
By "intense" I mean frequently and consistent sessions, not necessarily rigorous and dense.
Quoting Coben
Nah....? But I mean, we could say anything about anything. I find the word to lose any significant meaning at that point.
Quoting Coben
And you "define" it in a way to which is common. I don't find your definition useful because it poses no meaningful distinction between other fleeting emotions and fleeting cathartic release (e.g. disgust, repulsion, etc - that can exist as reactive social avoidance and offense) - and why we should find them interesting enough to discuss in the context of this thread in the first place as some complex philosophical issue.
But when we address "hatred" is not merely just an emotion, in philosophical, sociopolitical, etc., contexts, I view it as more than just a "reaction" but in order to meaningfully classify someone as "harboring all this hatred" attaching it to their identity as a person, there must be a pattern of intent to cause harm and/or restrict something - or someone, habits and practices, along with a series of self-defeatist behaviors, actions, either addressed - or unaddressed, etc.
So, yeah, I make a distinction between "hatred in politics" and "inactive racists" for example, from "hate" for some guy that fucked up your reservation or stepped on your foot, and some kid disliking pineapples because the flavor is foreign, the latter being significantly more trivial and not philosophically interesting (for me personally anyway) - and as I said I find it distracting and a poor analogy to even bring up children's version of "hate" in gist of "institutionalized hatred" (restricting rights of homosexuals); or supporting those that advocate harm against others.
Quoting Coben
I've always been talking about social backstabbing, I didn't misunderstand what you meant.
I am not only discussing "rage" or "aggression", but highlighting that "gossip, betrayal" and especially "political maneuvers" are examples of hatred because they are put into practice and not habitualized into behaviors which is where I again draw the distinction between people saying "I hate this, and that" and fleeting reactive emotions from being a person that genuinely hates.
Quoting Coben
Well, my previous response to you doesn't talk about rage nor do I say it's abnormal to feel, so don't know what you're talking about here.
I mean exactly what I said: Bubbling over with hatred.
'genuinely feel hatred' is a phrase which focuses on the type of feeling. Now to meet your criteria it has to be for such prolonged periods of feeling rage that the person's body suffers from stress related deterioration. And you contrast this with 'fleeting' moments of feeling that one can't even distinguish from disgust.
First, there is a lot of room between prolonged periods leading to physical problems due to the stress of negative emotions and fleeting moments that one can't even identify the feeling. And there is a significant percentage of the population who experience hatred between your extremes there. Two, it is very easy to distinguish between hatred and disgust when it is not some fleeting feeling one barely notices.Quoting SwanI never said anything about attaching it to one's personality and identifying with it. I wrote about experiencing the emotion.
I think your use of the term does not fit the way people on the street use the term, nor the way people who are experts in the language use the term 'hatred'. It also seems like you shift the definition around when it is pointed out that many people feel hatred for bosses, parents, people with different political positions and more. Now it has to be a situation where people are suffering physical ailments from long term stress caused by a pattern of feeling hatred much of the time. This is a radically idiosyncratic definition of the term. Not one used by psychologists, regular old people nor people who write dictionaries.
And basically you are telling honest people with the minimal introspective skills necessary to notice their own hatred that they are pathological or they don't understand their own language.
Time to face the music.
Quoting Swan
Thanks - got it now. I find that the difficulty with leaving politics alone is that the politicos rush off and pull some insane trick like Brexit, threatening your children with unemployment and stretching the Bank of Mum and Dad to its limits. I think it's better to hang on in there fighting the weirdoes! :)
Think we're talking past each other, bud. You simply aren't understanding what I am saying. I already addressed the problems of the wordplay going on. Continuing this convo is doing nothing for either of us.
Come with relevant arguments, or get off the pot.
All you've done is sniff my ass with empty assertions and appeal to definitions along with the projecting (S) guy that's still bitching about two days ago.
Yes, you are, because you're going by an idiosyncratic definition, rather than the ordinary one that we're going by. What did you expect? You're creating your own problems, honey.
I'm well beyond ordinary, baby.
Statistically, those who are extraordinary are more likely to be crackpots than geniuses.
¯\_(?)_/¯
:broken:
This is a valid question, Coben, but she may want to reply with reiterating what she said to you in her last post to you here.
Aside from that, if you don't understand what you don't understand, then it's hard to make you understand the very thing your arguing opponent wants you to understand. I have been down that path many times, the latest with @Bartricks. It is a Sysiphusian (sp?) work, and it's simply not worth the effort. I gave up on the argument with @Bartricks for this very reason; @Swan may want to give up the debate with you, as she can see (Please note: I am not taking sides, and I assert that I don't know if she is right or not in this) that you don't read what she wrote, at least not in the sense of understanding it.
There is no use in flogging a dead horse. I someone has to ask how much it costs, he can't afford it. If someone has to ask "what it is that I don't understand?" then he can't understand it.
But here's a start...she could have responded by quoting me where it showed I misunderstood her, and explained why this showed I misunderstood her. Then I have something to work with, and she is also testing to see if her interpretation is correct. There is a significant difference between we disagree and you aren't understanding what I am saying. I did quote her in my posts. I also tried to point out how her definition of hatred had shifted over time.
If she had told me before that I misunderstood and around what with a quote, it would have struck me as just taking an out. Perhaps I missed her saying 'you are misunderstanding my position', since to me it seemed like she was focused on disagreeing.
I do recognize that it can sometimes be hard to tell if it is a misinterpretation or a disagreement, but then specifics are the door out, if there is one.
I am pretty sure we disagree with each other. And if that becomes clear then it is,yes, a beating the dead horse situation. If we are misunderstanding each other, of course that can come to an impasse also. But I never experienced her as clarifying her position in relation to misunderstandings I was showing of that position, through her focusing on specific remarks I made. It seemed like someone disagreeing with me.
I could be wrong, hence my question.
But it's a kinda easy out to just say 'you don't understand me', if I do but disagree. I do consider it an if, right now. But heck, I'd be happy to find out we actually agreed. Or agreed more than it seems. I could have saved us all a lot of time and said 'No, you don't understand me', But I think she does.
Your post demonstrates (for anyone that can read), that you took a section of the text I made and responded "at it" with whatever you wanted to.. instead of responding to the points made. It easily turns into someone breaking down things that should not have to be broken down.
Rather than the definition "shifting" I expel it ONLY when it has exhausted it's usefulness (which yours.. I do not find adequate), in philosophical, social-political, in other contexts outside of just "just an emotion" (i.e. Psych) - or fixating on "just language" ("I hate people"), which I find simply distracting and trivial.
To here is where I draw a distinction between "hate" (some form of stress relief) and "hatred" (in practice), the latter that does not necessarily have to entail "rage" - or prolonged periods of "rage" but only necessarily corresponding behaviors designed to inflict harm - or restrict something, or another (e.g. gossip, "social backstabbing") or whatever, as I had no problem acknowledging already, and the former not making any meaningful distinctions between (especially culturally) between other stress relief words and phrases, or reactions such as 'disgust', distrust, repulsion, etc. To where I personally don't find it interesting anymore.
This, was explained, I thought clearly enough, in my previous post, but again, you isolated the text - and began to talk right over me, rather than respond to what had been said.
I'll give you an example,
A similar phenomena has happened for example, with the word "misogynist" - which, by the book, is just "a hatred of women" but the definition begins to become inadequate when we venture into the men that practice misogyny - rather than just say, "wow I hate women" (e.g. making misogynistic statements) after a trivial break-up as a form of a psychological catharsis (rather than a guy that genuinely just "hates" women) or people labeling all others that express controversial opinions of women misogynists, etc., but examining further, we can discern and see this is not the case, and such words have lost it's significance and must be re-defined to where they are useful once again, because obviously, the definition does not adequately explain anything - nor give a sufficient reflection of what is being said.
Does Steve that's all broken up over a break-up, goes out and says, "I hate women!" actually feel "hatred" for women" ... Is he a misogynist (in the most simple sense of the word)...
Probably not.
And I'll stress, this is the point, anyway, on "philosophy" forums - and places that are designed to challenge beyond the standard, which seems to be the case - for even great thinkers - that do not restrict themselves to hate "just being an emotion" (as a psychologist) might.
Absolutely.
By-the-by: @Swan, is your post above mine a response to Coben trying to explain to him what you think he does not understand? If yes, maybe you should expressly specify that, instead of leaving it as a new chapter of exchange of mutually misunderstood ideas.
A mutual misunderstanding is a double-edged sword. Person A thinks person B misundersands concept Z; but Person B is clear what concpet Z is, but in his response to Person A he uses or introduces concept Y which apparently Person A: Either understands but ignores or does not understand.
The un-understanding, misunderstanding and ignoring of points can escalate to heights where communication breakdown can't come too soon.
This happened between me and my wife, many times.
I mention these types of situations because I think they are fairily common in society, most of them relation to power imalances and oftne chronic, because I do think hate is involved, and not just the trivial cathartic version you do not count. I also think that many of the people who do feel hatred are not in need of therapy, CBT or another, but often need a different boss, to get out of a bad relationship - despite the children, for example - and also potentially to fight against systematic hatred that some groups face. And sometimes it is not easy to extricate oneself from these patterns for various reasons.
If it seems that yet again I have unfairly pulled your quotes out of context or misunderstood you, just let me know, I'll drop the discussion with you directly..
I appreciate that you took the time to respond...I just saw this...
I don't think you did what I asked for above. I think we might be able to reach each other. But here you are saying I quoted you, but then responded in a way that showed I hadn't read what you wrote. What I was asking for in my previous post was an example of this kind of thing. Maybe I missed it in your latest post. But it seemed like you repeated your position again, in a new way.
If you read the text (which is also Cohen's problem), you could figure that out on your own. The reason I did not want to respond in the first place, because even then there was no point, as he isn't even reading - let alone understanding, because he quoted something, and responded in a fashion to where the quoted passage, DOESN'T EVEN SAY THAT. (Talking at me).
And I don't expect him to thoroughly read this post either, so it's likely going to be my last response here. This is just not productive for either person.
I knew this would turn out to be amusingly ironic. Hate is an intense dislike. Lots of people have an intense dislike. Obviously not just the kind of people in prison for committing crimes of passion.
Who's overcomplicating here? Who's creating problems instead of easily solving them?
I hope you are only talking about the thread, not the site, when you say "last post here". I would be sad to see you go.
I'm always dismissive. It's kind of my thing. It's her thing, too. But I'm better at it.
Guilty as charged. I can't read. I have a real serious problem with ADD or ADHD. I can't read long texts, and can't read anything that tires me out and I need to spend energy to keep my focus on it.
That said, it is not important that I understand your stand, @Swan. It is important that @Coben understands you. My participation here is now reduced to confuse both of you, while the original intention was to bring the two of you on the same denominator, without my getting involved in the discussion or my making judgment or my taking sides.
Okay, never mind. Carry on.
:rofl:
How do I parse that? "A swang", or "Ass wang"? Latter by pronunciation, not by spelling.
Well...
Quoting god must be atheist
Sure it is. If you're attempting to (reduce) confusion between two opponents - it is best you know the bare minimum of what concepts are being discussed, and where the confusion meshes (and bring us "both on the same denominator". Playing as some "middle man" benefits both sides if you have an understanding (at minimum) of the ideas being presented and where the misinterpretations are happening.
Otherwise, you're just playing some emotional crutch/validation agent, which is fine, but not really needed. You haven't reduced any confusion, just validated what I said. Doesn't require "taking" sides, but you've already involved yourself in the discussion as is.
--
Also want to add there is a significant difference (for me anyway), between reading, interpreting and still not understanding and not reading/not listening AND not interpreting, then not understanding. The former signifies clarification or alternative explanation, the other signifies ending of discussion.
Like a boss.
Fair. That's literally all my post was saying the first time around. For what it's worth I don't even think we disagree with each other.
Quoting Coben
I don't understand what point you're trying to make with these examples; I am not claiming "hate does not exist," or saying that "hate" is not an emotion or something. I say that the textbook definition (and your definition) of hate is inadequate - same as "misogynist" - and prefer to evaluate whether someone genuinely hates X by further examination and reflection - and demonstrate that what this person is actually exhibiting is, in fact "hatred", rather than taking their word for it - or relying solely on fleeting "reactions" in the moment that pose no meaningful differences from other "emotions" that are merely reactions - or repulsion to something (e.g. social avoidance, resentfulness, distrust, etc). There must be something there to spark potential for hatred (in my view) - not simply reactivity to what is foreign - there are certainly people that exist - that manage and train themselves to catch themselves and (mitigate) negative feelings before progression into hatred.
Someone could argue I hate you here, because you make me frustrated as all hell, I would say I don't - and further investigation into knowing me would demonstrate that not to be the case (there is simply no rapport between us).
More often than not, in my experience, when you confront a frustrated individual that goes around say, "I hate this, I hate that" - they reiterate that not to be actually the case (in the case of Steve), they were just confused - or just "didn't like the taste," .. and so forth, or were simply bitter. "Hatred" is not meaningful for me unless put into (behaviors/harmful practices) via patterns - and usually prolonged, as you say there, (e.g chronic disrespect, back-stabbing, etc) - and I do make the distinction between "hatred in politics/ideology" (e.g. racism, sexism, etc - hatred in policies/law) from trivialities such as "hating the color blue".
Are there people, like Susan that truly feels "hatred" for her boss, absolutely yes. Are there racists and homophobes that feel hatred, absolutely yes. Nowhere in my post is arguing against that.
Quoting Coben
I think we are getting closer to understanding one another. I am not at a loss of what you mean, btw. I don't disagree with anything you are saying.
Quoting Coben
I think the very idea that misogyny persists in spite of it not corresponding to the inadequate and intimate definition of "hate for all women" - as there seems to be a disconnect here, is enough for you to be skeptical of simply jumping to the conclusion that hate is just an emotion, because that seems to not be the case.
In my generation anyway, "a hater" is a meaningless word utilized to assert and see "hate" where there isn't any. So, the cultural significance of the word in terms of language has severely deteriorated for me when I realized it was being misused or used interchangeably as ignorant substitutions and antagonistic projection.
Quoting Coben
Well the therapy thing was a bit exaggerated, sure. But, yeah, still, it doesn't hurt anyone to practice techniques - either meditative or otherwise, to combat negative emotion and deal with inevitably difficult situations that set the tone for "hatred" to potentially develop in the first place.
:blush: :hearts:
I concur. My posts are normally short and sweet, and people still (on another site, not here) only respond to the meaning covered in half of my sentences, completely altering the meaning I meant, since the second half of the sentence qualifies the first half.
This is a better site for that, and there are much fewer crazy people, although this site is also fully peppered by religious thinkers. Not that the religious would be crazy, craziness is randomly (or proportionally) distributed among the religious and the atheists. The only problem with the religious is that they don't have a healthy concept of science, they would rather believe their pastor or preacher than the current scientific findings. Or even well-established, historical ones.
I was talking in real life -- but I digress. I shall stop now.
We are the weakest and most insecure animal on the planet so you are correct in using vulnerable as a synonym. Our selfish gene is controlling our hate biases as well as our love biases.
Regards
DL
I think I know what creates or triggers hate and do know what it is, but I did not want to divulge it from the get go. I wanted to see what you guys thought first.
Quoting TheMadFool
No. I do not hate such trivia. I just get annoyed and move on.
Quoting TheMadFool
From what I think I know, science has already shown that hate is born from love and we are born with a human nature that defaults to love. Love seems to create and trigger hate as a response to anything that might jeopardize what we love.
Quoting TheMadFool
I do as I prefer to be led by truth than lies.
Regards
DL
In our dualistic reality, it could not be otherwise. That is why we should embrace our evil side.
Regards
DL
I am not sure on this as even god said he was a jealous god when speaking of his love for us.
I admit that I have never been insecure in those I chose to love. Quoting javra
I think that the love or hate we feel at all times are intertwined, as I showed above with love creating hate.
Quoting javra
The near perfect answer.
Quoting javra
Which are determined by what one loves, which is why I did not like you trying to separate the Yin and Yang of love and hate.
Regards
DL
Then I do not think you have learned to love fully.
Quoting Swan
I disagree, given that it is our instincts that have gotten us this far.
Quoting Swan
Those concepts were around way before Yahweh even thought of coveting a human woman for reproduction. The pig.
Quoting Swan
I do not see those as equal and if you do not embrace your biases, good or evil, you likely will have a harder time mitigating the consequences. If you do not embrace them, you will not understand your own emotions.
Quoting Swan
I hope so. My first born is 50. I am still a kid at heart.
Thanks for the well thought out post.
Regards
DL
Are you talking self hatred here and jealousy towards others that you think better than you?
Regards
DL
As I showed above, I think the Yin and Yang of love and hate to be two sides that compliment each other. Yin and Yang are compliments to each other and not in opposition to each other.
If hate is not evil to you, how would you define it, as good?
Regards
DL
I do not like violence either but if hate comes at me to hurt me, I will embrace the hate that drives me to retaliate.
Regards
DL
If you have been a victim of the standard mainstream homophobic and misogynous religions, then hate will mean more to you than just a minor irritant.
Hopefully, it will trigger your hate against homophobia and misogyny.
Regards
DL
Yep. Recognize and justify should be how we deal with all our biases, good or evil.
Regards
DL
Like this child is expressing?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/23/greta-thunberg-speech-un-2019-address
Adults should be more like her.
Regards
DL
I apply this to all human traits.
Regards
DL
This cannot happen till one learns to love himself. In that sense, I agree with you.
Regards
DL
Oh. I just meant it as a sarcastic expression of criticizing the parallel one about love that has been going around for a long time, for its own stupidity.
Sure you can love others without first learning how to love your own self. This type of unfounded, unintuitive psychobabble bullshit really irritates me.
I agree.
I have been waiting to have all here view this link that shows that we create a hate bias from our love biases in an automatic way. Love creates or triggers our hate biases.
If love creates hate, that is good enough for me to embrace both hate and love biases.
==================
FOR ALL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LIb22-5Lwg
Regards
DL
Let's be honest, you're just spamming/preaching mumbo-jumbo.
Honestly, who the fuck are you to speak on love as some pseudo-wise guy? I have loved and lost in disappointments, betrayal and death.
You actually just sound moronic; the inevitable doesn't elicit hatred or fear inside me, as you does you, Bishop.
:smile: Reminds me of Nine Inch Nails song I like. "Bow down to the one you serve; you're going to get what you deserve" kind of thing. Why on earth should I bow down to an omnipotent hater? Give me eternal hell instead. I imagine one would get quite used to the flames after a while, anyway. :joke:
Besides, the archaic definition of jealousy is "concern for that which one is jealous of; vigilance; protective; guarding".
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Yea, pain and pleasure duality kind of thing. Reality has both. Still, in my experiences at least, when I've felt the most intense moments of love, hate was utterly absent - be this love platonic or otherwise. When I've hated, I've always loved that which what I've hated was antagonistic to. So, I maintain my conviction. Love can exist without hate; hate can't exist without love. One is essential; the other isn't.
The second. The way the world is organised, a vast number of people are pushed about all the time and can't do much about it - except perhaps vote for Trump or Brexit! :)
Anyone who [I]doesn't[/I] know what hate is is a moron. And anyone who says they haven't ever felt hatred is a liar.
I can't see any hate in this girl. She's just stating facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LIb22-5Lwg
I don't know if you saw this link above.
As you can see, it is not unfounded psychobabble.
Regards
DL
The link I put up shows otherwise. Dualism exists in our emotions, like it or not.
Regards
DL
I do not recognize these as equivalent.
Trump is in a vile class all of his own and if the poor want help, they are voting the wrong way.
Brexit, FMPOV, is wanted for a different reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq_lhlIn1e0
Regards
DL
Accurate.
Regards
DL
I'm not sure just what facts you are referring to, but when I read of any love bias, I automatically read in a hate bias for all that would jeopardize that which is loved.
Regards
DL
I haven't once denied that there is both love and hate in the world, nor that these two emotions stand in opposition to each other. That said, the video - nice contents, btw - only evidences, at worst, an innate bias toward self and against other. But this bias can be maintained in the absence of hate for other - and none of the babies or children exhibited signs of hatred in their choices. So the video doesn't illustrates that hate is as an essential aspect of our constituency, much less that it is as essential as is love. It does illustrate that self-love is innate from the get go, however.
Unless one equates hate to a mere dislike of something, but this denotation doesn't seem right to me.
Ditto as well as with like versus love.
Quoting javra
They do indeed by not liking the evil puppets.
In duality, Yin does not exist without Yang.
Regards
DL
:up:
Is there a difference between knowing what hate is and feeling hate? Maybe I was being [i[too[/i] analytical about something so instinctual.
Yet wasn't it Socrates who said "the unexamined life is not worth living"? Understanding your feelings, their origins and ramifications, is an important part of this self-examination isn't it?
If you go Zen on it then some might even be able to use hate to accomplish the good. How could slaves have achieved emancipation if they hadn't hated oppression and if their oppressors hadn't hated treating their fellow human being like animals?
On the other hand we have things like hate crime that are senseless and have far-reaching effects on the collective.
There's a certain feature of this topic that interests me - that the more we become aware of our emotions, their origins and consequences, the more we're in control of them. This process is echoed in how we grow up from children to adults. First, when young, we're in the backseat of the car - we can't control our emotions - very much like animals and then we mature and take the wheels in the driver's seat, so to speak.
The whole idea being to switch the role of emotions from controlling us to us controlling them.
Ok, each to their own takes. So I clarify why my take is different than yours, one will risk and sacrifice for givens that are loved, but not for givens that are merely liked. Than one loves ice-cream is an aberration in other languages, ancient Greek being a well known one. Unless one believes that languages create our core emotions, this is then sufficient evidence that the English term love conveys emotive states of being that, while including that of intense liking, also consist of sentiments that are other than liking. One can, for example, deeply love someone whom one at the same time thoroughly dislikes.
Hate is not the same. I can't imagine how one could deeply hate someone whom one at the same time thoroughly likes. To earnestly hate can, and most often does, convey some measure of visceral disdain for that which is hated. Hence, I can greatly dislike earthworms without hating them (not that I dislike earthworms).
So, the way you're using the words, their referents could be conceptualized as a dyadic relationship. But not in the way I'm using them. Still, I'll skip on "what is love" debates.
Like Trump, Brexit was something that nobody had any thought of before a tiny minority of extreme-right oddoes pushed for it, and, as with Trump, millions voted for it out or resentment at others and all sorts of other odd reasons, though, compared with the American voter, they were lied to much more hugely. As with Trump, but much faster, the result is deep division and looming disaster.
Emotions are responses to stimuli.
Usually intelligent responses, although they can produce irrational responses as well.
We do need self control, but, for instance, with our eco system, our lack of emotion for the Earth, has likely doomed us to extinction, if the U.N. stats are sound.
Most emotions are spontaneous. Can you control your thinking enough to control your emotions?
I don't think I can.
When I see one of the kids heading for a fall, I cannot help but have my emotions feel for him.
Empathy and altruism are instincts.
I do not think we can control our empathy and altruism as well as we would like. In fact, our lack of control might have let our emotions go too far to the point that we should tone it down to help save the planet. We may be too nice to each other and go for nice instead of practical. That is not intelligent.
Regards
DL
Not to the Brexit crowd who voted to take the hit for the benefits of having control of their borders, immigration and governance unhampered by yet another one of our way too many controlling body.
We all already pay too much for the garbage governance that our politicians are producing.
Regards
DL
@ Not to the Brexit crowd who voted to take the hit for the benefits of having control of their borders, immigration and governance unhampered by yet another one of our way too many controlling body.
We all already pay too much for the garbage governance that our politicians are producing.'
Who cares about the nutters? It's our families the sane are worried about. Why should we let a drunken mob destroy their futures?
I don't know who you are referring to with your "nutters" and "drunken mob".
At present, in both the U.S. and England, I see all sides as nutters who put their affiliations ahead of their moral and social responsibilities.
I believe in a unified world but it has to be so voluntarily and without pressure.
Regards
DL
Yes, very good point. Indeed, how could slaves have achieved emancipation if they hadn't hated oppression? I think that that was glossed over by the kind of things that Swan was saying.
Why hate when you can mate? :joke:
Hate grows on inequality. There's an imbalance in the relationship between individuals or groups. Why should the stronger hate the weaker if it's the existence of the weaker that makes them stronger? Why should the weaker hate the stronger if the stronger exist only because they're weaker?
Hate is, it seems, either silly or foolish.
If you walk in on your wife being raped, is it silly and foolish for you to hate the rapist?
Regards
DL
I don't agree with that, although it can be.
Quoting TheMadFool
This is interesting, though. Thinking outside of the box. Good as a way of getting someone to think about personal responsibility in the case of the weak who hate the strong, and good as a way of getting the strong to realise the importance of those weaker than them in a way that they'd have to acknowledge.
Good question. I really like it.
I'll ask you a better question. How about the rapist raping someone else's (not yours :joke: ) wife. Would you hate that rapist? If I understand enough about human nature I'm willing to bet that your answer will range from a little bit to who gives a rat's ass?.
As you can see you don't hate because there's a good reason to hate. You hate only because something bad's been done to you. It's an important distinction to make Separates the subjective from the objective - a bitter truth we must all face.
That said I don't want to belittle people who have a just cause for hate. Hate away but please don't forget to hate to the same degree for others in a similar situation. In a sad way I guess this exposes a lot more than I wanted to about human nature.
Thanks again for your question.
'I don't know who you are referring to with your "nutters" and "drunken mob".
At present, in both the U.S. and England, I see all sides as nutters who put their affiliations ahead of their moral and social responsibilities.'
By 'nutters' I mean the brainwashed persons who vote against their own interest to benefit a very few, very nasty capitalists. By 'drunken mob' I mean those who howl down any attempt to tell the truth. I don't live in England: here the Brexit voters were voting against total misgovernment and to spite immigrants who they read about in their captitalist English newspapers and never meet here - only English immigrants who come here in vast herds.
Not if, like me, you try to live by the Golden Rule. I do accept that if done to me, I would likely have a higher degree of hate.
Regards
DL
In oligarchies, that is the way of things.
Regards
DL
LInks are always right. This is the first order of truth in the cosmic order of the universe.
Hate, as you might have already guessed, has something to do with morality. In a very loose sense what we hate are morally prohibited. Do you think this leads to anything in
particular?
We also hate wrongdoing or harm done to us. Or to someone we care about. Regardless of morality. I think hate is a general dislike, and as such, you can dislike acting against morality, but I see no special function of hate due to morality.
Please read the comment below
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
As you can see hate can be caused by injustice. Injustice has moral implications. It's this I'm referring to.
When we love, we often fear losing what we love, and then resolve to hate what we fear could take it from us. But a love that generates hatred, that gives way to fear, is not a healthy love. To love another is to risk losing them, to risk being hurt, and to accept that we are incomplete in ourselves, that we are more with them than without them.
We are afraid of losing so many other things that are important to us, and of experiencing a lack, just as we are afraid of pain and humiliation. We reserve our hatred for those people, actions and institutions that threaten to, or actually, inflict this suffering on us - individually, socially, nationally, ideologically, etc.
Why? Because we don’t believe we should suffer. Because that’s what happens only to other people.
When we have the courage to risk loss, lack, pain or humiliation, there is no need to hate - that’s just fear talking.
Thank you. Injustice is harm done to you also, no? So who is to say it is the moral implication that heightens the response?
I am not denying your point, I am only saying that it is not necessarily true.
You'll hate someone who calls you a liar, but hate him even more if he kills your wife or kids. You get morally hurt in the first instance, but not morally hurt in the second, yet your hate will be stronger in the second instance.
You're absolutely right. What I find is relevant, morally speaking, isn't the hate itself but the sorrow that causes it. The pain is morally relevant because causing pain is, well, prohibited or, if you prefer, discouraged. We could say that hate is just sorrow in disguise or transformed just about enough to appear as something independent but is actually not. It's something like an object being reflected off a mirror. In your example, the killer's reflection is the hate - it's just an image of the killer. The reality is the suffering - the process by which the killer's image is reflected.
I feel that hate is an inner feeling that only hurts inside ourselves, whether we have hate as a natural reaction of an action that happened. It is our own interpretation of how we conduct the feelings.
Personally, I do not believe that hate is necessary to outshow our yin and yang. On the contrary, I feel that hatress only feel our souls with negative energy and conducts us in a wrong way.
We have the power to make decisions in how we react to things but we do not have that so in the way we feel about. Because, at the end of the day, we do not decide or choose how we feel, we just do.
In addition, hating something only harms us and it takes up our energy and gives power to the problem which we are draining ourselves. We can choose to disregard whatever person, action or cause that made us upset and triggered our morals. Choosing to let go and focus on the positive things we like and have that a necessity of conducting ourselves.
In conclusion, I support the realization that the only individual you are prejudicing by having hatress or conducting it so, it is yourself. Therefore, you should choose not to hate anything or anyone; and just disregard it.
How do you know that you were born with these and didn't acquire them as the result of trauma and abuse?
Love something
Lose it
Hate that you lost it, or hate it
Justify why it happened
Depression over the loss
Accept what happened
Love something again...
Ad infinitum....
Most of the time we never complete the cycle, I assume.
In this context hate is an eventual natural result of love. And hate eventually leads again to love.
Or... qua the yin/yang: within each facticity exists its antithesis. Waiting to emerge.
The main question for me is are we taking abstractly about ideas here? Which seems the most natural to me.... or are we talking praxis?
If we stay in theoria then hate may be simply a state of patterns that are about to shift. Then the question of what brings it about is kind of silly.
If we want to talk about hate in the world... and how do we deal with it, and what are the causes of hate - and Do we embrace it and how do we deal with those consumed by it.... the answer is that some people get stuck in a moment and can’t get out of it (ok... old U2 song I know) - anyways people get stuck on something that they would naturally move on from.
Is it natural to go through hate? Yes. It isn’t natural to stay in that state.
??
Too loose for me. Tighten it up with a couple of examples please.
Regards
DL
Hate, like evil, has a good and an evil side and like Yin and Yang, compliment each other. They are not in opposition.
If you look around, you will see a lot more good going on than evil and a lot more love than hate being expressed. In fact, we are too good to each other.
As the Christian hymn says, Adam's sin was a happy fault and necessary to god's plan.
Strange that Christians call furthering god's plan as a fall.
You seem to be doing the same with nature.
Regards
DL
Hate is an emotion and all our emotions are triggered by something or someone.
Why do you conclude that some hate without a trigger? That seems really strange.
Quoting Seneca Advocate
Oh my. The hate of slavery ended slavery in the U.S. and you seem to think that a bad thing.
How about Rosa parks?
Did her negative energy against segregation lead her the wrong way?
Quoting Seneca Advocate
No thanks.
For evil to grow, all we all need do is as you suggest, and not hate evil.
If you think you should live by the Golden Rule, change the labels in this quote to women, minorities, gays or children being brainwashed by religions and it shows what we should be thinking and doing for each other.
"First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I'm not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I'm not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I'm not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me." – Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)”
Regards
DL
I think we are all born with an almost unlimited potential in terms of human aptitude. We will do as we must to survive.
But yes, my abuse is what jacked up my selfish gene to helping form my a criminal mind and delinquent aptitude.
Regards
DL
Show how please.
Quoting Metaphyzik
No. Science and a proven theory of how our instincts guide our moralsQuoting Metaphyzik
Hmmm.
Divorce came to mind, but if you think the reasons for it are silly, you re ignoring the misery of the couples that may want to know why things are falling apart in their lives.
Regards
DL
Everyone has the same aptitude? What does that mean? Everyone has an aptitude for incest? To be a psychopath like Dahmer? To be a genius like Einstein? To hate?
We're born with the same instincts, but what else is the same aptitude in all people?
I'm reading a very interesting book currently: The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective by Sue Grand. Care to join me?
The author thinks religion comes first and I doubt that I would gain much from her perspective as I have no problem with human to human evil. What we do is no worse than any Alpha male or female would do or any animal looking for its place in our various hierarchies.
Do let me know if you read anything that might refute my naturalists views. If she says that god gave us free will, she is a liar, both on the creation side and the evolution side.
We have no choice in having to compete and cooperate as the situations change, unless you choose to not compete.
Quoting uncanni
All humans all have the same human character traits. We bring them out as required.
You focus on the evil while ignoring that we do the good a lot more than the evil. Are all human character traits shared, more or less, by all normal humans?
Regards
DL
What???? The book has nothing to do with religion!!!!
Hate does not have a ‘good’ side, and we are not ‘too good’ to each other, as a general rule. There is a lot more ‘good’ going on than most people realise, sure - but if you’re suggesting that we should hate more, or that there should be a more even balance of love and hate, then I cannot agree with that. Personally, I think this argument is a way to justify a destructive response to fears we refuse to acknowledge.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Personally, I don’t think there is a plan - or a fall. I think there is a formula that works (and we’ve yet to completely figure it out), but that’s not the same thing.
Hate is not a part of that formula. It is a human invention, a subjective and delusional rejection of the reality of life: that pain, humility and loss or lack are a necessary consequence of living. There is no experiencing life without this: no knowledge, no love and no achievement. The sooner humans realise this, the sooner we can get back to really living - not just trying to get through it relatively unscathed.
Fear and denial of that fear is what triggers hate. What reduces hate is the courage to be aware, to connect and collaborate despite pain, humility, loss or lack.
Perhaps this is your problem, which is why I suggested you look at that book. If you're only interested in justifying and rationalizing hatred and anti-social behavior, then just continue to compare us to other animals--which is a straw man, or wolf, if ever I saw one.
It seems like you don’t really understand what hate is.
What ended slavery in the US was not the ‘hatred’ of slavery, but affirming the freedom and dignity of all human beings, regardless of skin colour.
It wasn’t hatred that inspired Rosa Parks to expect equal treatment regardless of skin colour. It was courage.
Yes, you can distort the story and make it seem like people put an end to slavery because they ‘hated’ it, or that Rosa Parks made an impact against segregation by ‘hating’ it - hijacking these examples to support your argument - but this ‘negative energy’ you’re referring to is not what hate is.
To strive to change the status quo in favour of something better is not hate. Frustration, sometimes - but not hate.
I did not mention the book.
I did a quick scan on the author whom I critiqued.
Regards
DL
So you would have told Rosa Parks to not hate having to sit at the back of the bus nor act on that hate.
How about the hate against slavery in the Civil war? Would you tell the north not to hate slavery or go against it?
Ignore evil if you want. I will encourage its hate so that those who can will fight evil.
Regards
DL
Never.
I see us and nature as evolving perfection, given that we are all living in the best of all possible worlds because it is the only possible world given our past.
Regards
DL
You are reading a lot of garbage into what I put.
Hatred has a good side and I never said word one on anti-social behavior, although I think that anti-social behavior is quite good when the cause is just.
You go ahead and ignore poor laws. I will continue to see fighting those as quite good.
Anti social behavior is a form of vigilantism and quite good for righting wrongs.
Regards
DL
Semantics. hate, like love, is a great motivator to action.
Regards
DL
Perhaps your problem is not seeing that evolution to us is more important than the small evils to those who are less fit.
Regards
DL
Come on, one of his examples was slavery: slaves did not feel just frustrated with slavery, though I am sure there was much frustration. They hated their treatment by the slave owners, quite naturally. Perhaps not all of them, but most of them.
Oh, I got so frustrated with being a slave
sounds absurd to me.
I got frustrated with a dead end job or with a boss who didn't let me engage in more creative projects, sure.
Any laws or systems or practices that as a rule dehumanize and mistreat a group are going to lead to hatred. And that hatred would be a perfectly natural and healthy response. Of course there is likely to also be fear involved and great sorrow.
It wasn’t that Rosa Parks hated sitting at the back of the bus - plenty of other people hated sitting at the back of the bus, or giving up their seat or even their right to ride the bus. It was that she was “tired of giving in” (her words) to treatment based on skin colour that eroded her rights as a citizen. She did not act on hate - she stood her ground against hate, and if you can’t see the distinction then you’re choosing not to see it. If she had acted on hate as you say, then the outcome would have been very different.
It was not hatred that put an end to bus segregation - it was collaboration. That there were people (black and white) who supported her, who saw in her response not hatred but the dignity and courage of a fellow citizen - this led to the bus boycott and the court case that abolished bus segregation. It had nothing at all to do with hate.
The US Civil War did not come about because the North hated slavery. It came about because the South feared the extinction of their way of life in the wake of the Federation of States acknowledging the basic human dignity and freedom of black people outside the slave states. It was an attempt at co-existence that the South refused to accept - the secession was a Southern initiative and so was the war itself. Most Northern soldiers were apparently indifferent about slavery.
Stop twisting history to suit your argument. Encouraging hate is not ‘fighting evil’ - it’s contributing to it.
I’m not denying that slaves may have hated their mistreatment, or even hated the slave owners. I’m denying hate as the reason for the change, and I’m denying ‘acting on hate’ as the cause of change. To credit hate with the abolition of slavery or civil rights is a ridiculous notion - likely driven by fears over the rise of the conservative right.
Hatred may appear to be a ‘natural’ response, but it isn’t a healthy one, and it isn’t justifiable in my book.
If you have to hate your dead end job or your boss before you will act, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Hate and acting on hate - by and on behalf of slaves - did more to fuel the fear and hatred that sustained slavery, than it did to abolish slavery. You cannot argue that slaves who hated their masters and acted on it furthered the cause to abolish slavery in the US one iota.
One of the biggest fears of the slave states was a violent uprising similar to the one in Haiti from 1791 - the only ‘successful’ slave rebellion that established a free state ruled by former slaves (and was maintained by slaughtering the entire white French population in 1804 - hardly a justifiable act of hate). Hate drove all sides of the conflict in Haiti, and resulted in so much cruelty and violence.
Frustration is sufficient to motivate positive, courageous, intelligent and realistic action towards a better outcome. It may not have been the main reason for the Civil War, granted (my mention of ‘frustration’ was in reference to Rosa Parks, not to slavery) but that main reason was not hate. Hate may have been felt by some, but acting on hate does not lead to positive change, only to destruction (as in Haiti). You can try to spin it all you like, but it seems clear to me that slaves hating their owners played at best a very minor role (motivating freed or escaped slaves to fight for the Union, perhaps) in abolishing slavery in the US, and more of a role in bolstering the South’s campaign.
Quoting Coben
I can’t argue with you there. But I will say this: that people feel hate is ‘natural’ but not healthy, regardless of whether or not they ‘stick with’ it. It is natural to initially fear something that we’re unable to understand, avoid, control or deny - and that feeling turns to hate if we refuse to acknowledge our fear as a natural response and instead project blame on what triggers our fear. That people then act on the hate they feel is not just unhealthy - it’s unjustifiable.
Quoting Coben
The situation is a problem, yes - but more so is hatred when it arises. The situation one is in may be extremely unhealthy and seem impossible to avoid. That the situation occurs is a reality, whether or not we want it to occur or think it should occur at all. We have to accept that reality first - whether we like it or not - before we can begin to address it. Hatred arises from a refusal to accept the reality as it stands. There are no healthy patterns of hatred.
Lincoln accepted the current existence of slavery in the United States, despite not wanting that to be the situation. It was the South who refused to accept the reality, who denied their fears and blamed the North (and Lincoln) for how they felt. Lincoln abolished slavery by acting (without hatred) when he had the opportunity (and the support of the people) to do so.
Quoting PossibilityI didn't say anything about acting on it. If we are talking about slaves, they had very little power, so it was whites fighting and arguing against white practices, then actually killing people over it. It took the deaths, by intentional killing, of thousands of people to end slavery. Now most of the soldiers on the Northern side were probably not haters of slavery, except the black regiments, who while brave and serving well, played a small role in the whole project. But I am sure many abolitionists had hatred for the practice of slavery. Along with compassion, sense of justice, empathy and other motivations. Quoting PossibilityAnd again, sure hatred can lead to serious problems. So can 'good intentions'.Quoting PossibilityAGain, how do you measure this? determine it? If we talk about Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement, we are not talking about being motivated by frustration. Of course there was frustration in there. And of course there was yearning for something better and other motivations. But there was a lot of hate in there also. It is perfectly natural when one is treated as a rule in a hateful manner, over long periods of time, and this includes treatment of your children in this way, to hate back. The problem is not in that responding hate. Yes, sometimes this hate can lead to actions that are not ok. But the problem is not the hate, it is the cognitive elements - that revenge is good or even will help you, for exampe, is one cognitive element that can lead to acting out in certain ways. To tell those blacks that if they hate it is unhealthy and wrong, is just adding more oppression on them. And MLK himself was extremely pissed off towards the end of his life. Listen to his last speech in that church where he keeps saying 'If I should die...' There's rage in there. He got frustrated with the government and whites and since he was not just anti-racist but socialist he has a lot of issues that had gone from frustration to at least very strong anger.Quoting PossibilityIt's a reality that we respond to certain kinds of treatment with strong anger. That is a reality. We are social mammals with limbic systems tightly involved in our reactions to treatmetn by others. THAT IS REALITY. Many people tell us that we must accept the reality of what is outside us, but the inside we must suppress, detach from, radically control, judge. But the inside is real also. I can't see how I can come to love others if I hate parts of myself as my starting point, especially in the face of mistreatment.
Not my problem if you are belligerent and obtuse.
Regards
DL
Ditto.
Regards
DL
I think that historically, hate has rarely been a factor in any changes for the better but endless examples of how it played a hand in what we'd have rather avoided. When a group experiences hate, that hate takes over and overpowers reason, tolerance and kindness. Hate is rarely pragmatic, hate allows people to forget about the consequences. Even hating evil leads to more evil, some people probably see things like the death penalty and lynchings/vigilante justice as examples of that. No forgiveness, persistent and overpowering anger which lends itself to thoughtless choices.
In almost all cases where hate can be argued to be something good, it's actually love for the opposite thing that's good - or would be much better. In the case of something like slavery, I would want people to love freedom and tolerance and not feel hatred. I believe this kind of attitude will lead to happier people and better solutions. I think all emotions can be manipulated and given contexts where they're good but unfetted hate has a terrible track record, can't ignore it.
Exactly the point I want to make.
When we create a love bias, we automatically create a hate bias against anuthing that would jepordize that which is loved.
All our biases are created to help us through life.
That is what makes hate good.
Regards
DL
You are absolutely right. I will try to mend my ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVivkbmu3To
for me.
Regards
DL
Yes, there were (and are) militant acts within the Civil Rights movement, and many who respond to racism with anger and violence and hate; who feel justified in spitting venom at those who treat others in a hateful manner. I’m not talking about them - I was arguing against the particular claim that Rosa Parks was an example of someone who acted on hate.
Quoting Coben
The problem IS in that responding hate. Natural, yes - it is an animalistic tendency. If you were incapable of abstract thought or of understanding how another person might feel, then yes - I could understand that you were unaware of the destructive nature of responding hate. But I don’t believe you are that ignorant.
Quoting Coben
I didn’t say ‘wrong’ - I have repeatedly acknowledged that the feelings leading to hate (fear, frustration, even anger) are understandable in these situations - but I maintain that hate is unhealthy and unjustifiable.
The claim you and GCB are making here is that hatred can sometimes be justifiable, and you keep watering down your definition of hatred to include frustration and anger in order to support your argument. Frustration is a feeling, anger is a feeling, fear is a feeling - hate is a decision. When we feel afraid, frustrated or angry, our thoughts and beliefs help us try and ‘justify’ a response that is hateful - or one that is thoughtful, even loving. Sometimes the limbic system makes that decision for us - that is no excuse. We have the capacity to think it through, or to enable a thoughtless response instead.
Quoting Coben
I haven’t heard or read that speech - I’d appreciate a link to it, or a quote, if you have one. Frustration or very strong anger is not hate. MLK is NOT an example of justifiable hatred.
When we ‘hate slavery’ today, we have the luxury of refusing to accept a situation that is no longer part of our current reality. We don’t have to respond to it, because it isn’t there. When you claim that abolitionists had a ‘hatred for the practice of slavery’, you say that they were refusing to accept their current reality: slavery continues to occur. That’s fine as long as you can keep from being aware of or exposed to the reality. But what happens when that reality - the one you refuse to accept - is unavoidable? If you continue to reject that reality, then fear, frustration and anger turns into hate. You have two choices: be aware that slavery exists, acknowledge it and take measured and reasonable steps to eradicate it; OR continue to reject it, and fight tooth and nail against anything and anyone that points to or exposes you to that reality: in other words, hate.
The same situation applied to Rosa Parks’ situation. She sought to accept the reality of her situation. She said: "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen." That is not hatred.
Quoting Coben
I’m not expecting you to hate parts of yourself at all. I have never denied that the potential for hatred is an internal reality: that it exists in our minds. But YOU choose whether or not that potential becomes actual - whether or not it determines who you are: what you think, what you say and how you act. That choice is not made by your circumstances, or by someone else’s words or actions. That our limbic systems are tightly involved in our reactions to treatment by others is real, but it is not a foregone conclusion - our limbic systems are only one input in the process of our minds. If you choose to give it full rein, that’s on you.
You can’t blame reality for being real, just because you don’t agree with it. And you won’t change external reality by hating it. Lincoln, Rosa Parks and MLK understood that.
True.
They knew actions were required and did what they could.
You may think they were motivated by something other than hate for the reality they lived in, but I do not think so because hate is created by our love biases and love for the good comes before the hate for the evil that threatens that which is loved.
Equality in the cases here.
And yes, hate has degrees, just as love has, so using the various degrees in discussions is kosher.
Regards
DL
Hate is created by our feelings: fear of losing what we love, frustration or anger at the lack of what we love - but it is hate only when we refuse to accept the reality of this loss and lack.
The reality in the cases here is that not everyone loves equality. There is a very real lack of equality in the world, even now, whether we like it or not. For us to change that, we first have to accept that this is the world we live in.
When we are confronted with this fact, how do we respond? Do we attack or spit venom at anything or anyone that reminds us of this lack of equality? Or do we accept that it exists and then seek to increase awareness, connection and collaboration in order to draw attention to this lack of equality and where opportunities exist in our situation to effect real and actual change? Can we do that without hate? I say yes. Lincoln, Rosa Parks and MLK are examples of that.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Hate varies in the degree we will go to in order to restore our illusion. It is not a degree of feeling, but of action. Love, too, has various degrees of action. Love is a decision we make to actualise our perception of potential. Love is created by our feelings, but it is love only when we choose to be aware, to connect and collaborate in manifesting the potential we see in others or in the world.
When we hate what threatens that which is loved, we are trying to define, confine and control what we claim to love, as if it is possible to make this our entire and unchanging universe - our reality - just by thinking or believing it to be so.
Does hate occur? Yes.
Is it necessary? No.
Is it effective? No.
Therefore, is it justifiable? No.
So by all means, share your frustration, talk about your anger, admit your fears - but hate will not effect change without bringing about more pain and loss, more violence, hatred, despair and oppression than you can hope to eliminate with your words or actions.
I think it is very unlikely that she did not hate the laws and at times hated her treatment. If you google 'rosa parks hated' you will find that people who have written about her think that hatred of the systematic racism was with her since she was a child. You don't have to be a violent person to hate, and when you are regularly treated with hatred, and for a black of that time, afraid to express yourself in so many ways and afraid to do so many things for reasons having nothing to do with who you are hatred is a natural and understandable response. Just as the body will swell up and become red if you are slapped hard. Once might induce anger or frustration. Systematic 'slapping' will lead to something stronger.
I mean, hate.
Any person living in a society that regularly discriminates against them, it seems to me, is extremely likely to feel hate. This is understandable, natural, not unhealthy - though being oppressed is - and further telling someone that their hatred is unhealthy would be unjust. And probably not healthy either.
I’m not denying that. There are people who give the limbic system priority in certain situations, and then rationalise around thoughtless, emotion-driven behaviour so that it appears justified. This stimulus-response behaviour is a cop-out for those of us who have the capacity for creative thought and self-reflection.
Ok, let’s go with this definition:
Hate is NOT frustration and anger, but derives from these feelings (as I have said).
Hostility and aversion are not a healthy response - they involve either attacking or turning away.
Dislike, disgust, antipathy and loathing refer to opposing something that one refuses to accept.
I have no argument here.
I don't think you get to tell me what these people felt. And as public figures they are going to present themselves strategically - which could take lots of forms. We don't know for sure what they felt or thought. I do know from communication with people in the Civil Rights movement that despite being non-violent many felt a great deal of hatred for the systematic abuse. I know people feel things that fit the dictionary definition of hate, which I quote earlier, in situations much less abusive than what they experienced then. These are not people who are pathological in any way. Of course hatred can be a part of problematic patterns. But it need not be. And it often is not. And being raised in de facto apatheid situations or other situations with systematic discrimination or oppression, it is not problematic to have feelings of hatred arise, even with some regularlity.
Correct. Yet you deny that it is the feeling of love that creates the hate.
Here is science making my point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LIb22-5Lwg
Regards
DL
What we hate we prohibit. Not all we hate are immoral. Yet all that is immoral is prohibited.
What judgements? ‘Animalistic’ refers to behaviour that we have in common with animals. Yes, we are social mammals, but our mental capacities are such that we are more than (not better than) emotional animals. That’s not to say that we are purely rational beings, either - and to give rationality full rein is just as unhealthy, in my opinion. We also have insight into the subjective experiences of others and can develop a broad understanding of the value they bring to the universe as a whole. And we have insight into our own emotional reactions - we perceive the harm that our words and behaviour can inflict on others, and we understand how it feels to have similar harm inflicted upon us. More importantly, though, we have the capacity to consciously choose how we respond despite our feelings and despite what is considered ‘rational’ - to love, hate, speak, stand, apologise, run, hide, etc.
I never said that emotions were negative at all. I said that giving full rein to our emotions - considering our capacity for rational thought, self-reflection and various other evaluative and relational tools - is unhealthy. I stand by that. ‘Love’ (as an emotion), playfulness, taking care of our young and even empathy - when given full rein - can all be unhealthy when we use their ‘natural’-ness to justify hate toward something else. Personally I don’t see love as an emotion but a decision, like hate (as I described earlier).
I suppose it seems to you like I’m criticising those who feel the fear, frustration and anger of oppression, and you’re defending their right to feel this way - but I honestly have no problem with these feelings. The feelings are justified - but hate is not the feelings themselves. Hate is specifically how we integrate those feelings as thoughts, words and actions that close down awareness, connection and collaboration - the very things that enable us to effect change.
There are many people who have been fearful, frustrated and angry at their oppression, at the hate or violence directed toward them, but used the energy of those feelings to increase awareness, to connect with others and to collaborate to effect change. You and GCB call this acting on hate, but I disagree: this is acting on love. They aren’t directing their energy toward their oppressors or the system of oppression, but toward others who feel the same, toward useful sources of information and toward those who have the capacity to help. They are perceiving the potential in the world, and increasing awareness, connection and collaboration in manifesting that potential. That has nothing at all to do with hate. They are surrounded by hate, but have the courage to love instead.
Quoting TheMadFool
One example against this is all I would need to refute your statement.
Our governments presently use the tax system to impose poverty.
Ghandi and others think that that is immoral, yet it is not prohibited.
I see religions doing the same, especially the televangelists.
Regards
DL
Quoting Coben
I guess we should learn to live with the truth which I hear is not sweet but rather bitter, like most medicine. Odd that people should so assiduously visit the doctor and swallow the proverbial bitter pill to avoid an untimely death but take rather extreme measures on occasion to avoid the truth. Reminds me of J S Mill's categorization of pleasure into higher (mental) and lower (physical).
I find the truth sweet, as I do not think we should live in delusions.
There are too many in Socrates' cave. Therein lies the grey area you speak of.
Regards
DL
Liar. I won't tell anyone :zip: :flower:
Yes I do. That’s because hate is created by the feelings of fear, anger or frustration that stem from failed attempts to construct our reality only from what we ‘love’.
There is a lot more going on in between this ‘feeling of love’ and the decision to hate than you’re acknowledging here. To leap to the conclusion that love creates hate or that hate is either good or necessary ignores the complex processes that surround what we prefer, value or desire, and the capacity we have to choose not to hate.
I want to reiterate here: I’m not arguing that hate is wrong, unnatural or even evil. Hating hate is a pointless exercise. My argument is that hate is ineffective, unnecessary and unjustifiable.
It is our awareness of these feelings of what you call ‘love’ (preference, value, desire) that help us to map the fifth dimensional aspect of our reality: that of value. We locate objects or events and relate them to each other not just according to space-time values (size, shape, distance, speed, velocity, etc) but also in relation to values of experiential quality (colour, feel, taste, sound, smell), and of relational quality, or how it interacts with the rest of our world.
This awareness of a fifth dimensional aspect to our reality is a capacity that has developed to varying extent in all social animals. It is the reason why babies respond the way they did on your video, or why dogs often appear to be a good judge of character.
When we experience preference or desire towards certain combinations of these values, it inspires us to be open to further interaction with the world, to build our world around this ‘goodness’. There is no natural boundary - a feeling of ‘love’ relates to the entire experience and naturally radiates outward. But that doesn’t fit with other experiences that identify harm in the world. Fear inspires us to close ranks - to define and control the ‘object’ of our love, so that we don’t open ourselves up to potential harm. It is the extent to which we allow our fears to confine this feeling of love that leads to hate - not the feeling of love itself.
You cannot justify hating murderers, rapists, Hitler etc., and allowing your hate to move you against such vile characters. Ok.
Hating Hitler and his ilk is what has us go to war. It was effective.
Regards
DL
Exactly. That you do hate them, I also don’t consider to be wrong or immoral. But I maintain that hatred is unnecessary, ineffective and unjustifiable.
When we hate murderers and rapists, we unequivocally refuse to acknowledge that this behaviour is a very real part of the spectrum of human behaviour. ‘Lock them up and throw away the key’ or ‘take them out of the gene pool’ is how we continue to live in the delusion that human beings simply don’t behave like that - even though they do. And my suggesting that ‘rapists are humans too’ would undoubtedly make your blood boil. Ok. Take a breath.
We aren’t going to remove this behaviour simply by refusing to accept it. We actually have to recognise rape and murder as human actions before we can even hope to effect the change in human thought and behaviour that leads to it. Hating murderers and rapists actually prevents us from achieving this.
Fear, frustration and anger are very real emotions here - I get that. It’s almost impossible to think practically and rationally when every fibre of our being screams ‘NO!’ at the thought that human beings just like you and me - who live a life not entirely dissimilar to our own - are choosing to act this way. To acknowledge this is to accept our own capacity to do the same. Even worse, to acknowledge this is to recognise our neighbour’s capacity to behave this way. That’s some scary shit. Most of us don’t have the courage to admit this reality to ourselves. THIS is why we hate.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Ah yes, war - I know it seems like all those murders and young lives irreparably broken were ‘justified’ because Hitler and the Holocaust were brought to an end, and I’m certainly in no position to suggest there may have been a more effective or less destructive way to achieve this. But looking back now, and knowing what we know now, we would have handled it differently, wouldn’t we? We know that the whole thing was preventable at certain points in history, but we also have to acknowledge that Hitler’s role as the lynchpin in all of this doesn’t preclude the fact that he was one human being in a society and world that formed much of his thinking and behaviour. Do you honestly think that none of it would have happened at all if this one human being didn’t exist?
Hating Hitler is denying the reality that all of this can so easily happen again: that our own fear, frustration and anger can be whipped up into a collective decision to hate a group so much - to refuse to accept the reality that they are fellow human beings - that we would support a government initiative to ‘wish them away’.
Which we do not.
As to a different and better way to end what Hitler was doing, your wish list does not show it and I will not try to second history. I was not there.
You want unconditional love, and there is no such thing.
Our hate biases are there to protect us and you would discard them. Tsk tsk.
You make many assumptions, like what I quoted, while I prefer to deal with reality and facts.
Regards
DL
Try reading the whole sentence. I’m not saying that we do. I’m saying that the capacity is still there, and hating Hitler is not going to protect us from that.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Protect us from what? From the hate biases of others? From our own inevitable death? From having to experience pain, humiliation or loss in our brief and relatively insignificant lives? Our hate biases protect us from nothing but reality.
Exactly. A negative reality, while our love biases push us to what we see as a better loving reality.
Regards
DL
I see hatred as based on projection, infantile rage and unconscious self-loathing. When people conclude that it's ok for them to hate, they also feel justified to do whatever they want to those they hate. There's a lot of self-righteousness that characterizes hate behavior, which creates a catch-22: I don't have to stop hating because I am right to hate. I'm "protecting Southern womanhood" or I'm "keeping the world safe for democracy." Of course, that's not what's really going on at all.
Anyone can choose to live without a moral code or can pretend to follow a moral code while not doing so in reality. I think those are the folks who tend to hate with the most impunity. When people feel no sense of responsibility in terms of how they relate to others, it's like an anti-ethics of anything goes--which is no ethics at all. It's fundamentally anti-social. Those who believe they have a moral responsibility to refrain from doing hateful things to others are practicing ethics. Practice is good!
You think you can choose what your reality is simply by preferring it a certain way - this is the problem. You can’t just block out the parts of reality you don’t like. Hate is a delusion that prevents us from understanding what it is in the world that we want to change and how we can change it in order to actualise the potential of this ‘better loving reality’ that we perceive.
Love is not a bias: it’s a capacity to perceive potential in the world and take action - by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration to manifest it gradually across spacetime. When we allow ourselves to love freely without denying our fears or the ‘negative reality’ that persists despite our preferences, then we can perceive the potential in our circumstances for positive change, regardless of how dire our current situation is in reality.
You may not see unconditional love, but the potential is there, nonetheless.
Thank you for your contribution. I think projection, infantile rage and self-loathing are forms of hate, but hate also takes other forms that some people here are less likely to condemn. The argument being presented here, which I dispute, is that hate, when generated by ‘love’, is justified. The OP question is what triggers hate - specifically, how do we go from love to hate, and is the process useful?
Quoting uncanni
Personally I think some people’s ‘moral code’ is part of what leads them to hate, and to justify that hate. When we have a strong sense of morality that we live by, how do we respond to what is ‘immoral’ in the world? Do we accept a reality that includes people doing hateful or ‘immoral’ things - a reality where we are certainly capable of ‘immoral’ things ourselves - or do we accept only this ‘better loving reality’ where everyone does the ‘right’ thing? When we encounter someone doing something ‘immoral’ or hateful, do we strive to understand why, or do we blindly attack this threat to our ‘better loving reality’?
When we hate those who hate, are we justified?
Here are some concrete examples: the shooters at Black churches and synagogues break my heart. The history of lynching pains me deeply; so do the Holocaust, rape, incest, My Lai, serial killing, etc., etc. ad infinitum. The kind of mentality that is capable of such actions is a very scarey mentality to contemplate. In general, I conclude that probably the people in those categories never developed a conscience and experienced severe abuse and trauma themselves. I've read about Hitler and the German family unit for the generations prior to the rise of nazism (Rosembaum's Explaining Hitler, and Alice Miller has a few books on the German ethos of the period) as well as many books on psychopathy. I've read a lot about the kind of trauma and abuse that result in the developmental disabling of conscience and the ability to use other people merely as things.
I will admit that during the past three years, it's been very hard for me not to hate Trump. I am hoping that he will be impeached so that all the damage he's inflicting is stopped. I understand that he's deeply traumatized and that he has found it quite easy and probably comfortable to view other people more as things than as subjects like himself. So I guess I'd have to say that I hate the destruction, cruelty and deprivation that very sick people inflict on the world.
I think hate is unnecessary and a completely illogical response to a situation. I think, any action or crime which results in hate from an audience has been ill judged and analysed. The more we understand, the less we hate.
If you think love has no conditions, you are sadly mistaken.
That is why you love family and friends more than others.
If you do not, you do not know what love is.
Regards
DL
Reciprocity rules say it is.
To tolerate those who do not tolerate others is empowering them. It rewards evil with good.
One is either for them or against them.
Regards
DL
Really.
What emotion would you feel if you got home and found a rapist on your wife?
What is the logical emotion you should feel?
Regards
DL
1). Because I'm not a homosexual and 2). Because I wouldn't marry anyone that stupid.
I see what you're trying to say though, about situations and events out of your control. Events like someone close to you dying from a drunk driver, or your exam mark wasn't enough to get into the dream university but you found out years later that it was a mistake, but it's too late and you lived your whole life in ruin. I see what you're getting at.
I still stand by it. Although these events happen, there are simply some things you cannot control. So you can control yourself. The rapist? I'd stop the situation immediately, then I would tie the lad up until I understand what is with him. And fix him so he won't do it again.
Hate leads to impulsive behaviour, how many crimes and deaths and dreadful events have resulted because of hate and could have been prevented by peace? War.
You must understand that other individuals are no where near in the same thought pattern as you, we are all very different in our childhood and biological wiring. So the act of one person does not explain their entire situation.
That is why I find it very hard to hate.
I love my family and friends - that I put limitations on my love for others I recognise as fear on my part, not a necessary condition of love. I don’t need to love others less in order to love my family and friends as much as I do.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Reciprocity rules? Are you saying we should go back to ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’?
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Tolerate is an interesting word, isn’t it? It doesn’t mean that we do nothing about what is happening, but that we have the capacity to endure it for a time. It doesn’t empower at all - it only looks like that to those who cannot see the bigger picture, or that real change occurs in time.
The world is not as black and white as you like to think it is.
I’m with you here. That we are angered and frustrated by the pain humanity inflicts on itself and the world is heartbreaking. That people believe they need to add to that pain in order to end it is illogical, when you think about. But I also understand that most people aren’t prepared to think about it when they’re in the thick of these emotions.
That’s why we think about these things from a temporal distance. There are things we need to recognise in here about our own capacity to inflict damage when we justify our actions based on emotion.
What you’ve written shows a common approach to hate in recent times. Instead of hating the person, we seek to understand their thinking and the circumstances of their life. It makes it possible to conclude that this person is/was mentally disturbed, traumatized or very sick. I’m going to challenge your thinking a little further here. Because we can’t blame these people entirely for their actions, but we can’t accept them as part of society, either. Pity is an interesting emotion - it isn’t hate, but there’s a certain distancing effect that’s still a long way from love.
Quoting uncanni
It’s easy enough to make this distinction while we’re talking conceptually, but I think we need to be honest here about what that means. When face to face with one of these ‘very sick people’, could we NOT hate them? Could we treat them with the dignity deserving of a human being - or would it be very difficult to respond to the person and not the behaviour or mentality that we hate?
Hate is a decision to deny reality based on very real feelings of fear, anger and frustration. That we can refrain from hating others by directing our emotions towards attacking the behaviour or mentality is certainly a step towards eradicating hate. The next step, I think, is to recognise how easily we can cause this destruction, cruelty and deprivation ourselves - how dangerously close all of us are to this ‘mentality’ or ‘disabling of conscience’ we define and separate out as pathological.
It’s frightening to be this honest about who we are as human beings, but I think that until we can look at people like Trump or Hitler and see ourselves in similar life circumstances, we won’t be able to effect the kind of change that we want to see in the world. Until we see that hate in these circumstances is not only understandable but also unnecessary, then we won’t recognise or be able to show others how to look for the potential to manifest a ‘better, loving reality’ from these adverse circumstances, too.
I wouldn't hate them, but I'd probably be quite frightened of them; it would probably be very hard for me to control my fear. But I don't hate people--not at this point in my life.
Quoting Possibility
I'm not attacking the behavior: I'm describing it. I have always sought to understand why people behave the way they behave, including myself.
Quoting Possibility
You know Stanley Milgram's experiment, right? Not everyone is going to be that obedient to authority. The Stanford prison experiment?Not everyone who gets into a position of power will abuse it, even if all those around are abusing their power.
It's patently obvious to me that not all humans have the same capacities for whatever we care to refer to: intellectual achievement or "genius," self-abnegation, goodness, badness, ambition, corruption, etc. There are anti-social personalities and there are social personalities!!
My point is not that I am an angelic being without flaws as far as my interpersonal relationships go, but to say that all humans can be this or that way seems (to me) tantamount to saying that all humans can be sexual predators, serial killers, psychopaths. This I absolutely do not believe to be true.
An eye for an eye is your law so zipper down or break your own law.
Quoting Fruitless
I hear you and you have exemplified your hate of what you do right here with you fixing that rapist.
You became your enemy.
Quoting Fruitless
I'm not sure I follow. What pattern do you see?
Quoting Fruitless
Hating is a demonstration of what is loved.
That is why I used the rape scenario.
I put what you loved in jeopardy and poof, there was the hate I wanted ti show you in yourself.
You would not give it up just as I would not give up mine.
Regards
DL
Back?
Quoting Possibility
You break the law of the excluded middle. Put that in the dust bin.
When did we stop trying to make the punishment suit the crime?
Regards
DL
- @Gnostic Christian Bishop
Please elaborate how I did this? I'm getting the idea that fixing something means you hate the way it is? That's like saying you hate children because you teach and discipline them until they contain enough logic to survive.
- @Gnostic Christian Bishop
Where is the hate? I did not express any hate?
- @Gnostic Christian Bishop
Well this is rather straightforward, every person you meet has a personality cultured by their context and beliefs, values and attitudes. They didn't pick and choose their personality, they didn't choose to be that way - and therefore since the person is only restricted to their memory and environment, you can see a familiar pattern of the way they behave.
(You either get it or you don't)
And Lastly, Can you describe your definition of hate?
Hate to me is the desire to remove that thing from existence.
Yes, back to when it was written down and people lived by it without considering the damage it causes.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
The law of excluded middle refers to truth value. How does it apply here?
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
The legal system is not my concern here - I’m talking about person to person relations.
Nice teaching method.
Quoting Fruitless
That is killing, IMO.
Not hate.
I offer no definition that would contradict or add to the dictionary.
I think you have with removing things from existence.
Regards
DL
The law of excluded middle refers to truth value. How does it apply here?
Let me rephrase for clarity and you breaking that law.
I don’t need to love others less in order to love my family and friends more.
I hope you see how you painted yourself into an illogical corner.
You, of course, have to love others less if you are to love those close to you more.
Regards
DL
I don’t need to love others less in order to love my family and friends as much as I do.
I don’t need to love those close to me more. That’s the point.
- @Gnostic Christian Bishop
Well where do you expect to go with hate? Otherwise it's an unreasonable burden on your shoulders you have to deal with. What is the point of hate?
and - @Gnostic Christian Bishop thanks :)
You do not need to for sure, but if you do not love those close to you mare than others, you do not know how to love.
If you had to save either your child or an acquaintance from fire, (lets say), who would you choose?
Regards
DL
All our biases are in us to protect us, be they love biases or hate biases.
When you create a love bias, you automatically form a hate bias against anything that will jeopardize that which you love.
Regards
DL
It's a bit like asking 'whats the point of reflexes?' or 'what's the point with immune system imflammation around a wound`?
The organism is reacting to outside stimuli. And then in some cases it is helpful to be mobilized by powerful emotions. One need not necessarily act on them, but to be mobilized and sometimes expressive without violence, given that we are social mammals, is often necessary. And then of course sometimes we need to defend ourselves physically.
And I think it is you who doesn’t know how to love. To love is not simply to feel - we don’t love when we desire or prefer or value, although we may claim to feel love. A love bias towards something or someone isn’t to love. These feelings call us to love. But what we love, whether a person or an idea/concept, is an experience regardless of its actuality.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
This is not a question of love. It’s the same as asking me which of my two children I would choose in the same situation, and then trying to tell me that choice has anything to do with love.
Not true: they don't protect; they sicken and weaken--in this case, the human psyche is weakened by the defenses one forms to avoid the pain and trauma of abuse. You call them biases, but you're really referring to the defenses you use to justify your opinions. And the conclusions you jump to, expecting the reader to accept them!! Loving more causes hate: just plain silly, and stupid. Dumb. Dull-witted. You can do better than that!!!
- @Coben
Makes sense. Essentially it's our primitive counterpart.
Nicely put.
Regards
DL
So you can see yourself saving your neighbor's child instead of your own.
Wow.
Don't tell your wife why or she, if smart, will drop you like a hot potato. Your a pathetic human.
Regards
DL
You are the stupid one if you think you can do better than nature and the instincts that guide you.
Regards
DL
??
Was it our primitive counterpart ways that cause us to fight against slavery?
Or was it our more altruistic and empathic and equality seeking modern thinking?
Regards
DL
Science. Try it. If your swollen head and ego will let you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LIb22-5Lwg
Regards
DL
Yes, my swollen head allowed me to watch the video, which was very interesting. But I don't see anything about hating versus loving. And this was the issue that I brought up by quoting you.
Then watch it again for the first time to see that a negative bias is created at the same time as a positive bias. That is love creating hate against all that would threaten what is loved.
If you don't agree then show what creates our hate biases.
Regards
DL
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Agree with what? You don't show in that example a hate bias--only a clear preference. You conclude that the opposite is hate, but I don't conclude the same thing at all. You are aware that others see things differently from you, right? But there's still the problem of you demonstrating absolutely no hate bias in those babies.
You conclude that because you hate, ergo everyone hates? This is an absurd conclusion. It's true that lots of folks hate, but you could never demonstrate that everyone does.
There are many reasons why I believe that I would choose to save my own child before my neighbour’s child - and my husband’s feelings as well as my own would factor strongly, for sure - but I’m not going to rule out the possibility of circumstances at the time that might lead me to go the other way, even if I can’t describe them in detail right now. I know that I would have to live with my decision as well as everyone else’s opinion of it, but I’m still not going to rule it out. If you think that makes me ‘pathetic’, I’m okay with that. I’m at least being honest with myself.
What we base our decisions on in situations like these are complex and cannot be predicted with any certainty. There are too many instances of actions that defy logic, social expectations and other ‘normal’ value structures for me to be certain of my own response, and I won’t try to assure myself of possessing any ‘inherent values’ to which I may struggle to reconcile my behaviour after the event.
But in a similar hypothetical fire situation if both the children were YOURS, would your decision to choose one child over the other be ‘proof’ that you LOVE one of your two children less? And if so, how do you explain that to your wife?
I understand that we look at these actions as ‘proof’ of love, but to me they simply demonstrate our feelings of preference, desire or value attributed to events or objects in time. They prove where love is at work in that moment, but not where love ISN’T.
It’s a bit like potential energy. We can calculate and predict where and even how much will be at work in certain situations, but that’s not ‘proof’ that only a certain quantity of potential energy is ever available for that object or event. And there is no term defining a lack of potential energy...
Though my goodness, we've gotten into a morbid corner of love, somehow.Quoting PossibilityReal life events are a mess. It would often be very hard to work out, in a fire for example, all the factors. But I think parents can feel each other's preferences and if the child one parent was closer too was chosen and it seemed like all factors were equal, it would be very hard on all three survivors, because it would remind all three that we often do love one child more than the other (s) and in this case it probably led to that child not surviving. An honest spouse - to the one in that horrible situation - would realize they might have done the same thing. If you have to choose one, one has to be chosen. But it might break the relationship anyway, especially if the other parent would have made a different choice.
The other parent would likely find it nearly impossible to accept choosing someone else's child over their own. Unless they could be shown there was no way to save their child. Unless they came to believe that was the case. I don't think any marital relationship would survive one parent choosing to save someone else's child. Relationships often have trouble surviving the death of a child by disease or accident. If the other parent could have saved the child but decided not to, I think very few make it past that juncture.
And it seems to me mentioning logic as you did....Quoting PossibilityIt's not logic that makes one choose one's own child first. It's outside of logic, it is feeling. And even the other parents, if they knew you had to choose one child, would understand you chose your own, because they know what they would have done. They might not want to be friends, because the feelings go so deep, but they would understand the choice.
Quoting Coben
I don’t deny that, at any point in time or set of circumstances, we would prefer one child over another. What I’m arguing is that while this appears to be an indication of where love is at work at any point in time, it is by no means an indication of a lesser quantity of love being available.
Quoting Coben
The reason I mentioned logic here is because in the aftermath of intense situations, many people tend to apply either a purely logical or purely emotional appraisal of the situation to evaluate or justify the actions of those involved. In my opinion it isn’t that cut and dried, and what initiates action - even in these situations - is a complex, subjective and amorphous ‘structure’ of mind that determines how logic, feeling, memory, knowledge and sensory information interact in relation to value and meaning. You suggested so yourself when you described the physical obstacles and ‘chances’ of success. So it’s inaccurate to assume that the parent made a choice based only on their feelings, even though it may seem that simple to everyone, including the parent themselves. When we start to look at how someone with autism might act in this situation, for instance, the complexity becomes irreducible.
Real life events are ‘a mess’ only because we’d prefer them to be simple enough to get our head around. They’re not. There’s always more going on than we’re aware of, and our mind has the capacity to process much more information than we can consciously pay attention to at any point in time.
But getting back to the original topic, perhaps you and I can at least agree that there is no hate necessary in these examples - that saving one child instead of another does not require one to hate the child we don’t save.
But I disagree that it means we love one child more than another. That we connect more with one child does not mean that we have less love for the others. I think love exists as a potential - we may perceive less opportunities to demonstrate love in comfortable or mutually enjoyable ways with one child than with another, but I think we limit ourselves if we figure that as less love. My two children are remarkably different - one I understand much more readily, and we gravitate towards one another through similar interests. With the other I need to consciously look for opportunities to demonstrate the love I know is there - both for his benefit and as a reminder to myself.
The way I see it, our feelings of love (value, preference, desire) certainly influence but do not determine our capacity to act with love. They also influence but again do not determine our capacity to hate. The same with feelings of fear, anger and frustration. Our feelings can contribute, sure - but we aren’t ruled by them in any situation.
I am not saying it must be the case. I think it is often the case.Quoting PossibilitySure, I almost think romantic love can be stronger based on difference.
But still I think a lot of parents love one of their children more than others and often there are, to varying degrees, black sheep children in families. I know this through confidences and confessions from many parents, nearly all of whom felt quite guilty about it. This does not mean it is true in your case. I assume there is quite a lot of unreported cases of this, and by unreported I mean: the parent tells no one. It's taboo. Given how many have told me I suspect it is widespread. I think also it is often hard for the person to admit even to themselves. There have been cognitive studies that strongly indicate that many peope who dislike racism, are antiracist and would even speak out about racism, nevertheless are more likely to make negative judgments about other races. IOW people can not know their own feelings, when those feelings are ego-dystonic. Not loving one's children the same is extremely ego-dystonic.Again, this does not mean you love yours to different degrees.Quoting PossibilityI got a little lost in this part. One can act lovingly but feel something else, or feel not so much love, though acting the same with another person...sure. And some nice people can be quite hateful inside - not that this is the same, just showing that acting and feeling can be quite separate, in degree and even in quality.
In any case, I certainly wouldn't tell you or someone else that you necessarily love one child more than another. I don't believe it is universal. But I don't think it is pathological either. In fact I think it is quite common.
He chose the good which shows his positive bias which rejected the other due to his negative bias.
No one said that hate necessarily created violence.
Quoting uncanni
That clip used the terms good and evil. I chose to use love and hate as analogies.
You seem to think that people can have a good bias but not an evil bias. You would be wrong.
Regards
DL
First. I am pleased that you could not come up with a scenario where you would put a stranger ahead of your child, even as you say that you could under the right conditions.
As to how I would explain it to my wife. I would say I chose the one whose life I had a better chance of saving.
I saw a clip which I did not keep of a woman in a tsunami having her two children on a float with her.
The younger toddler fell of and she let go of the older sibling 6 or 7 year old to save the younger.
She got lucky as the older manage to save himself. That was quick and instinctive but I don't know if we would all react the same way.
I don't know how she would explain her choice as I have forgotten if she did or not.
Regards
DL
...even though your decision to act was also influenced by your feelings of preference towards one child over another...ok
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
I find it interesting what we label as ‘instinctive’ - suggesting that a split second decision can only be based on an organism’s inherent behaviour patterns, and yet we cannot say that we would all react the same way. Why not? Is this woman inherently different, or is there something we can adjust so that we would behave in this way that we admire?
I get that there is no time for conscious thought in the moment, but I think it’s the kinds of discussions and thinking we’re doing now that enable us to evaluate our ‘instinctive’ behaviour patterns and make adjustments according to a broader perspective of the world: to recognise that we’re not ‘locked in’ to certain behaviour patterns; that we can not only map the mental conditions that initiate certain actions, but also structure or even create the right conditions in our own minds.
Now you have changed your wording, from love and hate to good and evil. These categories are not the same thing.
That is your assumption. Not mine.
I don't know, so you are showing your own thinking.
Quoting Possibility
Genetic mutations which effect thinking.
Quoting Possibility
Yes. Some can create their own delusions.
Regards
DL
Analogical thinking says they are. I changed the wording so that you would understand that baby link better than you do.
Regards
DL
I am saying that analogically thinking says that love and hate can be replaced with good and evil.
We must compete and cooperate in our evolutionary journey.
I see the evils of competition and the creation of losers to those competitions as a small evil within a greater good. It selects the fittest, which is evolutions inadvertent goal.
Regards
DL
??
I am all in for judgements.
We judge hundreds of things daily and I follow this good advice religiously.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.
What did I put that made you think I was against judging?
Regards
DL
I absolutely agree: they are not the same thing; I see no argument demonstrating in the least way that they are interchangeable terms.
But given how he has been saying hate is not bad or wrong per se and that he feels it seems a fair conclusion, it is odd for him to be saying it is analogous to evil.
This is the reason I have been using the terms ‘justifiable’ and ‘necessary’ to clarify the argument. GCB accepts that hate can be seen as ‘evil’ but argues that this doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. His argument seems to be that - given the way we understand evolution as ‘survival of the fittest’ - there are necessary ‘evils’ we must perform in order to survive and ensure the survival of our preferred way of life, those we love, etc. Kill or be killed, an eye for an eye, hating hate, etc - these are ways we attempt to justify actions in society that would otherwise be condemned as ‘evil’.
The argument may sound reasonable on the surface - as long as we don’t look too closely at why we hate and why we love. As long as we maintain that ‘love’ and ‘hate’ refer to mutually dependent value scales - that the degree to which we love someone corresponds necessarily to the degree to which we hate its opposite - then the argument can be said to hold.
My argument is not only that these value scales are independent, but that they refer only to the feelings that influence but don’t necessarily initiate love or hate. As humans, we are not slaves to our feelings - we initiate thoughts, words and actions according to the atemporal, value structured interaction of sensory information with the memories, feelings, logic and knowledge of our experiences. Mostly this happens without our conscious attention to the process, and it’s only after we act that we consciously select the value structures that appear to satisfactorily explain our past action in the simplest way.
But that doesn’t mean we’re unable to pay conscious attention to and evaluate the way our value structures interact. This is what self-consciousness and self-evaluation is for. This is what imagination and thought is for. We can evaluate our feelings in relation to imagined experiences, and be honest with ourselves about the degree to which they might influence our actions. We can map our own value structures, be critical of them and even change them.
But too often we don’t, because to acknowledge our capacity in this respect is to acknowledge responsibility. If we admit that we don’t have to hate, then we are responsible for when we do hate. It’s much easier for us to deny our capacity to choose love in the face of oppression, than to try and understand why we choose to hate instead.
I mentioned love above. Even so called positive emotions can be held to long, bouyed along with excuses for the other person, rationalizations, fantasy and more. But where there is love as an in the moment reaction, I also want to be able to feel that of course. And of course I am much happier when situations bring up the so called positive emotions, but I will not longer agree to contorting myself and telling my emotions (metaphorically) to be like X even if they feel like Y. I do want to stop focusing on one emotion when really I am feeling another. Or focusing on one because it makes me more comfortable. Hatred is often easier from some people to feel than fear. I am always looking underneath to see if something is being avoided. It is a process. But hate is not a problem for me per se, and honestly I think it would be problematic if most of us, who are not so wealthy we can pay our way out of everything we think is unjust or spiteful or dehumanizing, did not react with hatred now and then and in relation to, for example, some bosses. That doesn't mean we don't have responsibility to try to get away from destructive personalities, for example, but this is not always so easy to do or do quickly. I'm not going to judge my reactions to mistreatment,whatever the emotion is that arises. I may judge what I do in response to the problem - I want to learn, of course - practically. And I may judge the patterns of holding onto emotions.
But even that gets tricky. To someone else it can seem like holding on to emotions, but the person in question my simply be consistantly meeting dehumanization. African americans were often judged, when I was young, for being so angry. Like they were reacting to the air.
The way I see it, the ‘full range of angry feelings’ can be felt and even expressed without hate. In fact I would argue that they should be expressed without hate. And I agree with you that people tend to suppress their fears, which can lead to hate. Hate, as I see it, is denying the reality of our experience. That we feel anger, frustration or fear is natural and not problematic. These feelings draw our attention to experiences in the world that we wish to change. I see nothing wrong with sharing our feelings about these experiences. But feeling is not the same as emotion. How often do we admit our feelings of fear, anger or frustration without reacting to them emotionally?
We can respond to a wish for change in one of two ways: either we deny the reality of the experience and want to attack any evidence of it (hate), or we accept the reality and open ourselves to awareness, connection and collaboration in order to effect real change to that reality in time (love). When we have an emotional reaction of hate, whether we suppress that reaction or not, we already deny the reality of the experience. When we ‘refuse to accept’ hateful treatment, we deny the reality of the experience.
This is the confusing part: We can’t change something that we refuse to accept. In order to change the hateful treatment we first need to accept the reality that it occurs, and that we have a strong desire to change it. We need to be prepared to acknowledge that we are hurt by this hateful treatment. We need to share our feelings of frustration, anger and fear (with those who support us, but also with those who hurt us) - and to do so without hate, without reacting emotionally. Only then can we gain the necessary awareness, connection and collaboration to effect real change.
You may interpret what I’ve just described as showing weakness or permitting dehumanisation, but I disagree. When we can share how we feel about hateful treatment without reacting emotionally, I see that as show of strength and courage. I think that Rosa Parks and MLK showed us this, and also showed us how effective it can be.
I’m in no position to judge anyone who chooses to hate. I’m only disagreeing with anyone who attempts to justify it, celebrate it or argue that it’s necessary.
I disagree. And I have a guess we have reached an impasse in our positions. Of course it would help if I could feel your feeling of hate, to know if we are talking about the same thing. But then that's an impasse also. I think hate very much includes an awareness of reality and is a natural reaction to what hates us, dehumanizes us, etc. If one is comfortable with emotions, it can recede quickly and one can notice even that one has misunderstood or there is a change. And if it is necessary it can mobilize tremendous energy.Quoting PossibilityI don't choose to hate. Though I could choose to try to stuff it down. I think there were times in my life when I chose to keep triggering my own hate at someone or something or some pattern. But the hate comes in response to what actively hates and dehumanizes me. I wouldn't say I celebrate it and I see no need to justify it really. I would see a need to justify shoving it down. Extreme examples make this clear I think. That a rape victim would hate the man raping her just seems like a given. It is. It is a response to hate and violation. To me judging it as something that should not be there is like judging someone's immune system for imflamatory response around a wound or for violently struggling to get to the surface of water when running out of air.Quoting PossibilityI associate moments of hate with very clearly accepting the reality of what is happening.
And I guess part of my reaction to what you are saying is...it sure seems like you are not accepting the reality of hate in us. It is part of how we react. It is real. So often we are told to accept the reality of what is outside us, when we have strong emotional reactions,
but what this comes down to is telling us not to accept the reality of what is inside us. To try to get rid of reaction X.
If I cannot love all of my emotional reactions, I will never fully love others.
I have made it clear that certain kinds of patterns of cognitively retriggering myself can be damaging and also that sometimes we feel one thing instead of others. and use one emotion to cover and avoid one we would rather not feel. Hate can certainly become a habit this way. But so can other feellings. And other feelings can cover up hate and be habitual and this too can lead to damaging patterns.
And I will just add that many dictionary definitions define hate as, amongst other things, extreme dislike. I would use the word for a stronger emotion, but I find it a bit sad that people have less acceptance for such a basic human reaction.
I am going to leave this here. For the reason I mentioned first: it is hard to know exactly what you mean by hate and for you to know what I mean. And then in these kinds of extremely emotional issues, I think there can come a point where nothing will change the other person's mind. At root it is an intuitive choice, though rationality may be being brought in, by both of us, to make it make sense to us. So, bow out of the discussion, at least for a while.
You use the term ‘reaction’ as if it’s an involuntary response, but I dispute this. When we feel anger, the limbic system responds: the heart rate goes up, adrenalin flows and the muscles prepare for fight or flight. That’s an involuntary response to feeling. We can’t change that.
But an emotional reaction takes into account our sensory inputs, memories, logic and knowledge. We locate the source of the stimulus and direct our energies towards what we determine to be the most effective or valuable reaction in relation to the organism. Most of the time this is achieved without conscious thought - this, I suspect, is the ‘internal reality’ you seem to think I don’t accept. I accept it as a reality, but not as a necessity. Because when we apply conscious attention to this internal process (self-reflection), we realise that a reaction appearing most valuable to the organism is not always the most effective one (or the most valuable to civilisation), and also has effects that can be damaging at a later time. With that, we can adjust the value structures that determine our best course of action, so that when a similar feeling occurs in the future, we are aware that we can react differently. This may take some conscious effort initially, but eventually we can develop it into a better reaction without conscious thought.
Quoting Coben
I will point out first of all that ‘rape’ refers to a past (perhaps current) situation - not one that can be anticipated or reliably predicted. Because the split second before it becomes ‘rape’, it is considered by society to be a perfectly acceptable interaction. That a woman who finds herself in a rape situation would feel intense fear, anger and frustration is a given. It is most likely also a given, and perfectly understandable, that she would actively attack the reality of what is happening.
But let me ask you, hypothetically: if there was a more effective way to put a stop to unwanted sexual advances that didn’t require a woman to physically or verbally attack (which may not be effective and would probably result in her sustaining more harm), would that be a better course of action? If she could show reluctance, resistance or say ‘no’, ‘stop’ or even ‘wait’ or hang on’ - and have her words or actions mean something - would that be better? Why do we have to wait until a woman reacts with strong emotion, violence or hate before we recognise that something needs to be changed about the situation?
A woman would have expressed her fear, frustration or anger long before the situation could be termed ‘rape’. Let me explain what I firmly believe angers, frustrates and frightens women most about rape - what continues to be glossed over and what needs to be changed: it is how much any man can interpret, distort and ignore what a woman says or does when his focus is SEX - and genuinely believe his perspective is true.
Nicely put and I agree.
Regards
DL
What I see our friend saying is that he seeks gnosis as described in this link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9QI3nlinYQ
Do you think knowing yourself as fully as possible is pointless to our survival?
Regards
DL
I think knowing yourself as fully as possible is essential. But I think survival as the main purpose of knowing yourself is misguided, and I think pursuing our survival as the ultimate goal is pointless.
If survival is not your main goal in life, what is?
Regards
DL
Increasing awareness, connection and collaboration
Those can only come to you if you have already insured you are alive.
Without survival, nothing else can follow.
A dead mind/consciousness cannot be aware or connect and collaborate with anyone.
Regards
DL
Survival instinct must arise somewhere at the start of evolution, unless you assume an intelligent creator who can create living beings without a survival instinct and then can keep them in a safe place where they can live and evolve - which doesn't seem to be our world, although we may already be becoming such intelligent designers by applying genetic engineering or cybernetics.
That said, we don't need to always act with the conscious intention to survive or reproduce, even when our actions do promote our survival or reproduction: we can simply enjoy food or sex. And complex beings like today's humans can also indulge in activities that don't directly satisfy their survival or reproductive needs; they can even afford to indulge in activities that are detrimental to their survival or reproduction, as long as they have the means to reverse or mitigate such detrimental effects (for example pharmaceuticals, surgeries, etc.). As I said in the previous post, love (or similar feelings like happiness) seems to accompany accepting behaviors, so theoretically an organism can develop love for things that are beneficial or detrimental or neutral to its survival or reproduction - by accepting the things (as opposed to resisting them).
By the way, I don't argue that we are purely extensions of our animal nature. Who knows, we may have started our evolution in a spiritual/non-material world, perhaps even with an intervention of an intelligent creator, and arrived here later. My argument is about evolution and feelings like hate and love in general.
Well, I'm curious about general aspects of reality and existence. I also think it would suck if I bit the dust at the end of this life and that was it.
I fear more being eternal and being bored to tears in an eternity of what wold seem like re-runs that I have seen a million times over.
Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch.
Porn movie and even sex if allowed x many time, like 7678966668978008898000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 = times would even get borrrrrrrrrrrrrring.
Regards
DL
A never-ending life does not necessarily entail repetition. Moreover, more complex bodies or mental structures may hold qualia we can't even imagine yet.
A Big Crunch doesn't seem likely from current data. Expansion of our universe is currently accelerating and the most likely scenario is that it will expand forever but at some point it will end up in heat death where all stuff is homogenously distributed in space and thus supports no life. Maybe an extremely intelligent civilization evolved over billions of years will be able to manipulate some parameters of the universe to ensure endless continuation of life.
Both science and religions now have gods of the gaps.
Regards
DL