I begin by admitting that I am no angel; that I would probably benefit from anger-management classes at this point in my life; that I know what it is to be angry enough at someone who is hurting me and mine to wish to throttle him/her with my bare hands. I do know that feeling. *grimace*

I'm not entirely sure how to account for the contrasting feelings. They really do go deeper, though, I believe, than anything I have been trained to in adult life ... although I have certainly been trained -- as a student of history and of democracy and of literature -- to question impulses towards vengeance and punishment, feelings like "hatred."

I honestly think that "hatred" has puzzled me all my life. What is it? How would you define it? When would you feel "justified" in feeling it yourself? How and why?

My only -- lame, probably -- explanation for my own puzzlement about "hatred" is that I have never been able to bear watching anything else suffer. Even if I started out wanting to (Kill that snake!), I always ended up feeling sorry ...

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This kind of hatred will not suddenly disappear if the hated person is absent from the hater's life - even if by the hater's own hand.

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nonesuch: what does this mean?

Over the years the impression becomes indelible, as the steady drip slowly erodes away the part of the stone that is contacted and leaves a groove.

If you've been in a lousy situation the emotions associated with that drive your reactions to it. If you're exposed to it every day of your life you adjust to that situation and your reactions become habit and finally instinct.

A classic example of the depth to which these can be impressed is the person I heard of who still cringed whenever he heard a siren, even 50 years after World War II. This was because the SS used to blare a siren before grabbing somebody, and this created a panic response after enough times.

Similarly to situations such as what exist in the Middle East, South Africa, and in Ireland, people who have been exposed to such situations find the adjustment to be just as upsetting as the original situation they found themselves in.

What I knew then was that I wanted friends good enough AND smart enough to stop me from committing murder.

And so: I had them. They removed me from the site until I was rational again.

Isn't that better? Shouldn't that be what we seek always, ways to remove the victims from the site, rather than to encourage them to elaborate their nightmares? Is that what we are doing now, in domestic law or internationally?

[ 21 June 2003: Message edited by: skdadl ]

Christian Europe and CATS. I mean, I would like to understand, but I don't. I am utterly charmed, however, to meet someone who does.

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I won't even go into why Christian Europe hated CATS!!!!

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nonesuch: what does this mean?

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Pretty much what Dr. C said. Hatred that has taken years or even decades to build* becomes a part of the hater's personality. The hated tormentor is internalized: the victim carries that complex of emotions for life. Even after the tormentor is in prison, or dead; even if vengeance of some kind has been exacted. After long periods of psychoanalysis, the patient learns to 'manage' (hide and control) the hatred; after religious conversion, the convert learns to forgive (which i think is another form of hide and control) but it can't be erased.
This is quite different from sudden rage or panic. Either of those may drive a person to kill, in the moment. Neither of those will lead to premeditated murder, while ingrained hatred does.
* The victim would probably not have survived without it. Slaves, prisoners, abused children, oppressed people of all kinds, would simply give up and lose their identity (and many do) if anger didn't give them a certain tenacity. And, yes, plotting revenge is very much a part of holding on.

Traditional enmity between groups is different.
Scapegoating is different again.
And so is threat to identity.
A big brain is capable of many kinds of hate.

[ 21 June 2003: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

You might think at first that hatred mostly comes up on babble in objectified form -- as something we view in others. And we certainly do that.

But often enough, maybe more often than not, we read babblers expressing hatred, and today we certainly did.

The targets are (to me, anyway) boringly obvious: sexual predators, neo-Nazis -- for today, anyway. We must hate them. How very helpful.

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I want to analyze, to know, to express in another language than mine; I want to represent my delirium to myself, I want to "look in the face" what is dividing me, cutting me off. Understand your madness: that was Zeus' command when he ordered Apollo to turn the faces of the divided Androgynes (like an egg, a berry) toward the place where they had been cut apart (the belly) "so that the sight of their division might render them less insolent." To understand -- is that not to divide the image, to undo the I, proud organ of misapprehension?

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But mine is an imperfect soul.

I think "tit for tat", the governing rule of human society, imparts in us a sense of justice/injustice.

Some of us are more sensitive to it than others. Some allow many transgressions, while others over value the transgressions against them, and underestimate their transgressions against others.

And there's likely no two people on the planet who are set up to percieve their place in "tit for tat" the exact same way. So, there will always be conflict.

When something angers me, it doesn't bother me philisophically. Hate is a pretty strong word, and I'm not sure I've truly experienced it in any lasting form. But I'm not sure I would find it as terribly disturbing as the coldness.

When I read about some of the terrible things that happen to people at the hands of others, and imagine for a moment if it happened to someone near and dear to me, it strikes me I wouldn't act out of hatred, or anger, but out of a non-emotional place, a cold place, a mechanical place.

I had just finished my breakfast at Denny's in Victoria when I noticed the guy in the next booth was wearing a t-shirt with the Nazi eagle holding a swastika. He was enjoying breakfast with his wife and young son. I thought "what kind of person goes out in public with such a wearing such a symbol?". The answer was obvious, and I felt a visceral, living hatred for this person immediately. It was in this reaction that I realized how easily one could be given to a violent response (felt like hitting him with the maple syrup boat). I wanted nothing more than to physically destroy this fucking shitbag (as he joked with his son while eating pancakes, like some twisted version of those Mormon family togetherness commercials).

What really pisses me off is that my gut-level reaction is quite likely the same one they get when they see a Star of David or anyone with a darker shade of skin. That we held these reactions in common gave me a thought: The difference I see between the hate I felt at that moment and the hate he probably held was that the object of my hate could change his beliefs. Those whom he hates cannot change their circumstance. I hated the fact that this person choose to stop thinking and accept the vile ideology of racism and slavery. I hated that he would very likely infect his son with his ignorance. And I hated that he would probably never challenge his own beliefs.

The problem is that for all the hatred I felt, it is pretty much useless outside of being a mechanism for committing violence. You can't change someone's mind by bashing it with a syrup jar. The phrase "impotent rage" is apt, for hate is ultimately impotent. As an organizing tool, it is unmatched, but the worst violence is done not with hate, but with methodological precision.

I hate poachers, child-slave brokers, logging companies, mine owners, fur traders and wearers.... a lot of people who destroy and torture other living things for their own profit.
We hate certain sets of ideas and action and the people who own them, because they hurt our world.
Which people and which ideas we hate depends on how we define our world.
In my world, trees, elephants and children are sacred; profits are not.

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In someone else's world, Jesus is King and His Church rules every aspect of life. The Bible is sacred; sin is to be eradicated. So, she's going to hate anyone who threatens that world: atheists, homosexuals, abortionists, and fornicators.

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Not a very loving picture, is it? Kind of incongruent with the historical Jesus who ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, and other "sinners" isn't it? Runs kind of contrary to Jesus' own command to love one's enemies, doesn't it? Seems at odds with "Forgive us our sins to the same measure as we forgive those who sin against us" doesn't it? I can most certainly see why so many people dislike churches and church goers.

Sometimes I find it hard to love those who claim to follow Jesus, but themselves hate those who most need love. But, it seems I have to love them, too.

That's a wonderful quotation, pax -- about drinking poison and expecting it to knock off the other guy.

What do anger-management classes teach people? Has anyone ever had any experience of them? Do you think that they work on someone who is majorly damaged (I was thinking there of multi-violent offenders, eg)?

Every anger I've ever felt, even the most blinding, powerful rage, has at its base fear or hurt. It is a defense against fear or hurt, an active response to it.

In acknowledging this, I understand my anger and deal with it much more constructively. I deal with the fear or the hurt instead of lashing out.

Okay, sometimes I still lash out, but not nearly as much or as hard as I used to. I'm a work in progress, after all.

Edited to add: This does not stop me from hating certain injustices and the people who perpetrate them. It's hard not to hate those who hurt you badly, even just a little. It would take a better human than I am to completely shed that kind of reaction.

[ 23 June 2003: Message edited by: Zoot Capri ]

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Originally posted by skdadl:
What do anger-management classes teach people? Has anyone ever had any experience of them? Do you think that they work on someone who is majorly damaged (I was thinking there of multi-violent offenders, eg)?

Or how do you manage anger on your own?

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I don't think one manages anger on one's own. I learned to discuss what was happening to me with others. It helped.

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With wine and cigarettes.

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Originally posted by paxamillion:
I've done some work with guys at The John Howard Society who offer anger programs.

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Aside for a joke:

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Runs kind of contrary to Jesus' own command to love one's enemies, doesn't it?

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A more serious thought occured to me.
There seems to be an unquesioned, unexamined classification of emotions as GOOD or BAD.

There's a typically perplexing Hindu fable that tells of a demon that was so consumed with white hot hatred for Krishna that he spent every second of every day dreaming of ways to kill him. His devotion to this task was so fanatically unwavering that he acheived Krishna consciousness way before many of Krishna's devotees, simply by keeping Krishna so steadfastly in his mind's eye.

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Gods are all the time making laws they know humans can't obey.

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I disagree:

John 13:34

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love one another; as I have loved you

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Originally posted by nonesuch:
Exactly!
How many people can obey that one?

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:
Don't be such a pessimist !

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Where the object of hatred or love can be a person, a group of people, a peice of land, a house, car, etc. Love is when you can't help smiling everytime you see the object, when you would gladly and unhesitantly do anything you can and give up everything you have, even your life to please or protect the object of your love. Hatred is when you can't help but grimace everytime you hear the object's name, when you would gladly and unhesitantly do anything you can and give up everything you have, even your life to hurt or destroy the object of your hate.

I think this irrational behaviour is one of the defining aspects of "humanity".

I remember reading a novel, I forget which, but, anyway, at the end two surviving protaganists are driving away, and one asks the other, "Why is there so much hate in the world?", and the other answers something like, "It must be useful for something, otherwise there wouldn't be so much of it."

It is useful. A self-sacraficing love for own's own and suicidal hatred of one's enemies helps the group survive in extreme situations. Hatred, like love, compels people to do extraordinary things when it seems like giving up is the only option left.

I think what we hate/love, when and why is determined by our identity - who we are or to whom we belong. Hatred/love is triggered whenever we percieve this identity is threatened/enhanced. Hatred/love and the actions it compels us to do, do not abate until the object is either completely destroyed/absorbed and-or our identity changes.

skdadl, domestic/international law is about helping people live together. Its the absence or failure of a trusted authority to maintain mutually agreed-apon laws that causes conflicts. You had friends with whom you share common values whose judgement you trusted. But that is not always the case.
What we should always seek are laws we can agree apon and authorities we can trust.

[ 25 June 2003: Message edited by: nonesuch ]