On the nature of Hate

Have you ever stopped to wonder at the nature of hate? Not the manifestations of things like “racism” or “sexism”. What I am addressing here is the raw emotion of hatred, unmasked by title or motivation. From where does hate come? Some like to believe that our prejudices are to blame for hate. I have pondered on this issue many times & have come to the conclusion that our sense of “fairness”, or the violation thereof, is one of the springs from which hatred wells. A sense of fairness is something that we all have. “how is a sense of fairness a spring for hatred?”, you may ask. Given that we all have a subjective sense of fairness, it is guaranteed that someone else will violate that sense by the terms we as individuals use to define such a violation. The degree to which this affects us is directly proportional to what we think we stand to lose by such a violation; in other words, losing $1.00 from a dishonest person is not as bad to us as loosing $100.00 dishonestly.

This is obvious.

The problem is that a sense of fairness is a self-preservation skill. It allows us to assure that we do not loose more than we gain in a society. A sense of fairness is a cornerstone of surviving within a group of people peacefully.

A sense of fairness, however, is only truly useful to the individual. Applying your sense of fairness to another person can lead to disaster. This is where hate comes in for the accusing group.

“where is the hate argument already?”

Okay, fairness does not just apply to business deals and gaming. It usually arises when any perceived contract with another person or persons is seen to be broken.

a husband/wife cheats, a divorce ensues, and the entire ordeal is governed by an individual sense of fairness, given the circumstances, and every perceived wrong is tallied and weighed against perceived wrongs of the other, often using a quagmire of logical fallacies. This happens because the parties involved are applying THEIR sense of fairness to the other. “You break my heart, you owe me a house!”

This is not to say that accountability is not needed, Only that accountability should not be based on bias. This is where the myth of “power plus” comes in when defining things like racism, rape and various “phobias” where certain circles attempt to define these terms in such a way that they can only be, arbitrarily, attributed to a target group. In the case of social justice, the bias was created before the (new) definition, therefore an entirely biased group gets to tailor make a definition to fit it’s own bias while using previously agreed upon terms.

When then definition relies on one qualifier that the target group can not make amends for, It is not surprising that the target group’s sense of fairness would be violated. This is where hatred springs for the target group.

However, by social justice thinking, hate is only coming from one direction. The only thing that they themselves think they are guilty of is “righteous indignation” The largest problem with this is that righteous indignation does not seek the suffering of the one doing the wrong thing, but the drive to reconcile the wrong itself. It’s goal is correction, not retribution, The two often get confused. righteous indignation might seek to stop a tyrannical dictator, killing them, if no other option is present. However, putting him on a rack and burning down the houses of his defeated followers is not. Those things arise from hatred. The tyrant may have killed a relative, but that is a violation of the sense of fairness. “how is it fair you take that which I love from me?” Hence hatred, and in turn; vengeance, propagate.

This is the vicious circle of hatred. If you truly want hatred gone, you cannot use it, at all. Pretending that what you do is somehow different because you are “right” makes you just as guilty. But those who think they do not hate are the havens for hatred. You cant face a problem you don’t admit you have. I do not pretend to think that hate can be destroyed for good. I do not pretend to not hate things. But I also do not pretend that my hatred of those things is anything more than a violation of my sense of fairness.