Haters Gonna' Hate, Pt. 2

(Cont'd from here)

Like fear, hate is a powerful feature of human emotional life. [For a somewhat lengthy personal essay on the existential value of Fear, see my longish serial post "Thyraphobia, or Purity of Heart is to Fear One Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Not Do Again." Remember, it's a blog, so you have to read from the bottom up, and you will have to scroll through several pages to get to the beginning.] Some might say that our very identities are defined by the things we hate.

And, like fear, because it is so fundamental to our identity, hate would seem to have evolutionary import.

Hate involves selection. We hate certain things and like or tolerate certain other things. These choices occur on a spectrum from the gut-level and pre-conscious to the active and rational(-ized).

Hate stems from distinguishing the things we like from the things we don't like. Our friends from our enemies, e.g. Things that are harmful to us from things that are benign or even benevolent. This is, of course, a fairly valuable exercise psychologically and evolutionary. 'Yes, you should hate wolfsbane. It will kill you if you eat it.' or 'Yes, you should hate saber tooth tigers. They will eat you and your babies.' or 'Yes, you should hate the Neanderthals. They will steal your food and rape your women.' Or whatever.

Hate involves a judgment of a certain kind. And it involves some object. It isn't a free-floating feeling. It is hatred of something.

But merely differentiating between things that are helpful and those that are harmful doesn't fully capture the sorts of things we recognize as hate. It is, that is to say, more than a mere judgment.

Hate is more than that. It has an intensity about it. An emotional component.

But is it simply an emotion? Or, stated differently, is it a simple emotion?

When we examine ourselves and what we feel when we hate, we discover that hate is a quite complex set of emotions and feelings. It involves elements of, e.g., fear, anger, fixation, blame, dislike, loathing, contempt, indignation, hostility, disgust, intolerance, aggression, demeaning or devaluation or objectification of the object, desire for schadenfreude (the suffering of the other brings pleasure), wish to harm/destroy the object, and even jealousy (success of the other brings resentment).

There is also the feeling that the object's very existence demeans/diminishes one's own and thus takes on a moral component (rightly or wrongly). The hater tends to see him/her self as somehow victimized by the object of hatred. And, thus, the hater's identity is, paradoxically, tied up/in with the hated.

(to be cont'd)

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