Hate hate?

[beccaelizabeth]

I have been thinking about hate, and why it is a bad thing.
Someone this afternoon suggested it could sometimes be a good thing, like if you hate slavery, and I kind of flailed a bit and went 'no, because... *completely different thing here*'. Because it seemed obvious, so I hadn't thought about it.

So my now thought is that not-thinking is a large part of why hate is of the bad.

Like it leads to a kind of blindness. Like the thing that is hated is just... no longer examined, because there's this category that is Bad now and the only reaction is Hate.

And hate is sort of hungry, like it wants to get bigger? Like... the idea of collaborators, or if you're not with us you're against us? Because there's this thing that is Bad, and if you don't see it that way that makes you Bad too. Because Hate is very very sure of itself and not looking at alternatives any more.

And then there's that thing, that little leap that isn't little at all, between hating an idea or an action, and hating the person that holds that idea or does that action. Difference between hating slavery and hating slavers. Getting rid of slavery sounds of the good, but getting rid of all the people that have slaves not so much.

And hating people is not even hating the 4D continuing person, because it isn't seeing evidence and change and stuff, because hate mostly sees hate. Like, hate has this set idea about the hated, and that's the only thing it sees, not anything outside of hate.

So hate is blind, and therefore of the bad.

I think.



Ignorance as the bad that makes all the other bads; makes sense to me.


I don't think hate is a kind of energy that lets a person aim it and use it to get things done. It seems to me more that hate is a kind of energy that aims people and gets them to do things. Except for the part where people are the ones making the hate because at the minute I'm not thinking of a universe of disembodied forces.
Feedback loop?
Difficult to get out of sort, where more hate means thinking more hate is appropriate.



I am still thinking about this one. I've thought plenty about Lust but not Hate. Probably says something about me.

Also I thought a lot about Pride.
And how there's a sort of thing that is opposite of Pride in a lot of ways but also does damage - like that thing where Willow didn't seem to think she could mess anyone up seriously because she was Willow, rather than noticing that actually people were getting seriously messed up therefore she was powerful. Like underestimates are dangerous too?
There's probably already a word for that but I'm still poking the thought into shape.




Sometimes I want to just go study philosophy properly, because people have been having these thoughts and arguing about them for the longest time.

Except Cultural Studies seems to me to be about figuring how thoughts work once they get out into the world, which is a bit like philosophy only on the output side, sort of thing. So studying this bit first or as well seems pretty useful.

But I still feel like I'm reinventing the wheel and having half an argument that everyone probably had already a lot.

Comments

[damalan.livejournal.com]

An interesting discussion. I have a friend who studied philosophy at university. From him, I noticed that a good deal of what was studied were the philosophers themselves, rather than the underlying philosophy. But he pointed out that this does help provide something of a framework on which to wrap philosophical thought - philosophers as sort of signposts and labels of philosophical discourse.

Plus as you've noticed it's useful to have a vocabulary to describe philosophical thought. Ordinary words come clouded with haloes of meanings which can mask the precision required in discussing concepts, which by their very nature are rather nebulous to begin with. And as you've noticed it does mean you don't have to reinvent the wheel, as you put it. :) Though philosophers often seem to enjoy doing exactly that!

On the nature of Hatred, I am inclined to agree with you that Hatred is a corrosive and thus inherently expansive thing. I suppose it has the advantage of being a more visceral driving force than say a more cerebral motivator like belief in rights. So that it crops up isn't surprising. But it does grow as you point out - it becomes indiscriminate. Its end point is always eventually hatred of all difference, hate of other. And that's very frightening since that condones anything in the pursuit of purity... (I am suddenly minded of the Cybermen here - though nominally purged of emotion, they are better described as hating difference.)

When thinking of Pride, I always link it to the related emotional complex of Hubris. Pride is not inherently bad, since to be proud of something does not inherently do down others. I can be proud, say, to be British, without meaning that I think less of those who aren't. It's when Pride slips into Hubris that trouble starts. Hubris blinds you to the consequence of belief. Hubris will not see error, cannot accept limits, forgives faults within self as inevitable price of superiority. Willow's story is a classic example of Hubris. And the Torchwood Institute portrayed in Doctor Who is another: "I did my duty" does not forgive foreseeable failures and harm caused by your actions.

I only ever studied a little bit of philosophy on school, and I wish I had done more. I still use the most valuable thing that I learned then: recognising different types of fallacy () in arguments. Makes me wonder if more such study could have stood me in good stead also.