Hate

We have instincts, both social and individualistic; therefore we have grounds for internal conflict between these motivations. Is hate the natural emotion utilised to arbitrate between them?

Just as the Valkyrie Brunhilde was torn between Wotan’s law, which condemned Sigmund for breaking an oath, and Wotan’s wish to preserve Sigmund, his son; Brunhilde was tasked to fulfil the law of the oath, and see that Sigmund fell in battle as a hero. But love won through, and Brunhilde saved Sigmund from his ordained fate, thus sealing her own downfall, and subsequently that of the gods.

Nature has a less elaborate means of resolving personal conflict between our selfish desires, and those that conflict with our social duties; and that is hatred. With hatred we can more easily separate the mingling of otherwise contradictory standpoints.

Individuals together

Our beliefs are what hold our minds together; confutation with others, and personal cognitive dissonances are prone to strong defensive reactions, with correspondingly strong, adrenaline charged emotions. We are also social animals with a strong sense of worth and placement within society; which can lead to the urge of domination through evangelical persuasion; again adrenaline charged.

In order for a society to work there is a natural and dynamic tendency for hierarchies to form, there are motives to preserve the individual’s beliefs whilst simultaneously negotiating within the beliefs of the group. Domination and compliance are two obverse sides of the same coin; the more we try to dominate, the greater the risk of alienating the others by not complying with their efforts of domination. We are not content with our own beliefs but vie to persuade others as a by product of sexual evolutionary competition; it takes two to tango; therefore we try our hand at domination only so far as we dare, lest we lose the prize.

Faking honesty

The stronger our ego and social proclivities, the greater the hatred required in resolving any dissonance; feckless asocial people, rarely have cause to raise their voices. To swear and rant convincingly, you require earnest conviction; not many frauds or charlatans, if any at all, resort to expletives; it’s as though true hate is almost beyond faking; even the best actors resort to method.

Importance of being earnest

Some academics and politicians, which are prone to rationalizing their world views in somewhat cool and measured ways, are susceptible to being sidelined owing to their apparent lack of passion in discourse, giving the impression they lack earnest integrity. Emotional intensity therefore is affiliated with the credibility of our beliefs, especially when challenged.

More successful speakers may learn the art of mannerisms and expressions to boost their appeal through impassioned rhetoric; but they are shrewd to the effects of excess, lest they intimidate the audience that may have their own distinct views. Hence such a speaker may deploy tests to gauge the audience’s compliance to their words, by gradually increasing the tone, and waiting for audience’s reaction during the performance. When the speaker is confident that his audience is in tune with his message, he may save the most important points for the fulminating climax.

Too nice

In the absence of hate, we risk appearing shallow; we would also reduce our emotional and intellectual boundaries to some extent, aiding compliance with the domination by others; but this is countered by appearing less of a stalwart ally, and so less attractive to earnest people. Do these ‘nice’ people, who lack strong hate emotions, open themselves up to fads and a nebulous array of superstitions? Since the social urge within these people may overwhelm their weak selfish defence mechanisms, so they may fall prey to the dominating evangelical religions and fads; nice people maybe the dupes of society.

Imbalances between the selfish and social urges, which are not accompanied by hate emotions, may account for symptoms encountered in conditions such as autism and Williams-Beuren syndrome respectively. It is noted however that sufferers of these conditions may have sporadic attacks of anger, possibly as a neuro-chemical catharsis for otherwise un-utilized hate emotions in their everyday behaviour.

Too hot

Conversely, a greater tendency to hate, increasing the selfish urge, may lead to staunch bigotry; shutting out most alternate views to the point of obstreperous cussedness. Such an imbalance toward the selfish side may lead to extreme forms of politics and religion, especially when accompanied by a need to belong, but without the compromise of social negotiation.

The school bully, excessive police or military force, feminist misanthropy; these are all examples of how excessive hate can be used in place of rational persuasion, to achieve a social conformity: “You are either with us or against us.” The Eichmanns of this world, from callous bureaucrats, to over zealous guards or priests, all perform under the illusion of moral superiority bequeathed from the sense of the greater good; so the greater the hate, the greater the prize of social belonging by defaulting those outside the cult.

And what if the sophistication of politics and religion become less important; can the extreme social urge be fulfilled by blind hate alone? Consider the public executions in the Colosseum of ancient Rome, or the gathering of a lynch mob, which melds, however briefly, in a social self affirming maelstrom, at the expense of some hapless victim. If so, then we should not be surprised that primitive religions and politics require sacrifice and pariah as a matter of form, with the vast number of players oblivious as to the reasons for their prejudices they have imbued from each other.

Demarcation: “Out damned spot”

Internally we may have conflicts with our own beliefs, the so called cognitive dissonances. Many ideas we acquire from different sources simply clash with our sense of right and wrong. Take for example sexual deviance; because sex is a fundamental motivation, there is no meaningful rationalization to negotiate between acceptance and non-acceptance; hence we resort to a primitive demarcation via love and hate. This is because we risk contaminating our emotions regarding fundamental urges; we could provoke similar disturbance by incongruent choices of food or entertainment, as our minds are made up of those pleasurable notions we call ‘decency’. Hate serves to segregate in our own minds those unpleasant thoughts that could otherwise interfere with our primitive motivations by inadvertently crossing over and contaminating those pleasurable thoughts. Hate filled phobias are therefore perfectly natural; they induce strong hormonal emotions that serve to hard-wire neuronal pathways by thickening relevant synapses, and fixing our minds on the ‘ointment’, whilst avoiding the flies. It would take a lot of time and love, to persuade a monkey to like a snake, as some of our phobias are ready formed by evolutionary benefit; and it would be a disaster for our sex lives, and evolution, if every time we looked at our lovers, we saw our parents or siblings instead.

In the absence of external scapegoats to offload our revulsions, this system can be a self harming pitfall, rather than a saviour of decency; as hate is strong enough an emotion to modify a content state of mind, to an unhappy one; for example, a neurotic tendency of over cleanliness; or phobias that serve no apparent rational purpose of survival, such as fear of blemishes on a painted surface; or the fear suffered by the obsessive compulsive when not completing a ritual.

Might it also account for sexual deviances by the revulsion of sexual maturity suffered by some unfortunate youths during puberty? Imagine a lad who was precocious enough to have sexual desire for girls his own age, but suffered under some aberration, induced or inherent, to become disgusted by the adult form, that this left an indelible proclivity towards the prepubescent by default. As he grows, he exorcises out of his mind those feelings towards the mature female that other boys develop; thence he is doomed by his modified sexual urge to desire the immature female form. A similar argument may be used to account for homosexuality, whereby the sexual urge is not lost, but rerouted by the hate and disgust of the heterosexual form. Let us hope that the increase of feminist teachers, and other religious influences in our schools, doesn’t pervert too many boys from natural healthy maturity.

Conclusion

Hate is then the primitive and natural emotion that guides our performance within a social setting; it clarifies the demarcation between what we feel is right and wrong. In rude health, we try to inseminate others with our beliefs, whilst preserving our own individuality by cussed rejection of the views of others, especially if they contradict our own. By implication, hate also preserves our sense of decency, in that we use it to exorcise those internal dissonances of thought, lest our primordial urges be contaminated with incongruence.

An excess of hate, results in bigotry and brutality regarding others not in our chosen group; and may lead to neuroses or deviances, especially if focussed on ourselves in the absence of pariahs and scapegoats.