Hate is an elevated level of antipathy that has been rendered malignant by
any or all of the carcinogens of anger,
jealousy, irrationality and
prejudice.
Just as is the case for love,
humans appear capable of
hating just about anything they put their minds to, be it
other humans, natural objects or subversive
ideas.
So uncompromising can the hostility become, that tolerating the very
existence
of the thing becomes unacceptable
and its ultimate expression
is to shatter and burn whatever seems to be
the source in a rage of resentment and vengeance.
Mythologies and literature are frequently drawn by the irresistible
lure of contradictions and describe the status of hate by some such
aphorism as Hate loves Murder and Death.
Whilst such anthropomorphic fantasy can stimulate and colour the imagination
and draw attention to the possible extremes of such feelings,
nevertheless it is of little help in
obtaining a clearer understanding of the nature and origins of
such powerful emotions.
Hate is an emotional extreme and cannot be identified by poetic
pronouncement as some sort of inverted love.
The hater admits no place for the hated and would even sacrifice his or her own
life to ensure annihilation of the despised.
The fact that certain humans can oscillate
wildly between different emotions
is no reason to assume that those emotions are somehow similar just because
they occur in the one individual.
The terrorist can entertain an
intense love emotion for a god or an ideal
and at the same time have
an intransigent hate for the presence of anything that threatens it.
Just as an all-consuming love can attain a sufficient intensity
to enable the sacrifice of the lover's life in an attempt to benefit the
loved, so an all-consuming hate can motivate the self-sacrifice of the hater in
an attempt to destroy the hated.
Psychomedical science
may determine the origins and control of some forms of
all consuming hate but the most effective method by far would be
an altruistic secular
strategy to limit the spread of
demented religious fervour and the worst
excesses of state sponsored avarice.
|
|
