Why do people feel compelled always
to hate and fear
each other?
Sunday, December 7, 2014
36 comments:
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Fear is a normal human response to the unknown. It is up to a society, all the people in it, to develop people's understanding so they have no reason to fear. Once you turn the light on, you can see there are no monsters, or, if there are, at least you can see them.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
Fear -- and sometimes -- hatred of the other has forever led to such attitudes.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the other is to be feared, of course. This is related to the survival instinct.
Also, we keep hidden within ourselves baseness to one degree or another. We, therefore, assume that others are hiding a baseness as well:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9).
Beyond the above, hatred for the other somehow gives us a psychological boost and a feeling of empowerment.
It's easier to hate than to love.
Good morning, Jersey. You may be right about fear of the unknown, but aren't there plenty of occasions when we feel fear and anxiety towards those in authority, those who have manifestly superior abilities, those who have targeted us as an enemy, etc.
ReplyDeleteAlso what what accounts for hatred, or do you think hate and fear are one and the same? I see them more as siblings or first cousins in a family of highly unpleasant characters, myself. ;-)
Erich Fromm may have been a member of the Frankfurt School, which you know I despise, but he wrote two books well worth our consideration. The Art of Loving and Must Men Hate?
Very wise observations, AOW.
ReplyDeleteThere is an odd sense of a familial, clubby sort of comfort that comes from banding together with like-minded people for the purpose of casting aspersions on those who live, act and think differently.
No place could this be more nakedly apparent than in the blogosphere.
Since it's all too easy to see where it has lead us, I have come to the conclusion that drawing reassurance from such a source is unwholesome and degrading.
As you said, it's easier to hate than to love, but doesn't that prove that following the paths of least resistance is NEVER the way the Lord would have us go, if we ever hope to reach Salvation?
By the way, since so many today recoil with doubt, distaste and derision at anything that smacks of Christian theology or religiosity, I have decided that "Fulfillment" might be a better word than Salvation.
What else could "Salvation" be beyond true fulfillment of our God-given potential anyway?
@ FreeThinke: "There is an odd sense of a familial, clubby sort of comfort that comes from banding together with like-minded people for the purpose of casting aspersions on those who live, act and think differently."
ReplyDeleteYes indeed.
Your question has many answers, but I think we all seek affirmation of our beliefs, which too many of us mistake for our actual selves. And, there is strength in numbers.
The bigger cheerleading squad we can assemble, the more right we must be, an therefor the better person I must be.
Certainly better than those drooling plonkers over there who think differently than us!
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DeleteI think our propensity to hate a group grows in proportion to its perceived otherness. It's worthwhile sometimes do dwell on our similarities rather than always our differences.
ReplyDelete...although many times, we need to consider those differences. Like in the ways that muzzies treat women as chattle. Why give them a "pass"? Or in the way single women feel entitled to bear and raise children without a father. The "shame" is gone.
ReplyDeleteOh, that's right, cultural differences are "immutable" and "immune" from political discourse. "Diversity" uber alles.
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ReplyDeleteI was an enthusiastic supporter of President Obama before he was elected, and it broke my heart by seeing the USA turn into a lesser version of the one we had before.
ReplyDeleteThe US has long lost it’s claim to be “land of free speech and liberty”
My enthusiasm for “Hope and Change” went bye-bye along with my enthusiasm for Barack Obama. As for Al Sharpton, who has used the civil rights movement to many Americans, he is now not only the Co-Mayor of New York City, but the CO- President of the United States. As they say, the circus has definitely come to town! And the chief clown is now one of the advisers in the White House! If Obama had any shred of credibility at all left by now, he has certainly lost it during these last few weeks.
Ratturd Nation said:
ReplyDeleteBTW, my site is fine, no problem posting by anyone. Period
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But who the hell would want to step into that leftwing shitfest?
I agree
DeleteMozart:
ReplyDeleteOf course. It's human nature, and despite what progressives like you believe, it is enduring. Perfectibility of man is a pipe dream, like most detritus found on that shitheap known as leftwing 'thought.'
Jez:
ReplyDeleteI agree. The more we "otherize" fellow humans, the easier it is to denigrate them.
But, as Farmer points out, it is not one world, and there really are others who are very different from us, different religion, different culture, different beliefs and different ways of acting and interacting with fellow human beings.
God gave us the light of reason, and we should use it. We've let people into our culture who do not share our values, and it will only bring trouble.
If demographic trends continue, Europe will be a muslim continent in 100 years.
No biggies knocking the steeples off your churches; they're museums and mausoleums now anyway, but it's going to get ugly when they try to snatch the beer, cigs and porn out of your hands.
SF: I did say "sometimes."
ReplyDeleteRegarding immigration:
"it will only bring trouble"
only? Has disruption never brought any benefit in the past? I'm rather fond of Omar Khayyam, I'd welcome some more literary exchange, for example.
"If demographic trends continue, Europe will be a muslim continent in 100 years."
I question whether the trends are a) likely to continue as they are now and b) are as strong as sensationalist headlines may have had you believe. I don't know what trends you had in mind when you wrote this, but I am aware of many instances of disinformation in circulation.
Anything could happen in a hundred years of course, just think about the last century.
They'd be leaning against an open door with the cigs, if that's their plan, but wish them luck with the beer. Can't see that happening.
Omar Khayyam didn't decapitate anyone, or collapse any walls on homosexuals, so far as I know.
ReplyDeleteYes, I do mean always, when the people who are different are violently so.
What I mean about the booze is, once the muzzies get a working plurality, they will start burning liquor stores and punishing activities they deem illicit.
Here's an article from the Telegraph about Europe demographics:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/5994047/Muslim-Europe-the-demographic-time-bomb-transforming-our-continent.html
OECD statistics also show a below-replacement birth rate among native-born Europeans. I couldn't find any solid data that broke out immigrant birthrates compared to native-born, but given the muslim birthrate in their home countries, combined with anecdotal info like "most popular boys name in Belgium" paints a picture.
Well, FreeThinke, as I mentioned, once you understand your real enemies, then you are less likely to fear them. But you have to find a way to turn on the light, a light often obscured by commercial media.
ReplyDeleteThere are, of course, many real things for people to fear, and yes, authority is one of them.
And "authority" covers a lot more than just the government, my fine gentleman, like the aforementioned 4th Estate. And even the "government" encompasses much more than just the federal. For the poor, the federal government is either removed or benign. It is state and local government that hangs hard over the poor.
When you look at the way poor people in America behave politically, which is mostly not at all, you have to wonder why. Why is fear. They feel individually alienated, the franchise is irrelevant to them. The last thing they bother to do is rock the boat, after all, they are barely clinging to the side.
That is fear too. Yes.
JMJ
"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
ReplyDelete~ Oscar Wilde
I'm sure that applies very well to the topic at and, but it's up to you to discover how and why.
FreeThinke: some good maxims from the same Wilde article:
ReplyDelete"One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers."
"The criminal classes are so close to us that even the policemen can see them. They are so far away from us that only the poet can understand them."
Hi, Jez,
ReplyDeleteThere appeared to be two distinctly different sides to Oscar Wilde. Your first offering represents what-I-call his FLIPPANT side.
The second his more EARNEST and SINCERE.
I like to think his second self is more his real self than the flippant, sarcastic, sometimes cutting face he presented to a world he [quite rightly] perceived as indifferent to Beauty, cruel to Vulnerability and hostile to Genius.
I've often thought the beetle-shelled cynicism and flamboyant flippancy of the typical "Bitch Queen Syndrome" developed as a defense mechanism against the entrenched hostility and willful misunderstanding shown by bigoted low-class goons and religious hypocrites toward "Difference" they enjoy regarding as intolerable. This intolerance probably exists only to make these low life specimens feel better about the depths of inferiority and dreary mediocrity in which deep down they must realize they dwell.
At any rate, I see a fascinating dichotomy at work in Oscar Wilde, but at root I believe him to have been a tender-hearted, most admirable fellow. He certainly worked very hard in his short life, and by all accounts was a most accomplished fellow as well as an exemplary student and scholar.
His sad fate says a great deal more about the fickleness, shallowness, lack of understanding and unforgivable cruelty of the society in which he flourished for a time than it does about the man, himself.
SF: it's easy to read the telegraph article critically. Take the most outstanding claims: "whites to be a minority in Birmingham in by 2026" is only backed up by another journalist; "france to hold a muslim majority by midcentury" is attributed vaguely to "another forecast."
ReplyDeleteProblem is, demographic predictions are sensitive to many things which are bound to change. Here's my prediction: as immigrant girls get educated to higher levels, that will cause fertility rates to fall, female education being one of the most reliable predictors of fertility rate.
As Martin Walker observed in the Wilson Quarterly "the detailed work of demographers tends to seep out to the general public in crude form, and sensationalist headlines so become common wisdom." I don't know the Wilson Quarterly, but I can guess at an internationalist bias. Still, Walker's claim rings true to me. This is, to my certain knowledge, how journalism works to the detriment of many technical fields. Why not to demographics too?
The media, in creating alarmist panics like these and emphasizes otherness, is almost entirely to blame for why we hate each other more than we need to.
Go to a theatre, sit next to a muslim and laugh hysterically at the same play, and that hatred will have a harder time sustaining itself. Integration starts with culture in my opinion.
Jez:
ReplyDeleteWhy would you interpret hatred in anything I've said?
I do not hate muslims. I served with many in the military. Hatred would entail wanting to harm or kill them, and I don't want to do that.
What I do want to do is leave the remainder of them in their own lands, leave them alone, and prevent them from immigrating to my country.
If my government showed any ability at all to sort the good from the bad, I would be willing to let some good ones in.
Of course demographic projections are just that: projections, but I don't need to explain extrapolation to you.
Some economist said something to the effect that the trend will continue until it no longer can, and I believe it.
Jez:
ReplyDeleteThis story of a British Sikh school principle stepping down is from the New York Times, the Official Voice of Liberalism in America:
But in January, Mr. Bains stepped down as the principal of the Saltley School and Specialist Science College, saying he could no longer do the job in the face of relentless criticism from the Muslim-dominated school board. It had pressed him, unsuccessfully, to replace some courses with Islamic and Arabic studies, segregate girls and boys and drop a citizenship class on tolerance and democracy in Britain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/world/british-principal-who-resigned-believes-he-was-seen-as-a-threat.html?_r=0
This is an age old story, Jez. As soon as muslims get a working plurality, or even a big and noisy enough minority, they agitate until they get their way.
In fairness, that could be said of any group, but look at the violence, bloodshed, intolerance and hatred muslims engender everywhere they go.
I don't say every muslim is bad; that is clearly false, but too many seem to be cowed into standing aside passively as the more aggressive elements hijack the culture and antagonize the infidels.
I don't think you hate muslims, I was harking back to FreeThinke's original question.
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to explain extrapolation, but it's an easily misused tool, so you ought to justify its use otherwise you might find yourself doing something like this:
http://xkcd.com/1007/
Should be noted that the government is intervening to stop precisely this sort of interference into from religious governors. It isn't going unopposed. But the government can only get involved because these aren't explicitly religious schools. Muslim schools are permitted. I don't like it, but in a world where church schools are encouraged, on what grounds do you oppose Muslims setting up their own schools? I think this does very little except inhibit integration.
Hey Free Twinkletoes, how about a poem?
ReplyDeleteThey used to call me Free Thinkr,
And I had my fill of admirers and beaus.
I was quite a dancer of ballet,
My pirouette and my grand Pliny
were talked about for months and days.
I had my choice of theaters and plays.
I was photographed and interviewed by the best of the lot of Bagers and Libs.
I had rich men begging me for an interlude.
I had money tossed at me as if it were confetti,
I was envied by people that read me.
And then all at once at the very peak of my illustrious career,
I lost it all because I developed a taste for hamburger and beer, and became a Fan of a porn Queen..
“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”
ReplyDelete- Patrick Henry
Well, Freethinke, maybe because they make assumptions.
ReplyDeleteYour guardian angel informed me that you are not identical to the character who has been trolling progressive sites.
So I owe you an apology and will not make that accusation again.
My apology.
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DeleteThat clunk you heard was me falling over upon reading Ducky's apology.
ReplyDeleteWell blow me down! Thar blows a nightly salty apology.
DeleteHey FreeThinke,
ReplyDeleteWhere'd ya get the picture of Shaw Kenawe and Here's Ducky singing a duet?
You're apology is accepted, Ducky, but you should have known I am not nearly clever enough in the realm of technology to be able to fabricate fake identities with real addresses attached.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, let's try to put our differences aside, and enjoy the Spirit of the Season.
Happy Christmas, Ducky!
You're very funny, Cheroot, but quite wrong. You might be even more amusing, if you told us which of those two faces you thought was which. };-)>
ReplyDeleteAnd a Merry Advent to you, Freethinke.
ReplyDeleteI may be a little mellow because I attended the Handel & Haydn Society's performance of the Brandenbergs yesterday.
Especially good performance of the 3rd.
If good fences make good neighbors, surely good music makes good neighbors too.
ReplyDeleteThe best music might well make friends of adversaries.
You mentioned Stockhausen not so long ago. I know very little about him. Perhaps you would be kind enough to provide us with some advanced knowledge.
Cheers!
Music hath charms to soothe even the most savage duck breast...
ReplyDeleteListening to a college string quartet, a small choir and some backup horns perform movements from Vivaldi's Gloria did it for me. An older guy they brought in blew that tiny, high-pitched trumpet.
It was a sloppy, snowy night, hell getting there, but once the music started in the darkened theater, it all fell away.