Danger Flags #4: Hatred

SILENT SUFFICIENTLY LONG

“Under what conditions did Man invent for himself those judgments of values, "Good" and "Evil"? And 'what intrinsic value do they possess in themselves? Have they up to the present hindered or advanced human well-being? Are they a symptom of the distress, impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life? Or, conversely, is it in them that is manifested the fullness, the strength, and the will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future? On this point I found and hazarded in my mind the most diverse answers, I established distinctions in periods, peoples, and castes, I became a specialist in my problem, and from my answers grew new questions, new investigations, new conjectures, new probabilities; until at last I had a land of my own and a soil of my own, a whole secret world growing and flowering, like hidden gardens of whose existence no one could have an inkling — oh, how happy are we, we finders of knowledge, provided that we know how to keep silent sufficiently long. ”
 
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
 
***
 
DANGER FLAGS #4: HATRED
 
What’s that term for easy and pleasurable reading? “Beach reading”?

We delve now into hatred , trying to get our mind around it.  Easy and pleasant subject matter, no? Light and breezy, eh? A veritable barrel of laughs?
 
Perhaps not.
 
I suppose this is not beach reading.
 
Or, well, actually …
 
Hatred is, obviously, very heavy stuff.
 
Heavy stuff – by nature of not being “beach reading” – tends to get under-studied, under-exposed… neglected , even.
 
And yet, is hatred not one of the most powerful of animating forces?
 
I say that neutrally ; I don’t mean “powerful” as good. A nuclear meltdown, like Chernobyl or Fukushima, is certainly powerful  – as are heavy tanks, long-range bomber airplanes, raging forest fires, and so on.
 
No, hatred doesn’t lend itself naturally to beach reading. But it’s an incredibly important topic. Clearly, there is a lot of hatred living inside many people across the world. A failure to understand, reason through, and synthesize what hatred is , what it means , what it predicts  – this can certainly get us into trouble.
 
Maybe we can even try to enjoy ourselves in the process of this exploration. No promises in that regard, though!
 
***
 
PREMISE 1: ALL HATRED IS, TO SOME EXTENT, INTERNAL
 
Hatred is an emotion, or perhaps a collection of related emotions.
 
Hatred does not live “out in the world,” but rather in the minds and biochemistry of people who feel hatred.
 
We should distinguish right away, then, the internal aspect of hatred, and the external aspect of actions that are done out of hatred.
 
These often get blended together – sometimes for convenience, sometimes out of poetic license, or sometimes out of sloppy thinking.
 
The adjective “hateful” is a decent modifier of actions done while in a state of hatred, or originating from hatred. So we could say that “he hatefully lashed out” – but, the hate started internally .
 
I don’t believe there is hate out in the world, independent of human minds and emotions. There are hateful actions – actions taken while someone is feeling hatred, or conceived and begun out of hatred – but hate itself  must be said to be an internal thing. Hatred, raw hatred, it lives inside a person’s mind and emotions – their cognition and biochemistry.
 
We’ll come back to this point in a moment. It’s rather important.
 
***
 
PREMISE 2: IN ENGLISH, THE WORDS “HATE” AND “HATRED” ARE INSUFFICIENT TO UNDERSTAND THE PHENOMENON
 
All language is to some extent flawed – in domains that are hard to express in pure mathematics and analytic logic alone, words and verbal language are the main way we communicate with others and understand ideas.
 
If you learn a little bit of different languages, you start to see that some languages have words that others do not, which make it easier to express and understand concepts that are harder to understand in another language.
 
The German word “schadenfreude” has entered into modern English lately – it means roughly, “feeling joy at someone else’s misery.” The original German “Schaden” means “harm” and “Freude” means joy. Literally, “joy from someone else being harmed.”
 
The Japanese have a number of nuanced words and phrases for social situations that we lack in English. There’s one along the lines of “tschitsuraischimas” (I’m spelling it wrong) which means “I acknowledge and partially apologize for changing the social dynamics of the interaction as a result of my entering or leaving it.”
 
So if two people are having an intense conversation at a restaurant, and a waiter or waitress comes to take an order, they’ll say “tschitsuraischimas” – “You two were talking in an intimate conversation. By entering and saying something, I have changed the dynamics. I apologize.” Likewise, when three people are having a good conversation and one of them has to leave, they’ll say this phrase. “There were three of us, now, when I leave, there will be only two of you and it will be different. Tschitsuraischimas.”
 
Going from three people in a conversation to two in Japan, you’d say it. From two people to three, you’d say it. If there were 10 people loosely conversing at a party and you departed, though, you wouldn’t say it – since the dynamic is basically the same.
 
Just knowing this word and phrase makes you smarter socially. It gives you an easy way to recognize if the dynamics of conversation and socializing are changing as a result of you coming or going. In Japan, it’s automatic. In English, we can’t even easily conceive of the idea.
 
The word “happiness” in English lacks nuance; we use this one broad word like a machete. You can get a lot done with it, but it’s not particularly subtle or refined.
 
Other cultures have very different words for happiness; often, there’s no direct translation of the English word “happiness" – indeed, euphoria, joy, contentment, bittersweetness, pleasure, flourishing, and satisfaction all are significantly different and varied forms of happiness. There is more intense and less intense happiness; there are “pure” and “mixed” forms of happiness; there are varieties of in-the-moment happiness and longer-term arcs of a “happy life.”
 
“Hatred” suffers thus – the word is a blunt instrument. No understanding of hatred can happen without realizing that “pure hatred” is an incredibly rare thing; almost all hatred has different varieties of it mixed with other emotions and types of thinking.
 
I believe it’s literally impossible to understand “hatred” and its effects on a practical level without clarifying this in one’s own thinking.
 
***
 
DOWNWARDS-LOOKING HATRED
 
The majority of hatred that’s directed outwards  can be said to be “upwards-looking” or “downwards-looking” – in other words, if you hate something, do you see it as more powerful and superior to yourself, or as less powerful and inferior to yourself?
 
There are no perfect English words for this, and there is not a clean divide; this is messy territory.
 
But, briefly, someone feeling “downwards-looking hatred” might use words like annoyance, disgust, and patheticness in describing why they dislike something. Since it’s typically seen as bad etiquette to describe yourself as feeling hatred, you might say you’re “concerned” or “think it’s unfortunate .”
 
In modern America, the concept of rank is far less emphasized – even actively worked against – and expressing direct superiority over something is seen as taboo and bad social form. It’s easier to understand this type of hatred by thinking about a historical caste system – a member of a higher caste being forced to travel or be around members of a lower caste would often feel upset, often be prompted towards a downward-looking hatred of the “unclean,” “uncouth”, “uncivilized” people around the higher-caste person. It might be described as “concerning” or “unfortunate” or “pathetic.” It might be felt as annoyance and a general dislike and discomfort.
 
This is not always, but often, downwards-looking hatred.
 
***
 
DOWNWARDS-LOOKING HATRED TENDS TO BE LESS SALIENT
 
Downwards-looking hatred tends to be less salient – it tends to effect the person feeling the hate less strongly – than upwards-looking hatred. This is for a lot of reasons, but one of the largest is because one feels less threatened, and feeling threatened is very salient.
 
If a well-armed samurai is feeling hatred towards a peasant who is perceived by the samurai as being rude and out of place, the samurai literally had the legal right to cut the peasant down.
 
Likewise, the samurai would typically be armed with two swords and well-trained in swordsmanship; the peasant would typically have (at most) a crude knife or improvised weapon, and be poorly trained with it. The samurai would typically have better nutrition and be physically larger and stronger.
 
When a samurai and peasant entered into hatred towards each other, thus, the samurai will feel it’s less salient and significant, and often the feelings will be less intense – because there is less of a threat and less potential consequences.
 
***
 
UPWARDS-LOOKING HATRED
 
Upwards-looking hatred is directed towards something perceived as more powerful or superior to oneself.
 
Envy and jealousy often come alongside upwards-looking hatred. Envy, briefly, is wanting what someone else has. Jealousy is additionally thinking the other person should not have it.
 
It’s possible to envy someone without hating them – you can envy a person and admire them, even – but it’s almost impossible to not feel some hatred alongside jealousy.
 
This might seem like a small point, but is actually very significant for recognizing Danger Flags out in the world.
 
An envious person might feel, “I wish I had a big house like them.”
 
A jealous person might feel, “How come they  have a big house and I don’t? ”
 
Obviously, it’s hard to feel envious or jealous towards someone you don’t think has any superior attributes of their life to yours. If you feel like your life is better in every way (that’s significant to you), you cannot envy or feel jealous towards someone. You might envy or feel jealous of a small part of someone’s life – say, if you’re more materially wealthy but have more obligations – and that can prompt envy or jealousy. But both envy and jealousy are only felt towards things we wish we had  on some level; some aspects of seeing what someone else has as superior  or more desirable  in some way.
 
There are many other varieties of upwards-looking hatred. Resentment tends to be upwards-looking hatred, as does the type of hatred that arises from feeling generally threatened, or feeling insignificant around someone.
 
***
 
SUPERIORITY IN SWORDS AND HUMAN ENDEAVORS
 
Now, this is where hatred gets confusing.
 
We have a broad sketch of “upwards-looking hatred” and “downwards-looking hatred” – it’s easy enough to see that jealousy often coexists with hatred, and that jealousy is always (to some extent) upwards-looking. The vast majority of sane people do not want things that they see as worse in every way to what they already have.
 
It’s also easy to see why upwards-looking hatred is typically more intense and more salient than downwards-looking hatred. The stakes are consistently higher when engaging with someone who has more power than you; you have more to lose and less chance of winning if conflict breaks out. It’s inherently threatening, at least a little bit.
 
But what is “superior”? Certainly, superiority can sometimes be measured objectively – in battle, a well-forged steel sword has superior cutting ability and durability to a shoddily-forged iron sword.
 
But given that most domains of human endeavor do not have such objectively clear-cut superiority about them, superiority itself becomes a set of perceptions and internal evaluations.
 
Which leads us now into strange territory.
 
***
 
STRANGE GENEALOGICAL TERRITORY
 
“No one has, up to the present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesitation in judging the "good man" to be of a higher value than the "evil man," of a higher value with regard specifically to human progress, utility, and prosperity generally, not forgetting the future. What? Suppose the converse were the truth! What? Suppose there lurked in the "good man" a symptom of retrogression, such as a danger, a temptation, a poison, a narcotic, by means of which the present battened on the future! More comfortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite, but also pettier, meaner! So that morality would really be saddled with the guilt, if the maximum potentiality of the power and splendour of the human species were never to be attained? So that really morality would be the danger of dangers?”
 
Okay. I should rush to note that I don’t recommend Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morals” – where that quote is from. I don’t recommend it at all, but I really  don’t recommend it for people who aren’t already very familiar with his work. If you plan to read Nietzsche at all – which really should be done carefully, if you do it – Beyond Good and Evil  is a strange mix of aphorisms of varying accuracy, and Thus Spake Zarathustra  is a fictional allegory that prompts thinking and demands one’s own interpretation. If you read Nietzsche at all, be careful, and start with Zarathustra  or BG&E.  I don’t recommend Genealogy  at all, and certainly not as a starting place.
 
With that said, Nietzsche covered some interesting terrain in Genealogy . He was looking for where morality came from. The dominant “English” idea at the time – the one Nietzsche would refute – was that people praised any action that helped them, and so, doing pro-social and moral things started by being praised directly for being helpful, and over time, this origin in utility was “forgotten” and just became morality.
 
Nietzsche thinks that’s both incorrect and a dumb idea –
 
“The utility of the unegoistic action is supposed to be the origin of the praise it receives, and this origin has allegedly been forgotten: but how is this forgetting even possible? Could the usefulness of such actions at some time or other perhaps just have stopped? The case is the opposite: this utility has rather been an everyday experience throughout the ages, and thus something that has always been constantly re-emphasized. Hence, instead of disappearing out of consciousness, instead of becoming something forgettable, it must have pressed itself into the consciousness with ever-increasing clarity.”
 
He then dove into the history of morality, spending a lot of time looking at what things were praised in ancient Greek and Roman times, and how those eventually got replaced with the Christian morality which supplanted Greek and Roman paganism.
 
He came to a very strange conclusion: modern Christian morality comes from an internal struggle between warrior aristocrats and priest aristocrats –
 
“The reader will have already surmised with what ease the priestly mode of valuation can branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode, and then develop into the very antithesis of the latter: special impetus is given to this opposition, by every occasion when the castes of the priests and warriors confront each other with mutual jealousy and cannot agree over the prize. The knightly-aristocratic "values" are based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, the dance, the tourney — on everything, in fact, which is contained in strong, free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic mode of valuation is — we have seen — based on other hypotheses: it is bad enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests are, as is notorious, the worst enemies — why? Because they are the most powerless. From their powerlessness, their hate grows into something immense and terrifying, to the most spiritual and most poisonous manifestations. Those who have been the greatest haters in world history and the most spiritually rich haters have always been the priests. ”
 
Strange territory, no?
 
***
 
THE RESSENTIMENT MAGIC TRICK
 
One of the core ideas of Nietzsche’s Genealogy  is that people do not like to have other people superior to themselves, and that morality is a priestly way to regain superiority.
 
Since warriors would have their swords, armor, horses, and military training, they were indisputably superior in the martial sense, and could impose their will on any priests (or indeed, any non-warrior) that they chose to.
 
This led to what we’re calling upwards-looking hatred: the feeling of powerlessness, the feeling of being threatened, jealousy, resentment, and so on.
 
This led to a “ressentiment,” a re-writing of values, an inversion of values – the priests would condemn anyone who used violence or physical force as “morally inferior,” and they would not get to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and such.
 
Somewhat unnecessarily inflammatorily, Nietzsche calls the natural warrior morality “master morality” and the priestly morality “slave morality.”
 
Slave morality – Nietzsche’s term which I do not quite like – would deny the moral value  of certain ways of doing things, and would note that doing things that way is (morally) inferior .
 
I think there is, for what it’s worth, some truth in this. It’s not completely accurate, and unnecessarily harsh in going about it, but there’s something there. And while the exact particulars of how and why this came about aren’t important, it does have a large implication for modern hatred.
 
***

MIXED-DISTANCE HATRED
 
The most brutal and awful of conflicts often emerge when both two sides of a conflict both believe they’re superior in different ways . If one agreed on a standard of superiority – say, winning a Chess game – it would be easy to sort out who is the superior Chess player.
 
When two people have different views about the appropriateness of physical conflict, verbal conflict, direct confrontation, moral purity, and so on and so forth – it can lead to a conflict where neither side agree on what will settle the conflict, thus often putting things into a permanent unstable equilibrium.
 
Few people like to admit when they feel hatred, but both upwards-looking hatred  (especially jealousy and resentment) and downward-looking hatred  (especially obvious in caste-based societies) are rather easy to detect.
 
Mixed-distance hatred has all the intensity of upwards-looking hatred – things are still at risk and there’s the increased salience of fear and loss – but while simultaneously having the unfortunate aspects of downwards-looking hatred – dismissiveness, brusqueness, lack of any mitigating admiration on any level, lack of nonchalance, no quick dissipation after conflict, and so on.
 
This is perhaps the subtlest type of hatred to detect in oneself and others, in thoughts and language patterns.
 
***
 
ON THE NECESSITY OF DETECTING HATRED AS A DANGER FLAG
 
A person in a furious rage, acting like a rabid pitbull, is obviously easy to notice and immediately concerning.
 
But the subtler forms of hatred are important to detect as well; they predict all sorts of predictable-with-hindsight bad future actions, and likewise, they eat away at a person, literally sapping them of energy.
 
The largest and most obvious reason to Danger Flag hatred is that it’s typically kept in check by relative levels of power and superiority – if and when those change, the person is prone to act very differently.
 
Someone with upwards-looking hatred, particularly jealousy and resentment, are incredibly dangerous if they take power or if there’s relative changes in the amount of power between them and another person. Long-festering grudges can explode, seemingly without warning, if a person “no longer needs” whatever was holding them back, or if they suddenly have resources to go indulge in their grudge.
 
Many of these things are perfectly obvious with hindsight, but going further, they can also be viewed with foresight if you look cautiously for any elements of hatred in a person as you get to know them.
 
In short, I believe people who nurse and carry hatred around with them are prone to doing all sorts of damaging things in the future, and it should be a cause for concern when noticed.
 
***
 
AND SCRUBBING HATRED OUT OF ONESELF
 
Even if there’s no great reversals in relative standing, followed by horrific outbursts of pent-up hatred, there is another good reason to look to gradually eliminate hatred in yourself and your friends and allies – it’s very emotionally taxing.
 
All forms of hatred increase salience – the significance and drain on your attention of whatever is the object of your hate.
 
Put simply, hatred is at least  distracting, if not outright damaging.
 
Downwards-looking hatred is probably less  distracting, but is still distracting.
 
Upwards-looking hatred is at least  distracting, but can also do outright damage to a person’s hormonal systems, adrenalin, cortisol, immune function, and so on. Heightened sensitivity and awareness to a perceived danger – and upwards-looking hatred typically feels dangerous – literally grinds away at the body’s reserves. It’s a very bad place to be; it can lead to a person who otherwise would be healthy to slowly break down from the inside.
 
We can see why demagogues and such increase hatred – the increased salience and adrenalin can often be put to instrumental ends, but for my part, I don’t think it’s ever worth the cost for a leader to carry around.
 
Furthermore, even in cases where the object of one’s hatred seems very worthy of hating – Hitler, Stalin, etc – even in those cases, I believe the emotion of hatred  is a drain on cognition and can lead to rash behavior. If you were actively involved in planning to destroy Nazi Germany, you would simply set your mind to doing so. Once the decision is made, calmness and a neutral view of things will outperform. Oftentimes, hatred will cause someone to seek out revenge over and beyond what’s needed to achieve the goal , leading to dramatic overreaching and eventual downfall. In the case of implacable enemies seeming very worthy of hatred who need to be destroyed, a lack of the constant extra-stimulus and salience from the hate means more health and more cognition and less distraction when going about making and implementing the plans to, e.g., have Patton lead the distraction force while having the Allied forces land at Normandy.
 
***
 
ON THE ELIMINATION OF HATRED, BRIEFLY
 
"It is said that one day the Buddha was walking through a village. A very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting him. “You have no right teaching others,” he shouted. “You are as stupid as everyone else. You are nothing but a fake!”

"The Buddha was not upset by these insults. Instead he asked the young man, “Tell me, if you buy a gift for someone, and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong?”

"The young man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, “It would belong to me, because I bought the gift.”

"The Buddha smiled and said, “That is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you have done is hurt yourself.”"
 
“ Fake Buddha Quotes ,” incidentally, is a marvelous site. That one is modernized and simplified, but is based on original Buddhist scriptures. The original was similar –
 
"I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rajagaha in the Bamboo Grove, the Squirrels’ Sanctuary. Then the brahman Akkosaka Bharadvaja heard that a brahman of the Bharadvaja clan had gone forth from the home life into homelessness in the presence of the Blessed One. Angered & displeased, he went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, insulted & cursed him with rude, harsh words.

"When this was said, the Blessed One said to him: “What do you think, brahman: Do friends & colleagues, relatives & kinsmen come to you as guests?”

"“Yes, Master Gotama, sometimes friends & colleagues, relatives & kinsmen come to me as guests.”

"“And what do you think: Do you serve them with staple & non-staple foods & delicacies?”

"“Yes, sometimes I serve them with staple & non-staple foods & delicacies.”

"“And if they don’t accept them, to whom do those foods belong?”

"“If they don’t accept them, Master Gotama, those foods are all mine.”

"“In the same way, brahman, that with which you have insulted me, who is not insulting; that with which you have taunted me, who is not taunting; that with which you have berated me, who is not berating: that I don’t accept from you. It’s all yours, brahman. It’s all yours.

"“Whoever returns insult to one who is insulting, returns taunts to one who is taunting, returns a berating to one who is berating, is said to be eating together, sharing company, with that person. But I am neither eating together nor sharing your company, brahman. It’s all yours. It’s all yours.”"

Now, you can view the story on two levels – the first is the straightforward reading of it. If someone is getting insulting and hating and such, you can “eat together” with them in that unfortunate game and mutually indulge in insult and hate together, or you can decline to do so.
 
That’s straightforward – and useful.
 
But go a step further and you can see that can apply to any stimulus that prompts hatred in you .
 
It’s easy to understand the quote in terms of someone acting hostile towards you, and you declining to participate.
 
It’s a little trickier to realize that that’s only one specific instance of a stimulus that could prompt hatred and hostility .
 
To take a trivial example, think of “celebrity culture” – Paris Hilton some years ago, Kim Kardashian right now, the saga of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, that sort of thing. Some people enjoy this and enjoy participating in it.
 
But one of the most poignant observations I ever heard which prompted a huge shift in me is that complaining about celebrity behavior and hating on celebrities  is part of celebrity culture.
 
Even one level up, complaining about how people are obsessed with celebrities is still part of celebrity culture.
 
Disliking celebrity culture could be a minor instance of upwards-looking, downwards-looking, or most likely, mixed-distance hatred.
 
But in all those cases, complaining about and chastising it is participating in it – you’re eating at that table.
 
Likely a more effective way to go about it is to move towards neutrality  – genuine indifference being just one form of neutrality.
 
Occasionally I’m traveling in a country I don’t know well and I'll notice people getting ferociously excited about some sports match. Sometimes I literally don’t understand which teams are playing, or even what game is being played. As such, even when people take to the streets to celebrate or riot after a victory or defeat, the whole thing prompts very little emotion, and I’m not distracted from my work and my life.
 
***
 
TRAINING TOWARDS NEUTRALITY AND MISSION ORIENTATION
 
Neutrality can be hard to reach – I certainly have a whole host of things that aggravate me with whatever mix of latent hatred that comes with alongside it – but it’s something I look to move past when I recognize it.
 
In terms of Danger Flags, anyone who carries a considerable amount of hatred around with them is worth avoiding if possible, and at least, not becoming intimate or close associates with.
 
But all of us have little stupid things that bother of us. What then?
 
And in this case, that old stalwart Mission Orientation  provides part of the answer. If one of your normally solid allies is in a rage at something, you can just ask –
 
“Okay. So what do we want to do about it?”
 
When I say “neutrality,” I don’t mean fatalism or pacifism. I mean, deciding what outcome you want to have happen – what the relevant mission-oriented priority is – and setting to work on that.
 
In some cases, yes, the correct action will be storming the beaches of Normandy. Even in those cases, hatred is still probably not the most effective viewpoint for the Supreme Allied Commander to be taking while planning the assaults and making decisions effecting millions of lives.
 
Most cases are less weighty – most hatred is a distraction. In downwards-looking hate’s cases, it’ll often be someone who seems to be acting like an idiot around you and you getting distracted by it. In those cases, you either directly effect the situation – perhaps asking politely if a person will turn their music down, if that’ll work – or removing yourself from the situation, or re-focusing and training to be effective even when distracted.
 
Upwards-looking hatred can be safely discarded if it’s a stupid jealousy; just figure out what resource you want and go get it. But even in cases where you’re genuinely threatened, the hatred itself is a distraction – if possible, get out of the situation and get to safety. If necessary – a physical bully you can’t ignore – start physically training, learn martial arts, perhaps arm yourself if you’re in a dangerous enough part of the world where that’s called for. Regardless, the hatred wears away at you and you pay a great cost by carrying it around – or at minimum, it’ll be at least a minor distraction from getting to the desired mission outcome.
 
And again, open-minded people who are typically solid can be helped along in this with a genuinely neutral, “Okay. So what do we want to do about it?” Not engaging it, not trying to calm them down, nor arguing for or against. Just, “So what do we want to do about it?”
 
As for mixed-distance hatred? Well, that’s the trickiest. I don’t have any real guidance, except to say that the current day’s morality is probably a little overrated. But that’s well-beyond the scope of this piece, and we will simply continue with Danger Flags next chapter.
 
In the meantime, here’s hoping your meals and work are good.