One of the deep problems in our time is the failure to see the difference between anger and hate. Often people equate the two, both publicly and privately. Privately conflated notions of anger and hate lead to forms of bitterness and resentment that are cancerous to relationships. Publicly, the conflation of anger and hate leads to forms of political and social paralysis that perpetuate suffering and so hinder political and intellectual discourse, that it becomes impossible, even impractical to build coalitions between people who disagree about some important things while agreeing about others. Anger is an emotion that is, like all emotions, designed to move us that is, inspire change. Hatred is actually a form of thought constructed to mask fear and avoid dealing with the pain and shame of the impotence we feel because of deep fear. Hatred often requires a story or fiction. a fantasy really of superiority, almost always. Anger too is a response, I believe, to fear. Most of the time it cannot be avoided, our experiences program us to be angry about certain things. Anger is therefore inherently cultural. Because hatred involves what we typically call stories and systems, it too is deeply cultural. The difference, the important difference is that anger is unavoidable. Hatred however is a vice. Anger is not. Anger is like hunger: Hatred is like gluttony. ...You know, I should make you all pay for some of this... lol!
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:36:49 +0000
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