What is hatred?
Why do we hate Trump?
You wanna know what I hate? I hate willful ignorance. This is the inverse of self-confirmation bias, where a person purposely avoids information because they might learn that they are wrong.
Why do I hate it? That’s kind of a funny question because most people who hate don’t want to think too hard about why they’re hating. They consider hatred to be their right. You can’t control how you feel about things, right? Maybe not, but you can control how you react.
The reason I hate willful ignorance isn’t because it increases ignorance in the world. If that were the case, I could counter it with articles that demonstrate the flaws in the technique. It isn’t because it makes those people difficult to argue with. When I actually get in arguments with those types, they can never hold their own.
Put plainly, I hate it because some people are so damned successful when they do it.
Take Trump, the liberal world’s favorite punching bag. He’s made a very successful political career out of violently ignoring anything that might prove him wrong. He’s the President of the United States, a sure sign that willful ignorance is the nation’s dominant strategy. That’s a call for hatred if I ever heard one.
Memetic epidemiology
In the world of memetics, hatred is a cognitive dissonance management strategy. You’ve heard the joke that frustration is the body expressing the need to strangle someone who so badly deserves it? Hatred is like that. It’s our desire to destroy evidence that we might be wrong.
If you diffuse the target of hatred it becomes outrage. Outrage is hatred’s “society is to blame” cousin. It’s the recognition that something we hate is only possible because society allows it. Outrage is a step healthier because it starts to trace the web of cause-and-effect that make horrible behavior socially acceptable.
The archetypical indicator of hatred is kill-the-messenger style behavior. The clearest examples are lynching a black guy because some white girl likes him better or firing people who bring you bad news. This is why Trump can’t keep a cabinet. Ostricizing anybody who disagrees with you. Creating laws that do nothing besides validate your personal belief. Willful ignorance.
Any time you see hatred, you also see people who feel good about the target of hatred. Any time a black man gets lynched, it validates the superiority of white supremacists. Voter suppression relieves the fear of people who think that others are taking over their country. What makes you angry makes other people feel good.
Firewall rules
Harnessing outrage is a key dynamic in partisan politics. You see this on a daily basis when you get an email that says “He did a bad thing! Give us money!” Let’s refer to people who send those emails as outrage farmers. Those emails are like underpants gnomes in that they rarely have a solid connection between how your money is going to be used to achieve a goal that will prevent the outrageous behavior. You are assured that they are fighting for you.
The approach to handling this vulnerability is to recognize your outrage and be specific about what it is that outrages you. Identify how what you are outraged about affects you and those you care about. It’s ok to include “all of society” in those you care about.
Now envision what it would take to prevent that effect. Is this a small adjustment, a specific law, or is it a complete overhaul of human nature? Ask yourself if the group that is asking for your contribution is capable of making that change. Do they have an end-to-end plan, or are they just concentrating on telling everyone what they should be outraged by? Do they have specific goals or are they a coalition of the similarly inclined? Do their goals involve more than increasing the size of their organization?
These questions can help you separate the effective groups from the outrage farmers. It’s actually very similar to how investors review business propositions.
Remember that your involvement in the wheels of society should have a purpose more substantial than making you feel like you’re doing something. Throwing money blindly at things that give you a warm feeling in your gut is probably the easiest way to enable those whose goals aren’t aligned with their words.
Never act out of hatred
The medical equivalent of acting out of hatred is taking pain killers until you can’t feel what’s wrong. It’s a symptom of something that’s making you unhappy. Acting on it isn’t a path to happiness, it’s a band-aid that allows you to stop noticing it until the next annoyance gets your attention. That allows hatred to fester. Festering hatred results in dehumanization and can result in a sense of right to harm.
Instead, examine the sources of your hatred. Is it a side-effect of some inequality, or is it because someone wants to behave the same way you do? How are you being harmed? Who else is being harmed?
You can’t over-analyze hatred. There’s always a better level to leave it at, even if it’s the recognition that someone is dehumanizing you. Once you reach that point, you can form a plan that doesn’t involve you dehumanizing them.
Dehumanization is always wrong. No excuses.