Two Minutes Hate
--Suicide Bombers, Emad Hajjaj (Lebanon)
I'd like to teach the world to sing
in perfect harmony
I'd like to buy the world a Coke
And keep it company
--Coke Commercial jingle (1972)
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus!
That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't.
We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities,
we are eaten up by nothing
--Charles Bukowski
He had raised hatred into an art.
He hated better than anyone had loved
--Do you know the source of this quotation?
_________________
I'd like to teach the world to sing
in perfect harmony
I'd like to buy the world a Coke
And keep it company
--Coke Commercial jingle (1972)
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus!
That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't.
We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities,
we are eaten up by nothing
--Charles Bukowski
He had raised hatred into an art.
He hated better than anyone had loved
--Do you know the source of this quotation?
_________________
After recently reading the excellent Stories From Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch covering the Rwandan Genocide, and seeing pictures of the fighting still going on in the same region by the same players in the next day's paper, Ranger was reminded of one of his pet theories: The world is held together by hate, and not love.
Whether we are talking of the Balkans, Asia, Central Asia or wherever the world is not a Coca Cola commercial, and hatred is the prevailing glue that binds us together -- not politics, religion or any other enlightened philosophy.
Further, the United States both participates in the divisiveness and deviates incrementally from this fact as we are bound and riven by more seemingly benign tribal affiliations like sports teams and "reality" t.v.; a subset of reality t.v. would be the 24-hour news cycle programing. What this implies for America's future is unclear. Additionally, the maintenance of the tribes albeit once- and second-removed (via Tweets, feeds and other remote reportage) poses the question of whether the affiliations will be diluted via distancing, or strengthened via need for some defining connection, regardless of how ersatz or remote it is.
We claim to be civilized, and have our differences mitigated and attenuated by various attempts at fellowship, but at bottom, love does not triumph. As U2 sang in "Pride", "What more in the name of love?"
Hatred runs and rules the affairs of our daily lives.
Labels: animosity as glue that binds the world, haters, hatred
posted by rangeragainstwar at 2:13 PM
15 Comments:
Well you are one crusty old cynical barnacle.
To continue with Hendrix quotes, "Evil man makes me kill you. Evil man makes you kill me"
Hendrix - Machine Gun
Most folks don't want to kill each other. One on one, meet a stranger, meet a traveler, most folks don't hate. We recognize one on one violence as criminal.
It takes a government/political body to inject hatred into society and to kill en masse.
Societies would, have and do, function just fine without hatred. Why wouldn't they?
Without love, our mothers would have tossed us into the nearest lake by age 3. Did your mother want you to kill communists? Did you, at age 10, hate communists? Was this an instinct in you? Did you *hate* commies even when in VN? Then WTF?
The problem, IMO, is fucking government and the evil people that are attracted to controlling it.
If anything else, the problem is, more than hate, stupidity and intellectual/moral sloth on the part of those receiving the government's message.
Whiney coast dwelling tit sucking city slickers and their pussy dependency on (e.g.) the FDA be damned.
I confess that I do not understand, or much care for, Africa or Africans. Liberia is just as fucked as Rwanda as is Detroit.
Interested in your response and elaboration .
no one.
Hatred need not imply murder.
More people imo have been killed by love than by hatred.But....
Look at the ethnic hatred in the Balkans, Middle east etc...Where's the love?
Sadly i see US policy bound in hatred and fear. The result is wars that have prospered since i was launched and reached escape velocity.
That's as far as i'll go into your kill zone.
jim
no one,
This is a complex question: "From whence, hatred?"
I will take issue with some of your statements:
"Most folks don't want to kill each other. One on one, meet a stranger, meet a traveler, most folks don't hate. ...
"It takes a government/political body to inject hatred into society and to kill en masse."
No, I would say government is not necessary to "inject hatred into a society." That emotion is simply there. To what shall we pin its origin -- the story of Cain and Abel? I will choose the nucleic acids, A-C-G-T. Hatred is there, looking for a subject, a dispensation or a dissipation.
Per this:
"Without love, our mothers would have tossed us into the nearest lake by age 3. Did your mother want you to kill communists?"
Hmmm ... I'm going to go Commie on you, and suggest that what we call "maternal love" is a sense of obligation, a flood of chemicals, an egoistic conjugation. Why do so many mothers not feel that "love"? I do not deny the reality of love, one of the most rarefied of human achievements, but to suggest that love is any more "natural" than hate is unproven. Why do we so readily accept the phrase "maternal love", while calling the maternal attachments of other animals, "instinct"?
We must get beyond our anthropocentrism if we are to assess emotions and their roles sufficiently.
Why is the religion Christianity so novel? Because it preaches love, even towards those whom one might ordinarily shun.
no one, ii:
Further on your, "It takes a government/political body to inject hatred into society."
...While the government does not "inject" hatred, it does perpetrate lies for the citizen's consumption. During the Cold War, Soviet citizens stopped on the street would ask why the U.S. hates them. Of course, the "them" is not the Soviet Union, an intangible entity. Moreover, what the U.S. citizens felt was more akin to "fear", though it's been argued that hatred is a manifestation of fear.
To hate properly and actually, hate must be specific to the individual which is the subject of the hate. And yet, diffuse and non-specific anti-Semetism worked to fuel the Final Solution.
So -- I will amend your following statement: "most folks don't hate", to "most folks don't hate most people, but they can hate a group which sometimes they do not even have first-hand knowledge of. That makes hatred a pretty durable emotion, no?
First, my first comment is a good example of why one should not post when in the grips of the demon rum. Aplogies.
I will, however, stick to a slightly altered version of my point, it takes a government or strong politician to focus and the hate and get some action from the masses on it.
6 million Jews would have been alive in 1946 if the Nazi government hadn't concentrated and then motivated latent emotions in the typical German.
No one could have cared less about Saddam Hussein until our government starting tell us, ad nausea, that he was worse than Hitler and needed to be "taken out".
In addition to Christianity, there are the Buddhists and the Jains that preach compassion for all and non-violence. The Jains won't even step on an ant if they can avoid it.
Is that love? I dunno, but it sure is an attempt to outwardly display something close to it.
Hate is a pretty strong emotion. I just can't see it being behind mots of the "evil" in the world or most of the societal bonds. Rather, I see indifference, ignorance and fear.
No one,
Ignorance, indifference,and fear are logical subsets of hatred. Or at least the foundation there of.
jim
no one,
This topic is worthy of a lengthy meditation.
To Ranger: Rather than ignorance, indifference and fear being subsets of hatred, I would say it is contrariwise.
To no one:
The Nazis thrived on the fact that the GER people had lost face; they needed a convenient scapegoat, and there is no more perduring scapegoat than the Jewish people. The rancor was not "latent in the typical German" but alive, as it remains among the many today.
Per the pacifist religions, the proscription to revere life does not necessarily = "love". The impulse to preserve life is sometimes prompted by selfish motive.
I am not so interested in "something close to (love)," but actual love. If we can define hatred, we should be able to define love, and the nuances in between.
IMHO, what does form bonds is a sense of affiliation born of egotism. Behind that affiliative feeling ("cleaving to") is the flipside of feeling cleaved from the Other. I don't know that I will call it "hate", but any affiliation carries with it the disassociation from that which it is not.
Love......hmmmmm.......like husband and wife or child and mother or the love of life? I think love is very fleeting, but once it's been felt there is a sense of loyalty or respect toward that which inspired its expression along with the yearning for its return in pure form. Sometimes that which was perceived as the source of love becomes a magical object to be possessed at all costs.
This is the mistake that gives love a bad name.
In reality, all love comes from within oneself and is for oneself, ultimately, though it can be shared with others temporarily and can mistakenly be seen as having been caused by others.
Same is true with hatred.
All this other stuff (e.g. Africa and Africans, Hitler) is neither love nor hate. It's pure insanity; nothing more, nothing less.
Bad Monkeys on endogenous PCP.
No one,
And the source of the insanity is what?
jim
1st, a correction:
"Per the pacifist religions, the proscription to revere life does not necessarily = "love"." --
Of course, I meant, "prescription".
no one,
Now we are getting closer to defining love, though no closer to understanding hate.
Agreed that we suffer a Disney-fied, mythical concept of love, when it is IMHO it is really a rather simple feeling, and one which must emanate from within (Love they neighbor AS thyself; if one hasn't any love, one hasn't any to give.) I do not think love is fleeting (though enamorment surely is.)
That is why we have songs like "Traces of Love" ... we're trying to find artifacts of something not there. It was infatuation or some other blinding experience, at bottom narcissistic, but not love.
But hatred -- there's the thing. As I said before, it's not necessarily even caused by having commerce with the object of one's hatred. Now, you could call such a thing "insanity", but I think that is too easy (unless we are all insane, which is possible.) Hatred perdures, longer than love.
Is this all very primal? Suspicion, which can morph into hatred, was the safer stance vis-a-vis the unknown; love would be naive when the stakes were getting eaten (in the worst of ways.)
Tribalism seems to imply, "me good, you bad", so I'm just gonna hang out over here, and not invite you to any garden parties. Hatred might evolve from bias confirmation after the Other transgresses in some way upon one's "own".
I like your "Bad Monkeys on endogenous PCP".
Jim, Now that I think about it, it's catharsis and seeking catharsis isn't insane; it's actually healthy. You take all of your fears, uncertainties, pains and you give them a name and face. It helps if the name and face actually has done you wrong in the past (or present).
So maybe it's all a baked in feature of human psychology.
Incidentally, there is a liberal meme that if one would just sit down and get to know the person behind the name and face that the fallacy would be revealed and all would be brotherhood. I have seen this work just the opposite. In my own case I am hating Muslims right now and my encounters with them over the years have only reinforced my sentiments. One crazy Palestinian I knew in grad school was "ok", but then he go off on how evolution is false; we are all created by Allah - except for Jews who did, verily, evolve from monkeys. Bad personal hygiene too.
Again, apologies for drunk commenting up thread.
Have a great T-day.
no one,
Yes, the quest for catharsis is a baked-in feature of human beings, and retribution, or at least labeling and alienation helps one feel safer (and maybe even BE safer.)
It is nice for those who truly can believe the "retribution is mine, saith the Lord" meme, but most of them don't really buy into it, anyway.
I'm with you on the Palestinians, Muslims and anyone who has hatred as a part of their life motto. Bigotry is the thing which reduces us, and those people's blind hatred of certain Others guarantees their inability to evolve. One simply can't put one's mind in such a dark cast and expect light to enter.
On an individual level, a person born into a certain tribe may soar and reject their tribal hatred, but it doesn't happen too often.
That thing about getting to know the person behind the face is nice, but it does not work when you do not believe there is a human behind the face. See "Maus" for a good cartoon depiction.
Happy Thxging.
No one,
Concerning the drinking and commenting.
Why don't we market a breatalyzer that links up to a computer.
Now to you. You are confined to barracks, 2 weeks extra training , and forfeiture of 2/3 of your pay this month.
jim
Jim, I accept the office hours, but, 2/3 pay? Reg.s says 1/2 is all you get.
No one,
i stand corrected.
i didn't know that Marines could make such fine calculations.
my bad.
jim
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