I was having a conversation with someone the other day which made me think.
They happened to be referring to Myra Hindley and used the words 'I hate her'.
I asked if this person knew Myra Hindley.
They didn't.
I asked if Myra Hindley had harmed them personally.
She hadn't.
'So..' I asked 'Why do YOU hate Myra Hindley? Why do you waste emotions that eat you up on someone you don't know who has never harmed you?'
Because of what they had done, was the reply.
I agreed, what Myra Hindley had done was evil. Whether that makes her an embodiment of evil is another matter. Even if it did, there are people who have a right to hate her. But not me. And not the person I was talking to.
I put to this person that hating people the media raises as hate figures allows us to focus our own bitterness and our own deep seated resentments of people we know are not evil, but that we personally have grievances with, and focuses these resentments on to a target, somewhat like the two minute hate in the book that gives this blog it's name.
I put it them that hatred is a pwerful emotion that we often focus on to objects to disguise to ourselves what it is and who it is we really hate.
I put to them that if I said I was in love with Jodie Foster, I would rightly be seen as slightly unbalanced. Why? Quite simply, because I have never actually met Jodie Foster.
So how then, can it be accepted as normal to passionately hate someone you do not know.
Worse, how do we allow ourselves to stand idly by whilst such base sentiments- hate- are allowed to create whole political creeds.
Hardship, Fear, Unemployment, Social Change, these disquieting elements time and time again create political movements which transpose these anxieties on to human targets who can blamed and hated, and it is this unthinking logic of hatred that makes it possible.
Catholics, Protestants,Jews , Muslims, Black people, Freemasons, the list of people you can hate and blame is endless and it seems to work better when you do not really know them.
And it's still happening here and now.
And it's not just the BNP who exploit these fears and hatreds.
Even 'respectable' political parties do it.
And Labour are becoming the worst offender.
Think before you hate.
It's a nasty destructive emotion that eats YOU up as well.
It wastes your life, your emotions, the amount of happy thoughts you will have in your life.
Think- Is it worth hating X or Y? what have X or Y done to YOU?
Is your hatred worthy of you?
Monday, 12 March 2007
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7 comments:
Interesting post. Much like I wrote in a recent post on my own blog. People naturally project their own feelings, positive and negative, onto other figures (real or mythical).
It's not Myra Hindley that people hate, it's the emotions she creates within us all that we hate. Myra Hindley makes us think about actions that we don't want to contemplate. This creates an internal battle inside us; which we then project back to her image.
My MP is doing it- suckering people up to sign the pledge to stamp out racism and xenophobia. We have a BNP problem in our town but Labour are making it a solution to win back power after being trounced by independents. Unfortunately,(for him) it is starting to go horribly wrong as rational people like me are challenging his partisan motives publically.
You'd better stop thinking for yourself - you'll be reported to the thought police!
Ian- I take it your MP is Colin Challen. I heard he was making way for Ed Balls- maybe he just isn't cut out for the realpolitik?
David, you are right of course. It's always nice when people succintly summarise the point you were trying to make.
Onyx Stone- Room 101 is looming, I fear.
Does your opinion extend to convicted paedophiles? I regularly talk to a convicted paedophile on the phone and he's got a great sense of humour that makes me laugh. He said 'you sound much better without the flu' and we laughed for a bit about sometimes in the morning, when he calls me, I sound like a man. Work related, of course; but if i were to practice 'hatred' for all people that have committed evil doings, the world would constantly be brushing these people under the carpet, or stone, as society would have it.
I think, like love, hate is an over used word and usually has lost all meaning ...............I can say I hate bananas.but really I simply don't enjoy them.
They say the first casualty of war is the truth.It's all politics and propaganda.............to rile up the masses so that someone such as Saddam can be killed by a manipulative government for reasons they would never admit to, with the sanctions of the people ,after they have been spoon fed propaganda and lies, to justify the murder.
Doncha just "hate" that?
Miss Smack, not a great fan of the guys you refer to. Then again, who is? Don't envy you your job. You must have the patience of a saint.
I must admit, that's one abyss I wouldn't want to look into. Some evils I don't want to understand. But I guess someone has to try, so as protect the rest of us. So fair play.
Ubermouth, Saddam's execution is even worse when we bear in mind that the warcrimes they executed him for were carried out in 1981 during the Iran-Iraq war, when the wqest backed and armed Saddam.
So WE are exeuting him for warcrimes he committed with weapons given him by...er...us.
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