Hate vs Love

[Monarch_Anor]

What makes hate? What makes love? And how do they fit into the nature of mankind?

 

I will start with my first question, what makes hate? To me hate is the base emotion of all things, not fear. We hate something before we fear it. Take a spider, a wonderful and beautiful creature. Yet how many people do you know that will say "I hate spiders." With no understanding of the spider itself? I know quite a few. How many would say, "I know about spiders, and I fear them, I do not hate them." I know two. It is my fundamental belief that we as Man are a brutal and uncaring group of creatures, who just don't give a damn when the hurt, mutilate, and kill. We watch out beloved tele and see all the chaos, and say "tisk tisk, he shouldn't have murdered that child!". It gives me a bitter feeling. In the words of Tool "I need to watch things die, from a good safe distance". But what is hate? Hate is feeling nothing for anyone else.

 

So then what is love? Obviously it exists, there are (or were) many a happy couple. But what does it take to be one? It is my understanding that love is not a natural human occurrence. And if it is it is buried so far within ourselves. However it is my understanding that something has to happen to us in order to feel this "emotion" if one even wishes to call it that. Something very direct, someone or something has to, for lack of a better word, touch you. For instance, someone you care about dies. Or you finally realize you care for someone. So I leave my question unanswered, for I have no idea what to think. Perhaps all love is is the opposite of hate?

 

Now the last question, how they fit into the nature of mankind. In my opinion humans are the essence of hatred, all one has to do is walk outside and they can see it.

 

"Credulous at best your desire to believe in, angels in the hears of men..."

 

These are all my opinions, what are everyone else's thoughts on the subject?

[Nadin]

You're confusing things. There is no base emotion. Some are stronger than others, yes, and hate and love are strongest. But the largest human flaw is arrogance. While not an emotion, it is confused with hate very often. People assume that the spider is less important and therefore don't bother thinking about it. They just kill it.

Does this make sense to you? These things are hard to put into words.

[Monarch_Anor]

It does make sense, I disagree with it though. If the spider was beneath them the same way a dog was then spiders and dogs would both be killed equally. There is some other reason, and I believe that to be hate. As for there being no base emotion, I also disagree. Look throughout history, the first and foremost emotion is hate. Therefore it is the base.

[jaysus]

what you describe as hate could rather be called apathy or the void of feelings

yet hate is a very extreme feeling, many people dont even hate if they say they hate this and that, hate goes so deep that you wish something wouldnt exist, all evil of the world would haunt it and so on

however as a buddhist or an objectivist living by kants categorical imperative hate is a pointless thing, it wastes too much energy and blinds the hating person from seeing truth, nevertheless is hate also a very strong incent to do , to create and to be

 

just as is love

 

but we have lust and we are many, so what do we need love for?

not every couple loves each other yet theyre often happy as it is,

i had relationships which where filled with love, i had some that were more like a friendship with sex, those with true love were the hardest, while they lasted and after they broke

hence only parental love for the child makes sense imo

however i would also say that i "love" my friends, but obviously on another level than the love we speak about here, i would still risk my live for them but its different,

true love is when you see that face when you close your eyes, when you feel a smile coming to your face just when you think about her/him, when you have the feeling your live makes sense if just to improve that persons

wellbeing

 

anyway as i said about hate and which also rules for all feelings xcept curiosity and fear, is that is wastes too much energy which could be used on better things instead.

yet they are often the sole reason for people doing something, but we will never know if that was a positive thing as we wont know what these people would have done without feelings

 

dont get me wrong, i honestly dont want to live in a world which is like the one depicted in the movie equilibrium which tries to extinquish all feelings, i truly dig feelings, they make the world an interesting place, unpredictable and miraculous, its just once i venture outside of my subjective recognition of this world that i dont see very much of a reason for all those feelings...

 

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conclusion of my mumbeling:

 

feelings focus the mind on something and tell us how to handle it

-> incent to do (fear->run, love->mate and protect, hate->destroy, curiosity->explore, etc)

or

-> wasted energy (fear-> run instead of fighting, love->wanna mate someone who isnt viable, hate->destroy things that are important for other things, sadness->cry instead of create)

 

thus one should analyze ones feelings and see if they will actually lead to a productive event or a waste of energy and maybe even the worsening of a state, this however is only applyable if you dont have to act very swiftly like fear from the closing inn train for example

 

most if not all feelings only work if there is an oppsite feeling,

you can only feel being loved if you know being hated, you can only feel hapiness when you felt sadness and so on

 

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btw you can manipulate your own feelings ;)

 

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you can rule very well utilizing feelings, fear is the most predominant here and is used all the time since machiavelli simply because everybody can fear some simple things like death or pain, but every one has another fetish which could kick in for love or hate for example hence its much simpler to generate a general fear ignitor than a love ignitor

[jaysus]

arrogance:

 

i agree that arrogance is a bloody huge flaw in mankind but it lets us see ourselves as special and thus value our own lives, it only becomes a problem if we think of other things which are not as glorious as ourselves to be disposable like the spiders for example without understanding that they are a brick in a wall which will fall without it

 

how do you know hate was the first feeling in history? thats like asking wether the chicken or the egg was first ;)

 

regarding the spider, there are many scientists running round looking for clues what makes em so scary, afaik they ended uo somewhere with:

 

1. bad experience with spiders (older brother dropped one in your panties as a kid :D)

2. evolutionary sub-memory of badass huge spiders which chewed human heads and played golf with our balls

3. the distinct shape of them creates a bad feeling, spikey, long and thin, little hairs that dont look cuddly, many many eyes that stare at us and a grim face...

 

the arrogance factor is low in the spider case id say its really more of a subconcious fear factor

the arrogance thing comes better into play if we look at destroying nature, how we do at work or school, how we treat other people and so on

[dezdimona]

people will always hate and fear what they don't understand.Most won't bother to research on spiders say so then apathy comes into play.

Love is hard to describe because it involves many things and has no real "base" to it.What I love may be hated by someone else.this is a very deep topic and I wait to see some of the responces to it! Good topic IMO

[Nadin]

people will always hate and fear what they don't understand.Most won't bother to research on spiders say so then apathy comes into play.

Love is hard to describe because it involves many things and has no real "base" to it.What I love may be hated by someone else.this is a very deep topic and I wait to see some of the responces to it! Good topic IMO

You know, I would like to make a brief point. There is no fear of the unknown. People are afraid that the unknown will be something unpleasant that is already known.

...And if hate were a base emotion, would there be so many people today? No. If there is a "base emotion" --which I don't think there is--- it is fear or love.

As for your question, what makes hate? I know what hate is, but I do not think it can explained. Hate is when you want something to suffer, or just cease to exist, so bad it's all you can think about. It's obviously one hell of a survival tool, but I can't explain it.

And love is the equal and opposite of hate. Love is when you want something to be happy, or just exist, so much it blots out every other thought in you mind. Nobody knows why it is or how it is, but it definitely is.

As for your last questions, these are a major part of the defining aspects of mankind.Without them it would not be mankind, it would something else.

That's just my thoughts for now. I hope it helps.

 

 

***Disclaimer***

I assumed you were talking about in the spiritual/metaphorical/metaphysical sense. Technically, it's all just energy flitting between our neurons and chemicals floating in our brains.

[Birrii]

Without hate, there is no love. Without love, there is no hate.

[dezdimona]

Why We Fear the Unknown We are quick to judge, fear and even hate the unknown. We may not admit it, but we are all plagued with xenophobic tendencies.

 

By Jeffrey Winters, published on May 01, 2002 - last reviewed on July 14, 2009

[antonkr]

Love and hate are both more then emotions and nobody can describe them.