I am driving along a country road. I see ahead the front end of a car beginning to pull out of a side road. I suspect that the driver has not seen me. I give a brief toot on the horn to warn him. He stops his car. As I pass, he loudly sounds his horn. I glance and see him gesturing angrily at me. As so often, he is a balding, red-faced man. He is angry because I may have saved his life. The driver would not have explained it that way at the time. In fact, I suspect he would not have explained it all, except to use words to express his dominant emotion of anger. His anger probably arose because he regarded the horn I sounded as an admonition and hence, to him, as an act of aggression.
I suspect that if I met the same man some time later, the anger would have cooled. We might even chat over a glass of beer. This is because, for most people, anger is transient and rarely converted into hate. A few people seem to live in a permanent state of anger, but hatred is usually a colder feeling, like that of Iago for Othello - a compulsion to destroy another person, even someone with whom the hater is outwardly on good terms. Like Iago, the hater can not usually explain why they hate. There may be a feeling of envy or contempt for the object of hate. Or the person might be a member of some despised group. But in most cases, these explanations only provide a rationalisation for what is a primary, dominant and inexplicable emotion.
Those who hate have a supreme purpose in life. Those who are hated have much to fear. I remember many times when I have felt angry, usually because of my impatience or because of frustrated ambition. I can also remember disliking some people. But I have never felt hate. I have, however, been on the receiving end of others’ hatred. After I left my job in the NHS, I went to the wedding of a former colleague. I met someone who had been a fellow NHS manager - by now rather drunk. The alcohol revealed the true man, and I listened with horror to his expressions of loathing for me - from someone who I had always counted as a friend. Sometime later, I encountered a junior female work colleague who seemed polite, quiet and very competent. I used my efforts to promote her career until I discovered that she was relentlessly using her efforts to destroy mine. Discussion and mediation failed because hating me seemed to be the main purpose of her life. She seemed to resemble a character from a crime programme, like Midsommer Murders - the person who appears up to the last ten minutes as pleasant and helpful, but who is then revealed as the crazed murderer.
We are tempted to explain the pleasure some people get from hatred, cruelty and destruction as products of their childhood or other experiences. They may collude with this biography to gain sympathy. But they rarely admit that hatred and the opportunity to impose pain and destruction on others gives them supreme pleasure. There are no reluctant torturers.. I have learnt from bitter experience that attempting to compromise does not work with those who hate - they will see it as either deviousness or vulnerability. The rest of us also need to accept that such people will always be among us, and do our best to unite against them. This is easier said than done. People who hate have a singleness of purpose and a passion that sometimes endows them with a ghastly charisma. People who are troubled and unsure in the world will respond to their leadership. At times of great crisis, most people are in such a state of mind. Their leader then emerges, singling out their enemies, towards whom all collective human venom is directed.
See also: No sympathy for the devils
I suspect that if I met the same man some time later, the anger would have cooled. We might even chat over a glass of beer. This is because, for most people, anger is transient and rarely converted into hate. A few people seem to live in a permanent state of anger, but hatred is usually a colder feeling, like that of Iago for Othello - a compulsion to destroy another person, even someone with whom the hater is outwardly on good terms. Like Iago, the hater can not usually explain why they hate. There may be a feeling of envy or contempt for the object of hate. Or the person might be a member of some despised group. But in most cases, these explanations only provide a rationalisation for what is a primary, dominant and inexplicable emotion.
Those who hate have a supreme purpose in life. Those who are hated have much to fear. I remember many times when I have felt angry, usually because of my impatience or because of frustrated ambition. I can also remember disliking some people. But I have never felt hate. I have, however, been on the receiving end of others’ hatred. After I left my job in the NHS, I went to the wedding of a former colleague. I met someone who had been a fellow NHS manager - by now rather drunk. The alcohol revealed the true man, and I listened with horror to his expressions of loathing for me - from someone who I had always counted as a friend. Sometime later, I encountered a junior female work colleague who seemed polite, quiet and very competent. I used my efforts to promote her career until I discovered that she was relentlessly using her efforts to destroy mine. Discussion and mediation failed because hating me seemed to be the main purpose of her life. She seemed to resemble a character from a crime programme, like Midsommer Murders - the person who appears up to the last ten minutes as pleasant and helpful, but who is then revealed as the crazed murderer.
We are tempted to explain the pleasure some people get from hatred, cruelty and destruction as products of their childhood or other experiences. They may collude with this biography to gain sympathy. But they rarely admit that hatred and the opportunity to impose pain and destruction on others gives them supreme pleasure. There are no reluctant torturers.. I have learnt from bitter experience that attempting to compromise does not work with those who hate - they will see it as either deviousness or vulnerability. The rest of us also need to accept that such people will always be among us, and do our best to unite against them. This is easier said than done. People who hate have a singleness of purpose and a passion that sometimes endows them with a ghastly charisma. People who are troubled and unsure in the world will respond to their leadership. At times of great crisis, most people are in such a state of mind. Their leader then emerges, singling out their enemies, towards whom all collective human venom is directed.
See also: No sympathy for the devils
