hate > love: change my mind

[Jwar]

theses:

1. love is a weakness, hatred makes you strong. love is a vulnerability, a danger, a chink in the armor; hatred IS your armor.

2. love is weak, hatred is powerful. love can only build small things like families that are easily destroyed; hatred destroyed the Valois, slavery, the Romanoffs, and Nazi Germany. Bono sings that "love is bigger than anything in its way," but love was not bigger than Genghis Khan, the Holocaust, the gulags, or the guy with the bone saw.

3. love is dishonest, hatred is true. people will tell you they love you to gain your genitalia, your money, your attention, or your time; nobody will ever tell you they hate you for fun or personal gain.

4. love is temporal, hatred is eternal. love always ends, whether by boredom, betrayal, incapacity, or death; the Irish will hate the Brits for the next 1000 years.

change my mind. watch this space, as more theses may drop.

k. I'll take a stab at it.

1. Love is strength beyond strength and conquers all. Even noticed how damn draining it is to have hatred flowing? I have, it's exhausting. The emotion literally wears me out whereas love, on the other hand, take minimal effort and makes me feel great. If you feel like hate is easy, then it's your overall mindset and you probably ought to reflect on that. The world can be a pretty bleak place sometimes but I see time after time that mankind gets together for one goal and that goal is always love. Take for instance any food pantry or kitchen. Those people are there volunteering their time out of not obligation, but out of love for their fellow man/woman. Or take something more simple like our ILF meet ups. I drive 10 hours every year to Minnesota to hang out for a day with a bunch of dudes (and Louise ) that I really don't know that well. Why? Because I love those people. They are awesome and it's worth the trip every time. If I didn't care, I wouldn't go.

2.Love is not dishonest if it's true. I love people without any expectations of gains. For instance, all my friends. I love the hell out of them. In fact, if you've met me, there's a good chance I have love for you as well. I'm a passionate dude who enjoys giving love freely. No strings attached, no underlying bs, just love. I've given and given and given without taking. That's unconditional man. Love does not have some box you can put around it. Yes, death is the end of all unless you believe in an afterlife. Does that mean it ends the love? No. I love my Grandparents and they are gone. That love is still there. I love my dogs who have passed. My cousins. My friends...etc. People who die are remember with love and fondness. It's very rare that I think "man, I can't believe they were such a shit head". No, I remember the good times.


I'm going to stop there as this has a bit of overlap.

It sounds to me like you have probably had some really shitty people in your life and need love. I'm here for you if you would like a friend. I'm always down for more friends. My friendship is not something I offer up willy nilly. You are a good person and I've always enjoyed you here, so I'd be willing to take that next step and offer you some much needed love.



Hatred is such a toxic emotion. It really is. Most of the time it is fear driven as well, it's not even the real issue. Most people don't truly hate, they just get overwhelmed, angry and frustrated.

All those horrible events in history were horrible but you know what? They all taught us some really valuable lessons and mankind had to pay an enormous cost for that. Love your neighbors. If we had more love and less hate, our world would be a much better place.


That's all I've got for now, but I can add a book here if you want me too. I'm serious about that friendship offer too, so don't feel like I'm just throwing it out there for nothing.

[Snufkino]

Hate is weak. It is manufactured by ignorance and/or fear. It can seem strong because in fear, our body responds with a sensation of strength, adrenaline, but that's all, and it's primitive. It's beyond any higher intellect no matter how you spin it.

We love by default otherwise none of us would be here, or surrounded by the things present in society. We don't procreate, and we don't create useful things, we don't seek knowledge and act on it because of hate. You aren't sat on your chair using a keyboard, attached to a computer to communicate with others via fiber optic cable because those people that pooled their resources and knowledge to make them did so because they hated something. We didn't share the knowledge of fire, and hunting, and food because we hate. If hate was strong, society wouldn't exist.

I don't want to ramble on about it. Clearly you're in a bad state of mind, projecting, mulling things over, I don't know. I just feel like I have to say something when people seem to be drowning in any kind of sadness.

Good luck in getting through whatever it is you have to get through.

[repoman]

When I hate something I usually get a headache thinking about it. So hate kinda sucks.

[Lurker13]

I agree with the people saying hate is too exhausting, and so is holding grudges. Fuck all that, I have better things to do with my emotions and limited time on this planet. Also, wallowing in negative emotions can lead to physical problems, and who needs that?

[dubkitty]

@ jwar: thanks, that's very sweet. will be in touch. would also consider doing ILFMW or whatever u call it now that i have a car i actually enjoy driving. there's no way i'd have driven the Camry that far, but in the Matrix it'd actually be fun. and i've universally enjoyed all the events i've attended where folks i know on forums have met IRL.

not to be argumentative, but i think that at least on the microcosmic, one-on-one level love only makes you stronger when it's reciprocal...otherwise you can just wind up getting your battery drained.

please don't misunderstand me, folks...i'm not saying that i think it's good to go around being hateful. far from it. i try to keep myself out of that space day-to-day because it's too heavy for me. but i'm pretty sure that my darker moments are more realistic. as George Harrison once said, "you should try to expect nothing, because then whatever happens will be a big bonus." how one reconciles non-attachment with need and pain i just don't know.

it's also fair to say that though i've been quite fucked over in life i'm by no means blameless. i've been a pretty crap person more often than not. as i've said in the past, "if you think i sound mean when i'm talking to you, imagine how i sound when i'm talking to me." apparently my best defense against hatred from without is that no one could possibly hate me more than i despise myself. that's the kind of stuff that i can only cope with by forcing my thought process to shut down. i've tried to fix it for at least 50 years, and at this point i'm afraid i'm pretty much stuck with it. my last therapist was very good at giving me strategies to deflect and contradict my anti-me internal dialogues. it just doesn't always work, is all.

[Benn Roe]

I'm definitely a person fueled in many ways by negative emotion. It's the only thing that inspires me artistically or motivates me socially, and often the only thing that really invigorates me at all. But, man, anger and depression are just not the same thing as hatred, and I can't really get behind any of your premises. They all just seem like subjective abstractions. Hatred is almost always born of insecurity, so it may feel like armour, but it only gets worn over festering wounds.