# When is it OK to hate? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 17, 2010, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488 "2010-08-17T02:06:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/41 "2010-08-18T15:46:35Z")
[QUOTE=Aquila Be] Based on my own observations, a hate filled loon will always demolish a calm reasoner in a brawl, every time, without fail. [/QUOTE] And I have had just about the exact opposite experience. Generally, someone filled with hate is too emotional and angry, and generally gets the crap beat out of them by someone who is able to keep control of their emotions and focus on the fight. Make someone angry and emotional and you’ve half won the fight right there. > [@](#): > > You’ve just quoted a mantra. A sort of prayer. Really? Who is it a quote from? -XT ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/42 "2010-08-18T15:56:19Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > [QUOTE=Aquila Be] > Based on my own observations, a hate filled loon will always demolish a calm reasoner in a brawl, every time, without fail. And I have had just about the exact opposite experience. Generally, someone filled with hate is too emotional and angry, and generally gets the crap beat out of them by someone who is able to keep control of their emotions and focus on the fight. [/QUOTE] My experience is more in line with **Aquila Be** ’s. Peace and inner tranquility are almost the worst possible frame of mind from which to approach a street fight. Best is probably a state of **controlled** rage -not blind rage, but something like hate. That is why a lot of good street fighters are assholes - both because they get a lot of experience, and also because they have a reservoir of aggression that they can easily tap and use against a person in a calmer state of mind. Whether or not that justifies hatred I don’t know. Turning it on and off makes it useful, but that is a difficult thing to learn. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/43 "2010-08-18T18:14:16Z")
> [@Civil\_Guy](#): > > For a theological viewpoint - if such interests you - see Perelandra by C.S. Lewis, one of his sci-fi allegory books. This one is an allegory about the initial Fall - a saintly man from Earth is carried to Venus by heavenly forces to prevent another Fall from happening there. (Er, no, the climate reported for Venus is not, er, accurate.) /me crosses Venus off list of potential vacation spots. Well shucky darn! > [@Civil\_Guy](#): > > While there, our saint finds a demon that needs destroyin’ - and is amazed to have finally found a proper place and use for hate. He’s found a source of pure evil, and he finds that he hates it, truly hates it - and he’s for once found something he can hate without accidentally hating the person instead of the evil. He’s found that the hatred gives him a temporary surge of energy that he can use to great benefit - if he uses it well. > > If you’re interested in such. It was actually a fascinating book, though I think Lewis meant to write a 4th book and somehow got sidetracked. I have to add, I really like his [Spirits in Bondage](http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2003) … it is a very interesting read. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/44 "2010-08-18T18:33:55Z")
I don’t hate anybody. I feel sorry for child molesters. They have a drive that can not be satisfied without breaking the law and does harm to the child. They know what they do is illegal and immoral. It must be horrible to have a drive that is not normal and is illegal. Their lives are pretty well doomed. I don’t hate nazis either. They are wrong . They have bought into something stupid that can only result in a lifetime of trouble and pain. They will pay harshly as their life goes on. But if your parents teach you hate while you are growing up, it is tough to throw it off .Some can. The rest are doomed. Some people hate gays. They are just people. They did not choose to be gay, but they are. They have diffiicult and sometimes dangerous lives if they just admit they are who they are. They will face violence. They will face legal hurdles just to have a life they can live without fear. We make their lives dangerous and scary. They are being used for political gain. Their struggles for equality have become a weapon for conservatives. They are not doomed because there is some hope. But it will take time and until equality comes, they will be mistreated. It is a shame. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/45 "2010-08-18T20:37:58Z")
> [@The\_Facts](#): > > Some people say that you shouldn’t hate anyone … but everyone hates nazis and child molesters and the Klan. Everyone? Even Klansmen have mothers. > [@](#): > > Am I wrong if I hate evil people? Do what you want, but it’s often a waste of time and emotions to fill one’s self with hatred for “evil people” and can lead to the kind of thinking that is identical to those that you hate. For example, one could take a page from the nazis and [fantasize about eliminating the dross of society](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=571701) or take another page from the Klan not actually think about killing all of the political oposition, but just [speculate on how much better off we’d be](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=572756) if all the nig… umm, conservatives dissappeared in a puff of smoke. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/46 "2010-08-19T03:13:49Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > My experience is more in line with **Aquila Be** ’s. Peace and inner tranquility are almost the worst possible frame of mind from which to approach a street fight. Best is probably a state of **controlled** rage -not blind rage, but something like hate. But that sounds to me more like you are describing something that falls in the spectrum of _anger_, but not “hatred” per se. You do not have to specifically _hate_ (despise, consider inferior or morally vile) the opponent to conquer; you should, however, feel viscerally that he’s a threat and that you absolutely need to overcome and put him in a state in which he is no longer a threat. That’s not necessarily at a conflict with your having peace and inner tranquility _within yourself_. You can be in a state of self-harmony, yet upon identifying dire external threat of harm or evil, feel the righteous urge to deal with it by any and all means necessary (after all, the external foe threatens the harmony). But now that I write this, I realize we have not really defined “hate” very clearly for the purposes of this discussion; it was sort of addressed early in the thread but it moved on. And as someone else said, too often the word is bandied about as an all-purpose term, “I hate X” may at various times mean “X vexes me”/“IMO, X is a threat”/“I fear X”/“I find X despicable”/“I don’t want to deal with X”/“X pushes all my wrong buttons”/“How can anyone sane support X?”/etc. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/47 "2010-08-19T04:11:56Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > And I have had just about the exact opposite experience. Generally, someone filled with hate is too emotional and angry, and generally gets the crap beat out of them by someone who is able to keep control of their emotions and focus on the fight. I wish I could find an online cite for this. The U.S. Army did a survey of its soldiers in the Pacific and found that units with a higher percentage of people who hated the Japanese tended to kill more than other units with a lower percentage of soldiers who hated the Japanese. Make of that what you will but hating the enemy doesn’t necessarily make you a less effective fighter. > [@](#): > > Make someone angry and emotional and you’ve half won the fight right there. The key words there are angry **and** emotional. many people are quite capable of being angry and controlling their actions at the same time. Hating someone doesn’t necessarily make you a foaming-at-the mouth imbecile any more than being in love makes you a doormat to be abused by your girlfriend. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/48 "2010-08-19T20:08:07Z")
Well, I stand corrected…[here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=574931&page=11) is a good example of where it’s probably ok to hate. Mind, I still think it’s a bad idea, but it would be understandable… -XT ---
**Author:** ![Reno\_Nevada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Reno\_Nevada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2010, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/49 "2010-08-19T21:00:04Z")
First they said it was OK to hate Nazis, And I did not speak out, Because I was not a Nazi. Then they said it was OK to hate Communists, And I did not speak out, Because I was not a Communist. Then they said it was OK to hate child molesters, And I did not speak out, Because I was not a child molester. Then they said it was OK to hate me, And there was no-one left to speak out for me. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Understander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@The\_Understander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Understander)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/50 "2010-08-20T04:08:38Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Well, I stand corrected…[here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=574931&page=11) is a good example of where it’s probably ok to hate. Mind, I still think it’s a bad idea, but it would be understandable… > > -XT I don’t hate him, and being black, I’d have an excuse to do so, perhaps. People with that kind of mental deficiency I just pity. Another victim of tribal fixation in a world with no shortage of it. C’est la vie. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/51 "2010-08-20T16:02:56Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > I wish I could find an online cite for this. The U.S. Army did a survey of its soldiers in the Pacific and found that units with a higher percentage of people who hated the Japanese tended to kill more than other units with a lower percentage of soldiers who hated the Japanese. Make of that what you will but hating the enemy doesn’t necessarily make you a less effective fighter. Well, that one’s not that hard to believe - if you consider your adversary some sort of vile vermin you may be not just less hesitant to pull the trigger but even outright eager to take as many of them as you can (you’re quantitatively as opposite to qualitatively more effective: you get a higher kill ratio not because you’re more efficient but because you’re taking more shots). And it leaves us still with the question as to whether what people like to call “righteous anger” is or is not the same thing as “hate”, as in is _“Take this for what you did to the boys at Pearl Harbor and Bataan, you bastards!”_ the same thing as _“You bucktoothed slant-eyed yellow rat, world’s better off without you!”_ ---
**Author:** ![Add99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/977dab/32.png) [@Add99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Add99)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/52 "2010-08-20T20:09:24Z")
No one has brought up Gandhi ? His refusal to hate, to strike back, defeated an occupying empire. Simply by becoming grist for the mill, by peacefully objecting whilst being slaughtered wholesale, he shamed the British crown into surrender. They were counting on him to resist, enabling a crackdown of epic proportions. He resisted by almost dying of starvation. His comment that the Jews should have more complacently marched into the ovens was a bit hard to take, though. I’m not saying he was wrong, who knows, but it is a hard, hard thing to say that. He was convinced of the correctness of his stance even on that topic. I doubt the Nazis would be ashamed, but perhaps, perhaps. It might have saved many lives. What he did was so contrary to human nature it is hard to comprehend, but if he had hated, India would have been squashed like a grape. All you need is love? ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2010, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/53 "2010-08-21T06:31:20Z")
> [@Add99](#): > > No one has brought up Gandhi ? > **His comment that the Jews should have more complacently marched into the ovens** was a bit hard to take, though. I’m not saying he was wrong, who knows, but it is a hard, hard thing to say that. He was convinced of the correctness of his stance even on that topic. I doubt the Nazis would be ashamed, but perhaps, perhaps. It might have saved many lives. I’m not gonna say that he did say that , only that it was totally at odds with his support of that same empire to fight the Axis powers. His peaceful protest would have only worked with a power like England, had it been Germany of WW2 he would have been picked up and liquadated. Declan ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2010, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/54 "2010-08-21T13:17:07Z")
There is no point in fighting hate amongst a community that feels no hate. You all pat yourselves on the back for joining in the communal consensus. Good for you. The only way you can vent your collective spleen is to find some poor bastard who disagrees with you. I offer myself as that poor bastard. I do not think of myself as a racist. I do, in point of fact, feel that the African-American culture in the United States is poisoning itself by obsessing upon the injustices that they have suffered. Get over it. . ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2010, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488/55 "2010-08-21T23:23:57Z")
I’m going to break the rule against responding to my own post because I am disturbed by how callous it is. I sound like Dr. Laura. I stand by the sentiment, but I do grasp that I am expecting African-americans to show much more character than I myself might be able to do if I was in their shoes. I’m also off-topic - what a train wreck :smack: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-it-ok-to-hate/550488.md?page=2)