RexDart, let me quote you a few names. Lenny Murphy. Robert Bates. Billy Wright. These were people who deliberately set out looking for Catholics to kill. Before the moment that they randomly encountered their victims they didn’t know of their existence either, yet they already planned to kill them.
If that isn’t hate, then I don’t find whatever semantical distinction you’re making very useful.
I have found that I can separate the inspiration to act from the hate and anger by separating the logic from the emotion. All the way back in the 6th grade I concluded that all emotions were weaknesses and that I should try to purge them from me. I was actually surprisingly successful. I opted to keep some access to emotions just so that I could relate to the other people I meet (since most people have a tendency to be quite emotional), but I did create an emotionless default state for myself (meaning I am always emotionless unless I choose to act otherwise). Doing this has allowed me to make many judgment calls that would otherwise be too difficult to make. I have gotten in many arguments on this very board for being too callous in my judgments, but I believe it has made my decisions wiser (and I acknowledge that many if not most people disagree).
By removing the emotion from the logic that inspired it, you can gain inspiration without its being polluted by the irrationality so commonly associated with hate and anger. The quote about burning down a house to kill a rat is a prime example of the type of illogical behavior I speak of. Acting while inspired by hate or anger only serves to make your goal harder to obtain and/or makes it harder to avoid the repercussions of your goal. Weeding the emotion out of your inspiration can help in two ways. Firstly, you may discover that your reasoning was sub-par. By analyzing the subject unemotionally, you may find that there is no reason to feel such strong ill-will toward the person at all. Secondly, even if you find that your ill-will is founded, being emotionless will enable you to clearly plan your course of action (which will result in a smoother accomplishment of the goal and/or fewer repercussions). By smoother accomplishment of the goal I mean fewer loose ends (such as only killing the person you dislike rather than taking out his whole family along with him). A smoother accomplishment can result in fewer regrets down the road. By fewer repercussions I mean that you are more likely to realize that it is a bad idea to kill someone with the gun registered in your name and so you acquire a gun that will not be linked to you instead.
Hate and anger only make your life harder. They both cloud your judgment and interfere in the successful accomplishment of goals. I do not hate child molesters, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t kill them if it were legal. Using only logic I have concluded that it is better for all involved (including the molester himself) if he is dead. Hate or anger would not make killing him any easier or any better. You can always live with any choice you make in an emotionless state. It is when people act on emotion that you hear things like, “What have I done?” Any decision made with emotion carries the risk of being corrupted by that emotion. In the case of love the results are more likely to hurt you than the object of your love and so we do not persecute people that love too much. But since hate is more likely to hurt the object of your hate than yourself, we do persecute people that hate too much.
I find emotions make interesting toys to be used when you have free time, but I cannot support the use of any emotion when an important decision must be made. Thus I would recommend no one use hate or anger to inspire them to act (though it is good if you can use them as inspiration to think rationally about the subject at a later date after you have calmed down).
Now I know at least one person is going to ask how I can possibly say emotions should not be used to make important decisions such as marriage. I can answer that by saying marriage is not an important decision (yes, I know how bad that sounds). The choice of a life partner is the ultimate “entertainment”. It is done to make life more pleasant and thus does not actually matter, which is why I classify it as unimportant. It may be meaningful, but it is not important. Besides, think about how many awful marriages never would have occurred if the participants had not been blinded by emotion when they chose to be wed.
Live long and prosper.
What kind of crack have you been smoking? :rolleyes: If you ever ever decide to leave your Cloud Cuckoo Land of Pure Logic and return to the real world, we’ll welcome you back.
I think Procacious must have just underwent the Pon Farr, so his unemotionalism is at it’s peak 
Anyways, he is kind of right about emotions generally leading to bad decisions and reason generally leading to good ones. I suppose we really must need emotion to determine what we want to acquire, to set our goals, but we ought rely on reason to actually obtain it. And that goes for Vulcans too, if you really must know.
Heh. Gotcha, Procacious.
-=I do not hate child molesters, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t kill them if it were legal=-
Hmm. You have no age up, but from the tone and content of your posts you are statistically unlikely to be an object of their affections. Why, then, would you desire to kill a group of people based on who they are sexually attracted to? Emotion, that’s why.
Also, it stands to reason that making decisions based on your survival is redundant when you are well off mentally and financially to be a regular here. Therefore, the only goal left is pleasure-seeking.
Good luck on the vulcan thing.
We English always seem to the baddies in movies, but we’re OK about it.
In England it’s perfectly acceptable (indeed required) to hate the French and pity the Welsh.
Nope. Couldn’t even find it on a map. 
You ask a question for which you already have an answer.
“Whom are we allowed to hate” has already established your belief that indeed we are permitted to hate.
“Are we allowed to hate people deserving of hate” is really an indication that you are seeking approval for hating a particular person, place or thing.
So what is your real question? What is your real debate? You mention a recently deceased…is this your real debate? Are you trying to be clever in your question so that you can slyly express you views? Why not just state them and let us decide whether or not we want to read it? Who are you fooling?
Yet if I have misconstrued your question, please forgive me.
Perhaps you meant to ask “is it okay to hate?” or “what is hate?” or “why do we hate?” The answer to these questions depend on what we chose to believe. Beliefs are a choice not an obligation or something that is forced upon us. Therefore, you asked the question. Perhaps you would care to share your own belief? What do you think?
Whom are we allowed to hate? And why do you feel we need permission to hate? What counter belief do you hold that causes you such conflict? Or better yet, what established belief in others are you trying to unsurp? Are you cleverly trying to distribute hate towards others in the disguise of need for a self-induced injury?
Just wondering.
Not so. Speaking as a Southern American Straight White Male who Drives an SUV and sometimes Eats Meat- you are allowed to hate us. There’s a surprising number of us, too.
I’ll explain my reasoning since I seem to have peaked your curiosity.
Before I begin I must explain that my use of pure logic has lead me to believe that death is a neutral state. I have this belief for two reasons:
Since I have never died and I have not ever spoken to anyone with more experience on the subject than I have, it would be unreasonable of me to assume that death is either good or bad. Since the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, I conclude that death is like an endless, dreamless, sleep (which happens to be my exact definition of a neutral state).
Since I believe death to be like an endless, dreamless, sleep, it is reasonable to assume that dead people cannot think. If they cannot think, they cannot complain or feel regret. This means that even if I take the most fortunate person in the world, a person with a life that everyone dreams of having, and I kill him, he won’t care. Sure he would care if he were alive to know that he is dead, but he is not. Because he is dead he is incapable of caring. The first time I hear a dead person complain I will change my point of view.
Now the fact that I believe death is neutral means that killing someone only changes their existence from whatever it was to neutral (i.e. if they had a good life, I am lowering their existence to neutral and if they had a bad life, I am raising their existence to neutral). Since most people consider death to be a bad thing, I already have a much easier time killing the child molester than most people would because I do not feel as though I am harming him.
That being said, the decision to kill someone should factor in the lives of every person except the one that is dying. It sounds odd, but the dead person is the only person that does not have to live with my action, and therefore his point of view is irrelevant. Thus the decision to kill the child molester is based on whether the people that interact with him (e.g. his family, neighbors, co-workers, and the child he molests) would experience a better existence or a worse existence if I killed him. This is obviously a highly subjective question. It depends largely on how bad an offense I view child molestation to be. Part of the reason it is important to think without emotion is because emotion is inclined to make things seem worse than they really are (e.g. the emotions triggered in most people at the thought of rapists and molesters are usually quite powerful, probably more powerful than is appropriate).
So simply put, if I evaluate the molester’s value to his acquaintances (which are the only people that live to be affected by my decision) and he comes up with a negative score, it is time to load my gun.
Now, I should probably state, I do not usually kill people for a variety of reasons. First of all, it is rude. I do not commit mercy killings (i.e. killings of people that I feel would be better off dead) because it is impolite for me to make that choice for them. If they want to live in misery, who am I to stop them? I do not kill child molesters, because it is illegal. There are many laws I do not agree with, but I realize to live in a society I must follow all the laws whether I agree with them or not (I am apparently only one of a select few that feel this way, as I am the only person I know that never speeds while driving). Even if it were legal to kill child molesters, I would speak to the person’s acquaintances before killing him just so I could get their view on his value to their lives. Being an outsider to the situation, I am inclined to neglect their feelings to some degree so I conclude that it is best to at least get their opinions (though I would not ask the molester himself). I realize that their emotions are inclined to color their judgment and they would probably say that he shouldn’t be dead because killing is wrong and blah, blah, blah, but if that is what they say then I would respect that because it is their lives after all. I am not killing the molester for my benefit but for theirs (since I think without emotion the concept of a child molester does not bother me in the least) and if they feel that their lives are better with him around, then I would leave him be.
It is not okay to hate the English but–
It’s awricht ta hate tha bluidy Sassenach!
(And my Welsh friends assure me that you English are just jealous of their sexual prowess.)
Seriously, though:
In the early 80s a regular columnist for a local paper tossed off the line, “there are people it’s okay to hate, like Arabs and the phone company.” I was so enraged I called the editor, because I thought that was horrid and, as the statement didn’t have anything to do with the subject of his column anyway, was gratuitously horrid.
I still feel pretty much the same.
Hate things, not people.
To look at an early example in this thread, contemplate the pedophile. Now suppose someone with a strong sense of ethics, who is well aware of the psychological damage caused to a prepubescent child by having an adult molest him or her – and who yet finds them sexually arousing. This person may lead a morally sound life, avoiding situations where he or she might be tempted to engage in molestation, abhorring his or her aberrant sexuality. Is he or she properly the object of hate – or is it that one should hate his or her sexuality and have compassion on the person attempting to live morally?
Barring parodies of melodramatic movies, nobody gets up in the morning with a spring in his/her step looking forward to another day of committing evil deeds – most people try to live by their own moral code. It is simply that for many, their morality does not accord with the popular one, and for the sociopaths among them, their morality is an intensely egoistic one. I am fairly sure that Hitler thought that he was doing the right thing – though I quail at trying to grasp his concepts of what right and wrong might be.
Hamish and Czarcasm - your quotes are both beautiful and insightful. Thanks for sharing them.
Contradict much?
Is anyone else struck by the fact that the categories which “spring to mind” for this poster as deserving of unqualified hatred are sexual preferences? Not actions, just preferences. Not individuals, entire groups (Memo to self: correct evident misunderstanding of the following terms–stereotyping, prejudice. Thx.). I thought we understood why this is wrong by now. Maybe I’m missing something.
Serial killers or rapists or genocidal tyrants I could maybe see, because at least they’re doing something reprehensible; but this is appalling.
You want to make a list of who it’s okay to hate? Be sure to list yourself first, and then decide how “okay” it is. Wouldn’t want to look biased, now.
Hating groups is lazy. In order to properly hate someone, you have to know them as an individual.
Stop being lazy, get to know more people, I am certain you will find enough annoying arseholes in the world to allow you to exercise that hate muscle till it’s real buff…
Then again, if you must be lazy, consider hating the Belgians… they’ve been getting away with shite for years!
My ex wife is Belgian, so I’ve been keeping up the Belgian hate quotient for a good few years.
But why should you bother to kill the child molester at all?
You obviously shouldn’t care if the lives of others where better or not if you do not act on emotions.
On a person note: at first thought the idea appealed to me (being able to block emotions) but I reason that if I hate to choose between feeling nothing and having both good and not so nice emotions - I’ll take it all, I’d never want to be without the good ones.
It is not necessary to feel to understand that other people are feeling bad. It is true that there is no reason to care, but using a pure numbers game gives me something to do. Since the child molester is in the minority compared to those that dislike child molesters, killing child molesters would improve world happiness. The only reason to improve world happiness is to give me something to do. Life is very dull when you have no goals. The decision to make the most people happy instead of making the most people unhappy was made because it is easier to fit into a society that way (if my life goal was to cause misery, I would end up causing said misery in jail and I would rather be free).
The reason to kill the child molesters is purely because there are fewer of them. The ways to solve the “child molestation problem” are to:
Of those three options, #1 takes the least work and is therefore the choice I have made. It is true that I could try to counsel the people in option 1 or 2 instead of killing them as that would also solve the problem if I could change their minds, but changing a person’s mind is A LOT more work that killing them (as is shown by how few debates on this message board end with complete consensus).
It certainly is not for everyone and it is not something I recommend to anyone that is unsure about it. People that feel all the time are usually a lot happier than I. I have trouble understanding why they are happier, but they certainly seem to be happier (though sometimes I wonder if they only think they are happy because they have never really analyzed their lives). It has been my discovery that analyzing things too much just leads to unhappiness. Ignorance truly is bliss.