Columnist Dan Abernathy.

Courtesy photo

Let’s make an imaginary review and think back to the days our forefathers stepped ashore, which is now known as the United States. Like the exiles who are flooding our country now they too were running away from something.

They were fleeing their homeland looking for peace, happiness and to better themselves with political and religious freedom. A curious thing about these predecessors is that while searching for peace and happiness they started robbing, murdering and almost exterminating the people that this vast continent held. This continues on still today, as we have accepted and become comfortable with hate.

There is so much hate in the world and it always seems to be a derivative from power and control. Hate comes from the idea that certain people can or should have power and complete control over others. These ideas are strong byproducts of history where certain people took power over others.

Hatred starts from negative assumptions, images and beliefs about people. Certain groups and stereotypically negative assumptions that have become stronger and are no longer considered taboo. Hate and the people who spread it have gone mainstream. It is no longer skulking in dark corners.

We need no reminding of all the killing fields that have existed throughout memory. Their continuation reminds us all of the veracity of hate, even here in the United States. Gun violence has become equal to the killing fields of other countries. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, guns that are held by hatred kill 93 people on an average day.

There is ample evidence in historical records, art, and artifacts that hate has very deep roots that often push aside love and hope. Hate is a biological and cultural phenomenon transcending history that has been greatly articulated by the psychology of Carl Jung.

The conventional nature of hate can be understood in Jung’s conception of the shadow, the darker, repressed parts of the psyche that resist the pressures of self and society to conform and when acted out, often assume violent forms of expression. This simplistic explanation takes on a greater complexity when such psychological factors such as mental and neurological status, accompanying psychosocial stressors and family dynamics are taken into consideration.

Commentary on the nature of hate may have begun with Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E), who believed that “hate rises without previous offense, is remorseless for the person experiencing it, incurable by time, and strives for the annihilation of its target.”

Charles Darwin, in 1872, described hate as a feeling that lacks a distinct facial expression and manifests itself as rage. Typically, hate is viewed as an extreme form of dislike, an amplified version of anger, disgust, contempt and a readiness to do harm.

Psychologists believe that hate is most likely to emerge in the presence of moral violations particularly when the targets of hatred are perceived as bad, immoral and dangerous. It is not surprising that politicians frequently berate and provoke their opponents using negative terms.

A MRI study scanned normal human subjects while they viewed the face of a person they hated. For comparison, they also viewed faces of acquaintances for which they had neutral feelings. The study discovered a unique pattern of activity in the brain that has been termed the hate circuit.

The insular cortex, putamen, and left superior frontal gyrus are the main components of the hate circuit. These three brain regions showed a specific type of activation when individuals viewed pictures of people who they hate. Interestingly, these same three brain regions also reacted when the subject viewed a person that they once loved but had recently been rejected by!

I am aware of the irony of this statement, but I personally try never to use the word. There’s such a large gap between the words dislike and hate. Dislike implies that there might be some animosity or that maybe some people just don’t click with each other. You might be mildly annoyed, maybe even angry. Hate however, is different. Hate involves emotional investment. Hate requires genuine time and effort; it’s something that drains you.

Hate should be a word that makes us uncomfortable, yet we have watered it down into another four letter word used in our common everyday language for the description of most menial tasks. As the use of hate increasingly permeates our daily rhetoric, the impact it has when it really matters starts to decrease.

Saying hate all the time is also partially due to the fact that what we see and hear has set the precedent for us. Using the word in today’s world has blossomed into full display during the newscasts as well as on social networks.

Another study found that Fox News used the word hate, 647 times from January through May in a daily four hour broadcast. This calculates the word hate almost once every hour. This doesn’t even include the dozens of times we each hear it in our daily conversations.

We have become so flamboyant with our speech using a world like, dislike, feels too weak a word to convey your true distaste. Hate makes you feel stronger and untouched.  We would rather have people over-interpret our distress than dismiss it. We have forgotten that by using hate, we simply worsen the problem by devaluing the very word itself in an everlasting cycle that never ends.

So instead of taking the easy way out and adhering to the use of hate, we should pause and find a different way to phrase our grievances. A calmer way that doesn’t involve using words that are too strong for the context. 

To clarify the contrast and comparison, I do hate the word. I dislike that it’s become a common word that denotes nothing other than a little discomfort. I detest that it has become so overused that we can use a word that’s supposed to refer to literal crimes for complaints about the casualness of carelessness.

We need to learn to not be led, or be lazy with our daily rhetoric, because our language has such a huge impact on how we perceive the world. You don’t have to hate the minuscule. Learn to be uncomfortable with this word. If there is a need for it to be retained, reserve it for when it truly matters, though I strive in hopes that it never does. - dbA

You can find more of the unfiltered insight and the Art of Dan Abernathy at www.contributechaos.com.