Hate is easy.

December 15th, 2023

Why do so many love to hate?

I was reading an essay and it argued that most of us can’t even “articulate the strongest or most charitable argument which opposes our position,” which means we don’t even reasonably understand the people and ideas we disagree with.

So I wanted to try. I believe in love. I believe in being kind, even when it’s hard, even when you have to make yourself smile to generate just one spark of general good will for humankind.

And as I tried to think of the strongest, most charitable arguments for hate, I found out it wasn’t even that hard. Hell, hate is easy.

– You get to be on a team! And the way you form teams is simple: everyone you hate is on the other one.

– You get to blame people you’ve never met for all of your problems! They get to be your personal scapegoat and guess what? Nobody ever has to learn or grow when they project their own failures and defects of character on others.

– Speaking of people: you get to generalize them! You don’t have to think of them as unique individuals with beautiful, intricate relationships and distinct lives. You get to decide that all of one kind of people say the same things and act the same way. You don’t have to get to know a single one because you already know them all.

– Anger and rage are addictive. You get to feed it daily! Those emotions actually cause chemical reactions in your body that you get hooked on. And the great thing about addiction (trust me, I know) is that the more you use, the more you need to fill the tank and feel the same way. So, the more you hate, the more you have to keep hating to feel something.

– You get to ignore all facts! You don’t have to know anything about reality! You don’t have to believe any true thing anybody tells you! You get to choose whatever you want to believe, no matter how wrong, hurtful, or destructive it is. Your biases are your education, and hate school is free. (Hate school is not an accredited university.)

These are all examples of why we hate. (And this list took me just a few minutes to write.) And it made me realize how hard love can be. We have to trust people, who can hurt us. We are responsible for those we love, so we can get anxious and worry.

Love is work.

And hate is easy.

And as we watch humanity consistently choose lifestyles of least resistance and lives with less community, it becomes harder to imagine a future where the argument of love wins.

But it doesn’t mean we stop arguing.

Even when we can see the other side.