[SIZE=5]Origins of Hate[/SIZE]
The passions of hate arise from several features of our thinking process. These include wanting to assign blame for misfortune, protecting our self-esteem, a desire to strengthen our community, the need to avoid toxins, alleviating our fears, and several types of errors in reasoning. The ability to quickly separate friend from foe is essential to self-defense and safety and provides the origins of hate. Each of these contributing factors are explained in more detail below.
[SIZE=4]Assigning Blame[/SIZE]
Who do we hold responsible when bad things happen? If we want to affirm our stature, preserve our self-esteem, avoid shame, and preserve our pride, it does not help to blame ourselves. So we conveniently assign blame to “them”, the “others”, the Enemy. Since we don’t like bad things to happen and since bad things are caused by the enemy, we hate them for it. We frame the opposition as the enemy. It’s the victims versus the villains, good versus evil, us versus them, in-group versus out-group, and friend versus foe. It is often easier to reject the other than to work to understand their point-of-view.
Of course this line of reasoning is based on the fallacy of disproportionate responsibly and the fallacy ofbeing right. Since many causes contribute to each result, we probably share in the blame along with many others, including unavoidable bad luck.
[SIZE=4]Strengthening the community[/SIZE]
Hostility toward the out-group increases the cohesion of the in-group and increases our sense of loyalty and belonging to our local community. The in-group always finds reasons to see itself as superior. Hostility toward the out-group increases the solidarity of the in-group.
[SIZE=4]Avoiding Toxins[/SIZE]
Disgust helps us avoid toxic substances. Contempt distances us from unworthy people. Hate is our defense against noxious behavior. We attempt to raise our self-esteem by contrasting ourselves with the evil, subhuman enemy. Pain, including psychological pain, mobilizes us psychically, mentally, and emotionally, to get away from the source (run) or remove the source (fight) of the pain.
[SIZE=4]Alleviating our Fears[/SIZE]
Because the feared other—the enemy—seems dangerous, we feel compelled to escape the threat or destroy the enemy. Threat strongly arouses the simple and primitive urge to “kill or be killed”. Revenge is pursued with a vengeance to eliminate the threat.
[SIZE=4]Bias Toward Identifying Danger[/SIZE]
When identifying a stranger as friend or foe, survival in primitive times may depend on a quick decision that does not mistake a foe. The result is a bias toward caution and the suspicion of danger. The safest assumption is that members of the out-group are dangerous. In security screening the consequences of afalse negative—mistaking foe for friend—is much more dangerous than the cost of a false positivehttp://www.emotionalcompetency.com/images/external.jpg—mistaking a friend for foe. The resulting optimum decision threshold results in an inherent suspicion of strangers called xenophobia, even though this is based on the fallacy of overgeneralization. As a result we often overreact against a suspected foe.
[SIZE=4]Permission to Destroy the Enemy[/SIZE]
Empathy, compassion, and cooperation are ubiquitous strengths of human nature. However, various errors in reasoning can overcome compassion and give us permission to destroy the enemy. This often involves seeing ourselves as the victims of an evil other. This gives us permission to do good by killing off the evil enemy and still regard ourselves as a good person. Because they are wrong, bad, evil, or subhuman they deserve to be killed. An asymmetrical view of the other, seen only from the first-person viewpoint, fuels hate. Viewing the other as very different from our self can allow hate to emerge. What begins as the otherquickly becomes the beast. Denigrating the victim gives us permission to harm them.
Disrespect is the precursor to hate. Heed the warning. Reevaluate the evidence, eliminate the distortedthinking, correct the errors in reasoning, and reject the temptation to dismiss the other.
[SIZE=4]Other Errors in Reasoning[/SIZE]
A wide variety of errors in reasoning allow us to sustain hate.
Common stereotypes include a variety of overgeneralizations about members of a group based on race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, or religious belief, along with profession and social class. These can create distorted and exaggerated negative images of the members of particular groups. This dehumanizes and demonizes “the other” and invites hate.
Misattributing benign behavior to evil intent can make us suspicious and fearful of others. Choosing to hate is an ineffective shortcut that avoids the hard work of analyzing the problem in depth. It attributes blameincorrectly.
Egocentrism, the unshakable belief that “I am correct”, self-justification, and the need to be right leads us too quickly to the conclusion that others are wrong, they are the obstacles, the source of our problems, evil, and need to be eliminated. We deny contrary evidence.
Stress and fear can lead us to revert to simplified and often incorrect primal thinking based on the fallacy ofpolarized thinking.
Hypersensitivity to criticism can cause us to revert to simplified, but incorrect rules governing other’s behavior.
Our desire to go along with the group, including the Ashe Effect and other group-think tendencies, can compromise our good judgment.
[SIZE=5]Genocide[/SIZE]
Hate fuels the tragedies of genocide throughout history and continues today. Millions of humans are murdered in pursuit of “ethnic cleansing” justified on the basis of eliminating the disgusting, subhuman, others. Genocide often relies on misattributing evil motives to an out-group, establishing them asscapegoats, and transforming these beliefs into a widely-accepted conspiracy theory. Stories are told that reinforce, popularize, and justify these distortions. The United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocidehttp://www.emotionalcompetency.com/images/external.jpg in 1948.
Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, describes these eight stages of genocide developmenthttp://www.emotionalcompetency.com/images/external.jpg that are “predictable but not inexorable