the main defining characteristic of hate is a feeling of helpless trappedness
Hate as the feeling of being helplessly trapped
9 tweets · May 2024 · 133 likes · 8 retweets · read on Twitter
I may fear bears I may growl at a small dog that's being aggressive but I HATE mosquitoes. an individual mosquito, I do not hate, I merely kill. (unless I'm trying to sleep and it's buzzing and I can't quite get it, and then I do hate it!)
a kid who says "I hate you mom!" is expressing this sense of trappedness. most adults, if they don't like their parents, mostly just ignore them, not hate them. and "hate" mostly shows up in relation to the remaining inescapability (plus you can't get new parents)
when someone says "I hate myself", this is reflective of that fact that the part of them that is hating some other part, is stuck with that other part!
when there's hate between the sexes, same thing. people are trapped both by the social reality of men & women being part of all societies, and also by the push-pull tension of their lust & love of the other sex, but being unable to navigate the resultant intimacy
I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup kind of makes the same point it's being stuck with some group that is different that causes you to hate them slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-c…
to get a little bit spicier... what's going on with hatred of queer people? one rough guess is that the presence of queer people fucks with peoples' ontologies in a way that people find dysregulating and desperately, panickedly, wish would stop
hate is when you can't get away, so the anger ("go away") turns into hate ("i must destroy them")
a great diagram+thread from Emmett. also has hate as involving trappedness (maybe inspired by my thread?) but as fear+trapped rather than what I would have assumed of anger+trapped
