--who do you hate?
--huh? i don’t hate anyone.
--im not interested in that. you have to choose. tell me who you blame for the first world war goddam it and hate them for it.
--what are you talking about?
--and be quick about it. don’t waste my time thinking. just hate them. tell me who you hate. and make goddam sure your hatred comes through in your voice when you say it.
--but i don’t hate anyone...
--goddam it you’re not allowed not to hate anyone. don’t you know how many millions of innocent people were ground up and left to rot on the battlefields of world war one? not hating someone is a luxury in which youre not permitted to indulge. so be quick about it. and i want to hear the venom in your voice.
--but i dont understand...
--who the hell asked you to understand anything? understanding is inimical the necessary emotion. i want you to hate someone and make me believe it.
--well who do you hate?
--i hate the goddam french. sonsofbitches.
--what do you hate the french for?
--oh what? you interrogating me now? you asked me who i hated and i told you. why dont you do me the same goddam courtesy and answer the fucking question.
--ok. i hate canadians
--jesus christ. gimme a break. you cant hate your own nation. i want—
--do you wanna hear my reason?
--no i dont wanna hear your fucking reason. there is no acceptable reason to hate canada. its not permitted.
--just listen—
--absolutely not. dont think you can weasel out of your responsibility for hatred with subtle arguments. im not fucking interested. just answer the question. and i dont wanna hear any more bullshit about hating fucking canadians. smartass.
--ok. then i hate new zealand.
--jesus. are you fucking with me? new zealand is too pathetic to hate.
--exactly.
--no. not 'exactly'. youre a member of the commonwealth. youre not allowed to hate other member nations. especially ones as pathetic as new zealand.
--well who am i allowed to hate then?
--hate the goddam russians if you have to. hate the... italians. no. italians are even more pathetic than the kiwis. poor sonsofbitches--constantly reminded of past glory. every time they open their goddam eyes its another ancient ruin. who can blame them for teaming up with someone who promised a return to the good old days?
--can i hate the germans then?
--christ. everybody already hates the germans. what, are you afraid of making a mistake? why dont you hate the hungarians--or the austrians or whoever the hell they thought they were. what use were they to the germans? i bet the germans hated them.
--well i hate canadians.
--oh for cying out loud. not that nonsense again. i already told you: youre not allowed to hate canadians. why dont you hate the grand turk?
--the who?
--the turk. istanbul. the sick old bastard of europe.
--but i hate canadians.
--youre trying to piss me off, arent you? you can hate the russians, the germans, the french, italians—no i forgot you cant hate them--hungarians... who the hell am i forgetting?
--i wanna tell you why i hate canadians—
--i dont give a fuck why you hate canadians. and dont be working your sophistry on me. hate the turk. hate the goddam brits if you have to.
--i thought i couldnt hate commonwealth countries.
--well you can hate the brits. lords of the fucking manor in their bloody dreadnaughts. who am i missing? and dont mention the goddam canadians again.
--but i have a good reason—
--tell it to the hand. i wanna hear venom in your voice.
--but—
--alright you can hate the french and i ll choose someone else. id rather hate the grand turk anyway.
--why do you keep calling them the 'grand turk'?
--jesus. enough of your questions. if you cant hate those responsible for the great war i ll never have any respect for you.

End discrimination. Hate everybody.


Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.


Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.


I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.



Oooh, I really hate you, monkey-face!

Gee, when I was in Junior High School, I really, really hated Sara Horton. I hated her because even though I thought she was fat and ugly, she was popular. And in Junior High School, popularity means power. She and her gaggle of friends had resorted to calling me "monkey-face." In fact, they taunted me relentlessly with that name, at any opportunity. Of course at the tender age of 13, when my hormones were doing somersaults, my self-esteem was questionable and all I really wanted out of life was to learn something and when not learning make some friends. With the moniker "monkey-face," applied to me by no less than one of the school's most popular girls, I was, to the school's social-climbers, like kryptonite to Superman.

My revenge was sweet, however, but took a long time. By the end of our Senior year of High School, I was already driving to the Big City on the weekends and partying (and taking members of the social "A-list" with me) and Sarah Horton was fatter and more vindictive than ever, and sadly this only got her invited to the local B-parties. As competitive as High School is from a social standpoint, as young people grow and change, I found that being interesting and funny got me a lot farther than being hateful and viciously competitive. And to think about it, yeah, I did have a kinda monkey-face when I was a youngster. But I changed a lot between 13 and 16.


Quotations about hatred.

As I prepared for this writeup I knew what I wanted to say but because I'm so self conscious I wanted to start with some bright, witty quotes, as I often do, rather than a lede of my own writing. Which led me to the last of the quotes above. It was like a message from a deep, vast mysterious all-knowing voice: There before me were eight simple words that answered my question. They're from Ralph Waldo Emerson. So I'm going to leave the quotes in the order I initially chose to place them, but address them below backwards, from bottom to top.


Hate as poison of one's mind.

A close friend of mine who's been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for more years than I've been drinking alcohol once offered me a pearl of wisdom from AA's vast fountain of pearls of wisdom: "Hate (or worry, or jealousy, etc.) is just allowing something to occupy space in your mind rent-free." Easier said than done; but doable. There's a parallel between the teachings of Buddhism I've been studying and many of AA's "gee I shoulda thought of that" simple answers to complicated questions.

The third quote hereinabove (multiple-lines) is from the Sutta Nipata, a book of Buddhist wisdom. Would that we could, with these words always in mind, go about our lives, the world would be a much nicer place to live in.

Although I'm a Buddhist, it took a Google search to find a piece of Buddhist writing that contained the word "hatred;" and I couldn't find anything in a cursory search that contained the outright word "hate." The Buddhists obviously have no time to discuss hatred. I know why - we seek simplicity and beauty and love in its purest state. For years before I took Buddhism seriously, my ability to judge people was often hindered by my personal habit of trusting people until they give me a reason not to be trusted. I found myself liking people until they gave me a reason not to be liked. By now, you're probably assuming that I was clueless, or had not a whit of common sense. Kinda. Let's suffice it to say that I've suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune at the hands of less-than-genuine individuals more often than I care to admit.


Hate in the workplace.

Funny, one of the ways I found out about E2 was by Googling "restaurant customers." One of the results was Sneff's fine writeup Ten things I hate about restaurant customers. All my Buddhist teachings about "love, not hate" went right out the window as I clicked eagerly on the link. I wanted to know what made someone else in my business as irate as I about the idiots among the otherwise delightful population we call our customers.

Now, thankfully, I enjoy my job. Otherwise I'd do something else. In the writeup bad tippers in restaurants, noder Cordelia points out that "Nine times out of ten, the servers who griped the loudest about poor tippers were also the poorest servers. The ones who, if you had more than enough servers, you'd be happy to lay off." How true. How many times have I heard servers talk among themselves, "Oh, I hate them; it's your turn to wait on them." Gee, there's a lot of hatred among restaurant workers. If you doubt me, consult www.stainedapron.com. It's a collection of stories from restaurant people who really ought to choose another line of work. Brace yourself; some of the stuff contained on that site made me gag.


The most hated guy in the world ca. 1974

But I digress. Now back to the issue at hand. Back when I was 12 and daily falling prey to Sarah Horton and her gang, I thought that I was just the most unpopular, saddest guy in the universe. I had friends; some of whom went as far as to instruct me to ignore the taunting. Then, I witnessed what was up until that time the greatest public humiliation endured by any person in history (or so said Walter Cronkite; and he was second in importance only to God, so I guessed it was true). The President of the United States of America resigned his job. Nixon told the American public that it was for the good of the nation and in the interest of healing that he resign.

My mother spat venom at the television set "... oh yeah, so you won't have all your dirty laundry aired out in an impeachment hearing!" My mother hated Dick Nixon. In fact, when my father voted for him in 1968, (and being the upstanding, honest soul he always was, he told her despite having an inkling what the consequences would be) my mother didn't speak to him for an entire two weeks. Later on I discovered that, more than the principle of voting Republican when you're registered Democrat, my mom didn't know what she'd do if her friends in the Unitarian church found out that my dad had voted for the guy that she and some other Unitarians wrote hate-mail to.

I watched the television closely. I read the text of Nixon's speeches over and over. And in my mind and my heart I thought "wouldn't it be awful to be him right about now." Dyed-in-the-wool Republicans were on TV and in the press howling about the smear that he'd brought upon the Republican party. And I needn't say that the Democrats were having a field day. I'd hazard a guess Ralph Nader took copies of the New York Times chronicling Nixon's resignation to bed with him and masturbated nightly for at least a month.

The second quote hereinabove was uttered by Dick Nixon, on the occasion of a talk given to White House Staff and workers, from Secretary of State all the way down to the janitorial staff, they all were there, in a little room in the White House. That speech was Nixon's opportunity to thank them, and answer for them the question, "what does it feel like to be you right about now?" They're Nixon's own words, not the ones so often attributed to Nixon but actually coined by Theodore Roosevelt, to whom Nixon gave credit in the very same speech, "The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you're really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain."

It was with those words in mind that I felt sorry, a deep sadness, for this man. Years later, when his beloved Pat died, again I thought of this brilliant man who endured the hatred of so many people. The only President who enters a room and instead of people murmuring "he used to be President" they say "oh, there's the guy who resigned."

I could explore the tepid, murky waters of the subject: "Who was worse for the country, Nixon or Dubya?" but that's out of the scope of this writeup.


In closing...

Now, finally, we get to a quote from Elle Eden an artist and wordsmith with a sharp tongue and sharper wit. Wouldn't it make a great bumper sticker? I was surprised to have found it, because when ignorant people malign someone because of their race or sex, or sexuality for that matter, in my presence, and then give me the elbow, or the "wink, wink, nod, nod" I always give the same answer. "I don't make distinctions between black people or white people, gay people or straight people; I solved that a long time ago when I decided to hate everybody!" That usually shuts 'em up; unless of course, they're from the Ku Klux Klan, but then again, nobody's ever "come out" to me in my lifetime about being a Kluxer. My religion tells me that I shouldn't hate members of the Ku Klux Klan; but I'm afraid that I'm not quite that saintly. But when I go back to what I said about hatred of things merely being poisonous thoughts occupying your mind rent-free, it all falls in place. It's not up to me to hate the Kluxers. It's not up to me to hate people who kill other people. It's not up to me to hate people who hate other people. 'Cause until my own backyard's in neat and tidy order, why should I be bothered investing so much emotional energy in someone else's backyard, eh?

SOURCES:

Buddhist Quotes: http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/resources/buddhist_quotes.html

Laura Moncur's Motivational Quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2617.html

Quotegarden.com: http://www.quotegarden.com/hate.html

Hatequest 2007

Ha"tred (?), n. [OE. hatred, hatreden. See Hate, and cf. Kindred.]

Strong aversion; intense dislike; hate; an affection of the mind awakened by something regarded as evil.

Syn. -- Odium; ill will; enmity; hate; animosity; malevolence; rancor; malignity; detestation; loathing; abhorrence; repugnance; antipathy. See Odium.

 

© Webster 1913.

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