"The Hate Comes First."
I've long been fascinated by a story from the days just before WWII. Intrigued by how Hitler rose to power and brought Germany back from an economic basketcase, the Japanese sent some envoys to learn if the same could be done in their country. The envoys returned with bad news: What Germany did to unify the country wouldn't work in Japan because Japan, being 99% Japanese, had no Jews.
The lesson: Hate unites. People band together to fight a perceived enemy. Without an enemy, they don't band together nearly as well. Even the Free Love hippie crowd worked only because "Love is the answer" was seen as a reaction against perceived haters of love, an attitude that rallied those who hate haters, if you will. In the same way, anyone who states early and directly that they are "non-judgmental" and "accepting" often prove to be anything but; they simply need to separate themselves from those they perceive to be rigidly dogmatic and judgmental.
This article more thoroughly outlines the psychological causes and impacts of this tendency to demonize without analysis. Take, for example, this exposition on "splitting:"
Splitting -- reducing the other person to a binary abstraction of all good or all bad, is a primitive, or regressive, defense mechanism used when the emotional level and complexity is greater than a person's capacity to interpret it. For example, once your boyfriend cheats on you, he becomes a jerk, completely. Even things he had done that were good-- like give money to the poor-- are reinterpreted in this light ("he only did that to get people to like him.") Who splits? Someone with a lot of unfocused rage and frustration, i.e. the "primitive" emotions.
Currently, our social psyche has three main targets of splitting: President Bush, terrorists, and liberals. Depending on your political bent, two of those are often conflated.
Splitting says: Bush is all bad, period. Nothing he does is good, and if it is good, it is from some malicious (or) selfish motivation, or an accident related to his incompetence to even be self-serving. Similarly on the other side, liberals are weak, corruptible, treasonous.
Splitting is always polar; once something is declared "all bad," an opposite is necessarily declared all good. Importantly, this isn't a comparison between the two-- he is bad, but she is better; it's perceived to be two independent, unconnected, assessments, even though to anyone else looking from the outside, they are so obviously linked. So hatred of, say, liberals is thought to be independent of your preference for Bush, but in reality it is only because you hate liberals that you like Bush. The hate comes first.
For some reason, I've long recognized the tendencies this article discusses, but have had a bitch of a time articulating my thoughts on the topic. Especially nowadays. It's gotten so bad I've set myself a goal: I refuse, when I can, to declare anything good or bad. "Good" and "bad" designations lead to tortured logic and train-wreck conclusions such as those noted in the article. I've found it intensely frustrating to declare myself someone who refuses to believe in Good or Evil. People naturally assume me to be nihilistic, a conclusion I find misses the point entirely. I'm just trying to analyze from a factual perspective, trying to weigh as many relevant factors as possible before reaching a judgment: Is this situation beneficial or detrimental? How can it be tweaked toward providing benefit?
I do believe in Good and Evil, but in a different way. Broccoli is evil simply because I hate eating and smelling it. That's just me. You have your evils, I have mine. To you, war is evil. To me broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus form an Axis of Evil. We can get together and spout Declarations of Evil until we suck all of the oxygen out of the room, but what would that prove other than our stubbornness, our refusal to listen to someone else's contributions? It's better by far to stick to the facts, to share only that which can be independently verified and corroborated. I've found when everyone sticks to the facts, the conclusions are often surprising and useful to all. Opinions? Leave 'em on the porch next to the rocker and the whittling stick.
(Note: This is not what I do, but what I aspire to do. Everyone who has ever met me knows this.)
Seriously, despite my goal of fact over emotion, to my embarassment I found myself reflected in many of the examples cited in the article. I hope you find it as useful.
Article finding credit where due to squidb0i.
The lesson: Hate unites. People band together to fight a perceived enemy. Without an enemy, they don't band together nearly as well. Even the Free Love hippie crowd worked only because "Love is the answer" was seen as a reaction against perceived haters of love, an attitude that rallied those who hate haters, if you will. In the same way, anyone who states early and directly that they are "non-judgmental" and "accepting" often prove to be anything but; they simply need to separate themselves from those they perceive to be rigidly dogmatic and judgmental.
This article more thoroughly outlines the psychological causes and impacts of this tendency to demonize without analysis. Take, for example, this exposition on "splitting:"
Splitting -- reducing the other person to a binary abstraction of all good or all bad, is a primitive, or regressive, defense mechanism used when the emotional level and complexity is greater than a person's capacity to interpret it. For example, once your boyfriend cheats on you, he becomes a jerk, completely. Even things he had done that were good-- like give money to the poor-- are reinterpreted in this light ("he only did that to get people to like him.") Who splits? Someone with a lot of unfocused rage and frustration, i.e. the "primitive" emotions.
Currently, our social psyche has three main targets of splitting: President Bush, terrorists, and liberals. Depending on your political bent, two of those are often conflated.
Splitting says: Bush is all bad, period. Nothing he does is good, and if it is good, it is from some malicious (or) selfish motivation, or an accident related to his incompetence to even be self-serving. Similarly on the other side, liberals are weak, corruptible, treasonous.
Splitting is always polar; once something is declared "all bad," an opposite is necessarily declared all good. Importantly, this isn't a comparison between the two-- he is bad, but she is better; it's perceived to be two independent, unconnected, assessments, even though to anyone else looking from the outside, they are so obviously linked. So hatred of, say, liberals is thought to be independent of your preference for Bush, but in reality it is only because you hate liberals that you like Bush. The hate comes first.
For some reason, I've long recognized the tendencies this article discusses, but have had a bitch of a time articulating my thoughts on the topic. Especially nowadays. It's gotten so bad I've set myself a goal: I refuse, when I can, to declare anything good or bad. "Good" and "bad" designations lead to tortured logic and train-wreck conclusions such as those noted in the article. I've found it intensely frustrating to declare myself someone who refuses to believe in Good or Evil. People naturally assume me to be nihilistic, a conclusion I find misses the point entirely. I'm just trying to analyze from a factual perspective, trying to weigh as many relevant factors as possible before reaching a judgment: Is this situation beneficial or detrimental? How can it be tweaked toward providing benefit?
I do believe in Good and Evil, but in a different way. Broccoli is evil simply because I hate eating and smelling it. That's just me. You have your evils, I have mine. To you, war is evil. To me broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus form an Axis of Evil. We can get together and spout Declarations of Evil until we suck all of the oxygen out of the room, but what would that prove other than our stubbornness, our refusal to listen to someone else's contributions? It's better by far to stick to the facts, to share only that which can be independently verified and corroborated. I've found when everyone sticks to the facts, the conclusions are often surprising and useful to all. Opinions? Leave 'em on the porch next to the rocker and the whittling stick.
(Note: This is not what I do, but what I aspire to do. Everyone who has ever met me knows this.)
Seriously, despite my goal of fact over emotion, to my embarassment I found myself reflected in many of the examples cited in the article. I hope you find it as useful.
Article finding credit where due to squidb0i.