12:17pm May 27, 2014

Okay, I am getting really leery of some stuff I see on tumblr.

So what else is new?

But I actually saw someone saying that hate can be constructive, and that denouncing hate is bad.

I understood some of the points they were making. They said that some people assume that all oppression is based on hate, and that if you solved hate, then all the problems would go away. And I understand why that’s a simplistic way to look at the world.

But seriously, hate is not ever constructive.

Also, hate is not an emotion. It’s not just some kind of extra-intense form of anger. I wish I could define hate in words, but just like you can’t really define love (which also isn’t an emotion, at least not in the sense I mean here), you can’t really define hate either.

And hate doesn’t always look like rage.

Hate can look like love. Hate can look like indifference. Hate can look like anything. What makes it hate, is what it is underneath, what it does. Not how it feels, not how it looks.

And hate is bad. Hate is bad no matter who it’s directed at or why.

I’ve only come close to hating once in my life. I was badly hurt by a person, she hurt me in ways I didn’t even know were possible to be hurt, and she promised to keep on hurting me as long as we lived. And I started to wish that she did not exist, that she had never existed, that she would just die. That feeling scared me, so I talked to a friend about it.

My friend said, “I understand why you’re coming to hate her. And in some ways, she deserves your hate. She has earned your hate. But even though in your position, you have a perfect right to hate her? I really hope you don’t come to hate her. Not because of the damage it would do to her. But because of the damage it would do to you.”

She told me that if I hated this person, it would change me. It would change me to someone who was living in a state of hate. Because you can’t just hate one thing. You’re either “in hate” or you’re not “in hate”. And if you’re “in hate”, then the hate will go in every direction, the hate will go inside of you, and the hate will harm you in ways you can’t even imagine. It will destroy you from the inside out.

This is why hate is not ever good. Even if it could be justified to aim it at another person or group of people, it never stops there. You can't direct hate, hate is a state of mind, and that state of mind will come to rule you and define you and change the way you interact with yourself, the world, and everyone around you.

If you think you can just hate in one direction and keep that hate compartmentalized, and use the hate rather than be used by it, then you don’t understand hate.

Love doesn’t solve everything. I know that. People say it a lot, in response to ~all you need is love~ sorts of naiveté. But…

Love is necessary in order to solve anything in a lasting way.

That whole thing of “necessary but not sufficient”? That’s love.

Love, in this sense, is also not an emotion. Love, like hate, is a state that person can be in, or can be outside of. Love means that you care what happens to other people, on a fundamental level.

And without love, things will fail. Some sooner, some later, but they will fail.

Because without caring what happens to people, you’ve got no foundation to build on.

Love is difficult. Love is demanding. But love is absolutely worth it and necessary.

I understand that it’s hard to love. I don’t think everyone can just suddenly be loving. I struggle all the time with being a loving person, even though love is my highest value, even though every time I’ve been close to death I’ve been faced by the question “Have I loved enough and have I expressed that love?” It’s so important to me, and yet I don’t always manage to do it. So I’m not trying to judge people here.

But people who say that love is bad? That kindness is bad? That hate can be good? (I am not all meaning the same person here, these are just things I have seen over and over in tumblr contexts.)

This is not useful. No, it’s worse than not useful. It’s completely fucked up on every possible level.

This is not something you can analyze to death and find all this weird stuff about how love is awful and hate is good. (Although I do think that saying that love is bad, or that hate is good, are practically inevitable results of ideology. Even if nobody specifically says those things, they’ll say things that stem from those ideas. Because ideologies turn things upside-down really fast.)

Love is necessary. It’s at least necessary as something to strive for. Without love, anything you do will eventually fall apart in a really ugly way. Love alone won’t save things, but without love you can’t save anything. And kindness is not some kind of evil thing. And kindness is not a weakness. And kindness does not mean being a doormat. And kindness does not mean accepting injustice, rather the opposite.

I know, I know, I’m a Hufflepuff, but seriously people.

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