Kevin Bemel ·
The Virtue in Hating
If love conquers all, by what mechanism are injustice, bigotry, and murder destroyed?
You love justice, equality, and life and everything will be okay, right? Movies and music extol the transformative power of love. Perhaps human endeavor would work according to such a noble ideal if it were not for one thing: human nature. You have only to contemplate the behavior of a child to realize that they must be taught to share, be self-controlled, and refrain from self-absorption. All of these are necessary for love to exist.
Hate has become a much-maligned idea during the previous half century. Yet there is nothing inherently evil in hating. In fact, surely it is meritorious to hate evil. Otherwise, you would have to love or be indifferent to it.
Love and hate are often identified as opposites but in truth the opposite of love is dispassion. Ask married people and they will tell you fighting entails very strong emotions just like love. But the marriage faces doom when one or both spouses become emotionless. Viewed from this perspective, hate sometimes becomes necessary if only to keep a couple together while they flip the coin back to love.
While most often the micro does not translate well to the macro, in this case societally it becomes evident that in order for love to prevail you must hate those forces that impede it. It is virtuous for you to hate injustice, bigotry, and murder because through loathing they will be demolished.
Question – How does hate impact your ability to love?
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