Hostility and Hate
Hatred is often misrepresented as an emotion. Hatred is another complex of
cognition, behavior, emotions and feelings. Hatred is based on casemaking and
story telling and thrives on misinformation. Hate can be defined as persistent,
recurrent story telling that treats outsiders as aliens who are to be feared and
despised. The emotions associated with hatred are fear, disgust, anger and rage.
Hostility is a broad term that refers the mix of cognitive structures
associated with hatred, the frequent expression of anger, threatening displays
and the dysphoric feelings that are prolonged and/or recurrent. A hostile human
usually has a well-developed case against the targets of his or her hostility.
The case is prejudicial and unyielding. Hostility is a feature of discrimination
that is practiced systematically and may become a permanent feature of an
individual human's life.
Hate is mostly a cognitive process that is constructed slowly but surely;
the emotional components may erupt only occasionally. Angry hate is destructive
and leads to acts of aggression that, from time to time, disrupt efforts to
establish peaceful co-existence in many areas of the world. The beliefs that
support hate tend to be enduring and resist modification by new learning.
Strong beliefs associated with religious fundamentalism almost always have a
hate component and underlie enduring or recurring conflicts. Religions involve
groups with strict boundaries, inclusion-exclusion rules and belief in the
superiority of group leaders, icons and gods. All groups, large and small,
define and defend their boundaries with hate stories.
The benefit of hate is to enhance the readiness of a group to defend itself
or to motivate an attack to weaken by killing members of and stealing scarce
resources from a neighboring or rival group. An alien is any creature, real or
imaginary, who is not a member of the group. The dynamics of hate involve
repeated telling of a hate stories to arouse fear and anger.
Hate groups, preparing for an attack, will meet and use story telling,
dancing, chanting, music, drama and ritual to arouse the emotions of the group
to energize an attack. Mobs, hostility and hate go together. The reptilian part
of the human brain clings to old routines even when circumstances change and the
old routines are no longer effective. Painful past events tend to be recalled
more often by selftalk and are repeated and embellished as casemaking. The
hostile case argues that someone or some group has wronged you in the past
and/or will harm you in the future; the wrongs are detailed; revenge and
retribution is sought. Grudges and revenge motivation, as hate, can be
maintained for generations.
