The topic of this book is important as we are seeing a rise in all sorts of hatred across many societies. Social media seems not to helping -rather the reverse: fanning the flames. Our global community is increasingly being stressed by climate forcing -related changes which are beginning to push populations into harm's way in terms of forcing people to confront others who are being demonised. And our propensity to emote synergistically with those around us has always been a force for fanning the flames of conflict as we can be induced to hate someone designated 'enemy'.
I came to this book also with my own questions about how anger and hate interrelate and how our psychology around hate can be manipulated and how that manipulation can be counteracted.
I thought I'd give this book a try also because I recently became intrigued by this:
Hilge Landweer distinguishes between Verachtung (contempt) and Hass (hate). She argues that contempt fits perfectly into the neoliberal emotional landscape, because it’s a gesture of turning away from, and dehumanising the other person, not taking them seriously. Hate, on the other hand, takes its object very seriously. In a system of class hierarchies, there’s contempt from above and hatred from below. The ruling class don’t have to take the enemy seriously most of the time – unless the working class organises and strikes. But when you’re an oppressed person, you really have to take your oppression seriously, because otherwise you can’t exist. You can’t survive... " https://novaramedia.com/2023/04/17/is-hate-politically-useful/ ...
This was intriguing not least because it recognises the place of power in our emotional responding. And I recognised something in this about where anger and hate might be legitimate and about that adage "love the sinner, hate the sin" -is that sound advice? Or is there more complexity involved? And, as a Christian, is some of Landweer's analysis anywhere near what we might want to bring to reflection on Ephesians 6:1-10?
The book spends a lot of time initially on history and evolutionary background to violence and discrimination. At this level, it didn't meet with my desire to examine hate as emotion firstly rather than as social attitudes relating to othering. Of course, this does lead me to consider the the relationship between othering, in-group and out-group attitudes on the one hand and detestation or contempt in individual psyches -and indeed the genesis of such hatred as well as the social construction or structuring of such emotions.
One of the things I appreciated was the outlining of good reasons to consider that homo sapiens are fundamentally a co-operative species (which scriptural-theologically I would locate in the narratives of Genesis 1 and 2) though that sociability is capable of being co-opted to ill. And the examination of the move from hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural societies with cities helps to justify both dimensions of that thesis.
I felt that the examination of wars and of just war theories was helpful and nuanced. It was also enjoyable that there is a British centre of gravity in the writing, in an era when so much takes a perspective of the other side of the Atlantic.
So, while this was not what I was expecting, it did throw light helpfully on the psychology and anthropology of war and prejudice. I guess the core thesis is that there are traceable factors that become culturally embedded but as it is 'merely' culture and not hardwired biology that does these things (though biology does play a part but not determinedly) , then we can design cultural ways out and around and beyond these hatreds.
I warmed to the authors deft handling and compassionate and fair-minded approach.
Links
Why We Hate on Bookshop
Michael Ruse’s Website
#WhyWeHate
