re: #1 jvic

Yes, the article is titled The >Psychology of Hate and it’s interesting, but…

Hate is such a strong and widespread (in potential and in actuality) emotion that it must have served an evolutionary purpose. Surely understanding hate’s evolutionary role is essential to understanding hate, yet the article does not touch on that at all.

As David Wong put it, “Humans are social animals, and by that I of course mean we are bred by evolution for group murder.”

Once upon a time, yes, hate served a purpose. It kept tribes together as societies from the tribal level to modern nations control people by focusing their hate.

Now? I’m not so sure. Hate served a purpose when the best we had was fire sharpened sticks. The best we could do was kill everyone ‘not us’ in a day’s walk. In the present day we can kill people on the other side of the world at the push of a button. In fact we could probably kill everyone in the world at the push of a button.

Which means as often happens in evolution that what was a positive trait in one environment becomes a negative one in a different environment.

We humans are supposed to be able to direct our own fates. If we direct them with hatred as the main motivator, we’ll be extinct.