More than 70 years after WWII, few topics stir such heated conversations in France as the collaborator vs resistant debate. It boiled back up after the Eichmann trial and never left the surface. In 2008, the Bibliothèque de Paris hung the work of André Zucca on its walls. The pictures depicted ordinary Parisians going about their daily lives under the occupation. His work revealed a third, seemingly larger category of French people: the passive citizen. It was a scandal. It seemed the passive citizen drew almost as much hate as the "collabo."

Hello, I listened to your recent episode concerning hate. The guest Berit Brogaard suggested that hate when not acted upon can have positive benefits for a person, although she did not disclose any details about how these benefits manifest in individuals or society. The reason I believe is because there are no examples of this.
What happens when such a strong emotion as hate is indulged? I think it would seek an outlet. What happens when one is not provided because of philosophical constraints? Is the individual who holds hate and does not act on it destined to just constantly grumble and become bitter?
I think this creates an atmosphere wherein we want to blame other humans for all the problems in the world.
When we blame we create enemies. This tendency may feel good at the moment and bolster our egos but is ultimately self defeating. The reason is that whether we like it or not we are all to some extent dependant on each other collectively, and wouldn’t it be a more happy and functional collective if we held feelings of goodwill towards our fellow humans rather than hate?
I would like to ask your guest Berit if she thinks we are controlled by a need to hate or do we have a choice.
Cheers! Love the show!
PS: Most People are a product of their conditioning and do not make conscious choices.

All good questions about a universal human condition. But, as usual, I'll offer something a bit different. My question is: Do we hate people for who they are, or is our hatred more about what they do---or don't do? No one, it seems to me, is intrinsically abhorrent,solely based on their ethnic and/or racial characteristics. Anyone who claims to hate a group, is naive, as to the foundations of such hatred. Why? Because, those sorts of stigma are mired in fear; mistrust; suspicion and a few other misconstructions.. Such unreasoning behavior can also emerge from superstition and personal history. But, all else equal, it is not who someone is, but what she does that makes her abhorrent to someone else. I would charge gentle readers and thinkers to consider this position carefully. Think of those whom you dislike or with whom you may even violently disagree: ask yourself where that truly comes from.

Are you feeling threatened? Jealous? Envious?---because of something they have but you do not?
Is that ' something' a something you can, in all likelihood, never expect to attain? Hatred is a trickster.
It fools us, far more often than we are fooled by other people. And, it is such a drain on those better angels of our nature.. Think of these remarks as a primer on a philosophy of psychology. Whether you can agree with them, or no.

Or, in fewer words, we tend to hate people and things foreign to us; those we don't understand. Hate then, at bottom, springs from fear. Blind, unreasoning, irrational fear...

The ontology of hate is a relatively simple matter and known since ancient times, as reaction to compelled accommodation of an intrinsic incompatibility. Usually characterized as an emotion, it's better or more accurately described in de-subjectivized form as an epiphenomenon caused by an unwanted yet unremovable existence. What makes it special is that the persistence of its object is exactly calibrated with the desire for its non-existence. And this makes hatred a special relationship between two existing things, the reacting hater and the persisting hated. So called "hate groups", then, would not belong in this class, since the hatred there is described in abstract and general terms, --not applying directly to a hated object, but indirectly through something shared by a community of subjects. One might even go so far as to say that love for each other figures more fundamentally in such groups than does the hatred for their stated targets. The Delian League headed up by ancient Athens, for example, constitutes by this criterion an anti-Persian hate group. How might this compare to participant Neuman's view that hate springs from fear? Certainly the Persian army was feared, but in addition to the fear of invasion, had not a common hatred contributed to Greek solidarity prior to the Persian wars?

In relation to the essential predicate of undesired object-persistence, it's frequent to observe the reference to this persistence used as an apology for failing to use one's own capability of removing it. This occurs for example in the North American slave-reparations case. Because some suppose it impossible to do while nevertheless justified if it were, a shared negative view of those who continue to demand it induces a group commitment to remove the persisting demand rather than to exercise the potential for fulfilling it.

In such cases hatred is a product of failure to perform a duty prior to any effort to undertake it. The persisting object becomes a constant reminder of their moral failure, and as such, object-removal efforts are transferred from the unfulfilled duty to its reminder. Part of the problem in the stated case seem to emerge from the elevated complexity and magnitude of required considerations. If one assumes for example the fundamental distinction between compensation (the obligation for which is generated by wrongs suffered by the living) and reparation (whose demand is produced by transgressions committed against those now deceased), it is apparent that any legitimacy of obligations which arise from them can not dispense with an historical description of considerable complexity. Two such descriptions are of effects of discrete causes, one concerning whether or not stolen property should or can be returned, and another raising the issue of structural advantage which one group or demographic has in comparison to another as a verifiable effect of previous crimes, even if many occurred under authority of legality. A third description is based by contrast on a continuous causality extending back to the original perpetrators, not as contributing to their deliberate actions which initiated the respective series of undesirable effects, but rather as subject to the increasing set of unfulfilled duties which began at the time the crimes were originally discovered to have been committed.*

Obligation-quantity of generated duty-failure which is implied by these considerations, then, is likely to appear to override any potential of correcting the imbalance. But this might not be the case if one does not limit obligation-demand to those who own stolen property, are unjustifiably advantaged, or are participating in injustice-permission. Rather, duty fulfillment-obligation here need not exclude traditional victims of historic injustice, but on the contrary should include determination-demand of amounts and manner of reparative distribution and subsequently be the central component of any corrective measures.

Perhaps paradoxically, responsibility on the side of the historically disadvantaged and expropriated constitutes by the above a principle of parsimony in determining approaches to reparative justice, which reduces its foreboding complexity. I say "paradoxically" because it's the immensity of the duty-failure of those to blame for it which causes many to coalesce into groups committed to its denial.
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* No current obligation arises however from any failure to prevent such crimes from happening by those with knowledge that they were going to occur, since the responsibility to prevent or impede them disappears once they are committed.

The role of societal norms and cultural conditioning in shaping hate is sneaky. As Daniel and Harold have discussed the ontology of hate and the relationship between hater and hated, what about society's expectations, values, and norms and their contribution to developing and perpetuating hatred?

Moreover, the impact of social media and technology on hate is worth examining. Platforms that facilitate the spread of misinformation and hateful ideologies should be called out, as they significantly exacerbate or even create hate groups. This waxing will only worsen as AI tweaks the conversation.

The influence of leadership and authority figures on shaping public opinion and attitudes towards hate is likely our most pressing concern with elections starting to kindle. Leaders have the power either to promote or mitigate hostility, and both actions can have far-reaching consequences. The debates will get dicey, sharp, and informative (at least to those who ask the right questions.)

In addition to understanding the nature of hate, let's explore strategies for addressing and reducing it. The salve could include education, promoting empathy, fostering intergroup dialogue, or implementing policy changes that challenge existing biases and discriminatory practices.

The relationship between hate and other negative emotions, such as anger, resentment, or frustration, should also be investigated. As Harold has mentioned, fear plays a role in the development of hate, but other emotions may also contribute to the formation and perpetuation of hate. Funding emotion research, both constructionist and natural models, will pay huge returns in future battles and, if done well, resolutions.

It is crucial to address hate's psychological and emotional toll on individuals. The impact of experiencing or witnessing animus toward one's mental health, self-esteem, overall well-being, and the potential for hate, can, are, and will lead to acts of violence or self-harm. Here I'm thinking about generational injury calling out race, gender and, I'm going to say it, class.

Incorporating these aspects into the ongoing conversation about hate will provide a more comprehensive understanding and facilitate the development of effective strategies to address and mitigate hate within society.