The Importance of Hating People

The idea that we might, at points, need to create room for hatred – that mental well-being might rely on a selective time-bound capacity to hate certain people quite profoundly – may sound deeply implausible. Our world has long been steeped in notions of forgiveness and of the maturity of an empathetic mindset; the only associations we tend to have of hatred are of pathology and barbarism.

But this is to overlook that when people close to us do us wrong, it isn’t merely thoughtful or elevated to dismiss our injuries and turn away. This is to distort reality and drive a sickness into our bodies and our souls, from where we start to suffer from insomnia, depression, cynicism and impotence. We are so scared that hatred might be the last word on a situation that we forget to honour its legitimate role in any process of recovery. It is as psychologically mature to hate those who have injured us (and to notice cleanly and unambiguously that they have done so) as it is to know, at other times, how to recognise and accept tenderness.

There is nothing remotely vindictive or base about properly spotting that, for example:

— someone hasn’t returned our generosity

— someone has led us to believe in them and then callously let us go

— someone has failed to show us gratitude 

— someone has discharged their sour, vindictive moods on us

— someone was always too busy to take care of our needs

— someone never listened

— someone left our house in a mess

— someone smiled at us for a long time and told us they adored us – only to quietly sell us a string of lies.

It isn’t peevish or unkind to spot all this and to baulk and curse, to condemn and insult. It belongs to a correct reading of reality and a quest to return to a balanced economy of good and evil. 

The reason why some of us have such difficulty with this, and instinctively go mute and keep smiling, has very little to do with psychological evolution – and much to do, far more poignantly, with having been mistreated at our origins. Those who have been unable to identify their own early torment can subsequently have a very hard time feeling appropriately incensed.

It’s generally because we have – in our pasts – been constantly made to feel guilty and ashamed for what was not our responsibility that we now operate without an instinct for emotional self-preservation or a functioning compass of accountability. We have been schooled not to register the slaps we receive. We haven’t been loved enough to know how to name hatred.

For many of us, our childhoods gave us a lengthy covert education in not understanding who the villain might be. How could it be a parent who – though they entirely neglected us – nevertheless paid for nice holidays and good schools? How could we hate someone who deprived us of any intellectual self-confidence but was so obviously clever and revered by the people around them? What could we do if we were described as ‘bad’ and ‘selfish’ by someone much taller and more capable than us? How could we resent someone who was ill or addicted? These are not puzzles a small child is easily equipped to unpick.

As a result, for some of us, it will be the very last and most utterly implausible thought that someone else might have decided to inflict harm.

The problem with our instinctive forgiveness is what it does to our interiors. Hatred that hasn’t found its correct source doesn’t dissipate into lofty forbearance; it turns inwards and starts to gnaw at the spirit of its victims. If our parent isn’t bad, we must be. If an ex-lover isn’t to blame, we must be. If a friend can’t be at fault, we must be. We must be as ugly, guilty, deformed, awful and twisted as they are elevated, decent, committed and noble. 

Whatever the salutary role of self-criticism, there are a great many occasions when we should observe a simple truth: we have been done over and have every right to be livid. If we have been betrayed, we are right to be indignant. If someone left us without accounting for themselves, we have a right to resent them. If we were victims of meanness in childhood, it is part of health to feel offended.

We don’t need to stay in an angry space forever. There will be plenty of time – eventually – for serenity and complicated interpretations of why our enemies acted as they did. But this will only help if we have first been able to use expletives and throw something (soft) across the room and bang our fists and, if necessary, go to the basement or the forest and scream very loudly for a long time. This isn’t madness or a slide into immaturity. It is restitution and proportionate complaint. Hatred is not the end-goal of health; it may, for a time, be its only rightful and dignified means.