Issues with Hate…

Now don't get me wrong… I can't say I like wrongdoers, but I find it hard to say I hate them…

“Why?” you may ask… Well, the way I see it people are ‘victims of circumstance'…

A victim of circumstance (which really includes us all in some way) is someone who can't help doing something as it is what they have been told to do, what they have always done, or perhaps what seems most logical for them to do…

Consider the person who had to steal bread just to survive…
Consider the person who killed for their country…
Consider the person who always been around a certain environment where they may have been the stronger one, and perhaps have become the bully…

I can't find it in me to hate outright someone who appears to have some sort of abnormal situation in their life. They may be classified as having difficult circumstances (where they become the victim) and this may include them having traits akin to those with mental illnesses…

Let's consider one of the ‘cruellest' people known to us… Adolf Hitler…
Okay, I can't say I like the guy, but in some ways he was trying to do the right things, he was merely aimed in the wrong direction.

Note: great apologies here for those who have suffered somehow by his hand, but there's more to the situation than often meets the eye.
Also, apologies as I don't know an awful lot about this particular topic.

Hitler was trying to create a perfect society. In his mind the Arian race was considered the perfect race, and to create a Utopia, he needed only these Arians…

Also Hitler didn't simply make himself leader, he was brought by the masses to the top. The power he wielded was nothing without a country to follow him. Perhaps if the country of Germany was wiser, they would never have let this kind of person to lead a country…

The people of Germany may never have done what they did if it were not for Hitler's guiding hand. But don't blame all the people, some of them were surely showing respect to their leader and their country by following Hitler's words…

The logic of Hitler was to blame. The people supporting a particular leader was to blame. A World system, where this kind of malicious activity is not stopped earlier, is also to blame.

With Hitler as an example…
- Can you hate a person who wanted the best for the world?
- Can you hate someone who cannot yet see the truth?
- Can you hate a people who believes in their leader and their country?
- Can you hate the other's in the world for not being strong enough to stop maliciousness early?

I can say I believe everyone is trying to do their best, and is doing things for the good of others (at least in some small way)…
Unfortunately people are often misguided, and if you put a lot of power behind something misguided, you may well end up with something hurting the worthy…

I don't really like what Hitler has (and what many others have) done, in regards to what comes very close to evil… But in understanding that everyone is a victim of circumstance, I find it hard to have absolutely no appreciation of a person whatsoever. I think they may have had many good times whilst they were still an innocent child with memories that last a lifetime. I think people try and live the good life, it's just that it can often be at the cost of someone else's welfare…

So don't steal bread from the poor…
Don't let your country start a war…
Get to know the world outside, and explore it's bounds, so you'll know more about what is right and what is wrong…
Pass the good messages onto those who clearly need to hear them…
And, if you're going to hate, be well informed, so you know what it is you hate…

Personally as a final note, I don't feel I hate people, I just hate what they do…
This would imply circumstances can be changed, and we will have the rest of life to work together on improving the world and how it educates people, so we can attempt to reach our ‘True Utopia' (this Utopia, I have an idea of, but my view is far from perfected… Just one thing in it would be reducing the possibilities of crime, by making life a little more equal. Which is something that may be able to be reached by getting rid of money, trade, and land-ownership, etc.)

Ps. Please feel to respond on the topic…
Pps. Please don't get me wrong, I don't appreciate what wrongdoers do, I just hope to understand they do it for reasons they feel are good enough. Wrongdoers, in my mind, need help to rejoin the community. They also need to pay for their wrongs. I love my world, it just needs to be better organised for it to more closely resemble the Utopia we see when we close our eyes…

Mmmm, yes I can see where you are coming from, and I think that what you describe is part and parcel, and indeed a necessary pre-requisite for the following:

Acquiescence: (Dictionary.com) 1. the act or condition of acquiescing or giving tacit assent; agreement or consent by silence or without objection; compliance (usually fol. by to or in): acquiescence to his boss's demands.
2. Law. such neglect to take legal proceedings for such a long time as to imply the abandonment of a right.

And BTW this is EXACTLY what 'wrongdoers', or more particularly those who 'do wrong' and have Power right now would want from you (and other tax paying individuals with a vote, just knowing that they are only doing the best that circumstances can allow right now - after all they are just victums of circumstance, right?).

And I do not mean this unkindly when I ask: How will you feel if you one day find yourself out there on the receiving end of such wrongs to which you allude?

Or perhaps if if you had had loved ones that went down with the WTC, or if you were a resident in Iraq, or even a Holocaust survivor... (the list could go on).

Would you have the luxury of Acquiescence then?

I have a little folder I have watched grow over the last 9 months full of my thoughts I jot down for this site. And somewhere I had written a few similar lines to what your getting at.

It went somthing like this:

There are so many assholes in this world and to act like them is only going to create more hatred and conflict. It is better to lift them up and teach them wrong from right.

In the place you describe, it would be a good thing to do that. But so far no one has the power to enforce this. The most we have is prisons. And they are like The Army for criminals. They are breeding grounds for hate.

And even worse. No one has any real idea on what's wrong or right, or how we should behave to make a Utopia.

Example:
In some countries it is perfectly fine to marry your close cousin. In others its disgusting.

In some cultures, eating the flesh or other humans gives you their spirit and power. In most others its the one of the most appalling things a human can do.

In one country 60 odd years ago it was fine to burn other humans in massive ovens based on their genes.
Now its an atrocity.

So what is right and wrong?

I guess that's another issue and would take a whole section full of threads to work out. And still no one could agree.

But right and wrong is a big part of your theory on hate.


I think what you're trying to say is, dont hate the sinner hate the sin?

I really dont agree.
And becuse of all the examples I listed above.

It seems that hate is based on who considers what appalling or what deplorable.

And although Chiron got to this post first, I had seen it last night and was going to say the same thing:

Everyone goes around doing as they please and blaming "circumstance" on their actions.

This means there is no accountability.

The buck has to stop somewhere.

We can all say that we are doing what we think is right. Or we feel that we have been slighted in some way and are only doing our best with what we know. It is just a cop out and way for people to justify doing what they know is wrong in the end.

I truly agree with your ideas in theory. But ONLY in theory.

I wish I had it in me to not hate people, like you do. I see hate as possibly the worst emotion human's can have.

It is aimed anger. It is so potent and viscous and it BREEDS on itself.

And I too think Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. But the guy was sick. His ideas of genocide and eugenics were totally wrong.

I really like his idea to make a better society and his desire to see peace and prosperity. But his methods were insane.

But its not the larger scale wrongdoer that I find problem with.

Its the ones on the smaller level that I find I have feelings that could be considered hate towards.

You see, they are the ones that create the Bush's and the Hitler's.

They are the ones that acquiesce. The ones that vote in the megalomaniacs.
The ones so full of hate themselves that the Bushes and the Hitlers see the world in need of saving (Or use that excuse of saving the world to suit thier own agenda) and begin such drastic measures as the only way to stop all this hate.

I dont have it in me to kill the people I despise. But if I was as powerful as Hitler or Bush I really wish I could take all the refuse of this world, all the scum, all the haters and all the ones that do nothing positive in their time here but only negative- and put them all in one country to govern themselves.

Like in Escape from New York.

They could have whatever they wanted. Just stay away from me. And when they had killed each other off then no one could complain. It would be like hate was being quarantined.

I know that hate is inate in all of us. But it seems that as we evolve, things can be bred out of us. Like caniblism.

And since hate feeds on hate, letting it fester in our society because we feel that everyone is a "victim of circumstance" or things arent equal is not going to solve the problem.

But at the end of the day, my biggest problem with your theory is this:

quote:

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I can say I believe everyone is trying to do their best, and is doing things for the good of others (at least in some small way.)

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Here is a small excerpt of the hate related gang rapes that occurred in Australia in 2000.

Note: this was before 911 and all the anti-Christian/ anti- Muslim sentiment of today.

These sadly are by no means the worst of the people I would like to see disappear off the face of the planet. But they're the only ones I could find off the net at such short notice who are an example of people that are not doing anything for the good of others. Or even themselves.

They are examples of what I consider the lowest form of humanity. And it is because of people like these, HATE is so alive and well in today's society.

quote:

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Sydney gang rapes
The Sydney gang rapes were a series of gang rape attacks by a group of up to fourteen Muslim Lebanese Australian men against white girls, some as young as 14, in Sydney, Australia in 2000. The crimes, described as racially motivated hate crimes by commentators such as Miranda Devine saw blanket media coverage, the passing of new laws, and over 240 years in jail time handed out to nine men.

The Sydney Morning Herald stated that the Middle Eastern rapists had stated to an Anglo Australian girl during a five hour attack in which the girl was raped 25 times by 14 Middle Eastern men, "You deserve it because you're an Australian" and "I'm going to fuck you Leb style".

August 10, 2000, Thursday
Attackers offered a ride and a portion of marijuana to two women aged 17 and 18. The women were taken under duress to Northcote Park, Greenacre where more collaborators were waiting, the women were then forced to fellate eight males.

August 12, 2000, Saturday
A 16-year-old girl was brought to Gosling Park, Greenacre by her friend, 17-year-old Mohammed Skaf. At the park she was raped by Mohammed's brother Bilal Skaf, and one other man, with twelve other men present who were "standing around, laughing and talking in their own language".The second man held a gun to her head and kicked her in the stomach, before she was able to escape.

August 30, 2000, Wednesday
Another woman was approached by attackers at the Bankstown train station, who proposed she join them in smoking some marijuana at another location. She was taken to three separate locations by the men, gang raped by a total of fourteen men, in an ordeal that lasted six hours. After the attacks the woman was hosed down with a fire hose, the woman, who was known during the trial as 'C' to protect her identity, later told her story to 60 Minutes. She told of how the attackers called her an "Aussie Pig", asked her if "Leb cock tasted better than Aussie cock" and explained to her that she would now be raped "Leb-style".

September 4, 2000, Monday
Two women, both 16, were taken by the attackers from Beverly Hills train station to a house in another suburb, where three men repeatedly raped them over a period of five hours. The attackers told one of the victims at one point that "You deserve it because you're an Australian".

A further series of gang rapes were attempted, but thwarted. On Friday August 4, 2000 four of the attackers approached a fourteen year old girl on a train where she was threatened with violence, punched twice and slapped before escaping the would be rapists.

There was evidence to convict only nine men of the fourteen suspects, and in total over 240 years of prison time was handed out for the rapes.

The attackers used SMS and mobile phones to orchestrate the attacks, utilizing this technology to phone ahead to other attackers to co-ordinate timely transport of rape gang members to the locations where women were being held. Authorities later intercepted these phone records, and a small sample of this material was released to the media, the rest being too offensive to publicise. The attackers texted such messages as "When you are feeling down ... bash a Christian or Catholic and lift up".and "I've got a slut with me bro, come to Punchbowl".

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First of all to Chiron…
(thanks for the reply by the way)
I guess that acquiescence has quite a bit to do with one part of the idea…
Also, I feel I have been on the other end of receiving wrongs, which some may consider small in part, and I could easily agree, and due to the wrongs perhaps being small it was easier for me to excuse the guilty party… If it was something much more serious I would find it a lot harder and bear a much deeper grudge… I would, due to my nature, look for an answer to why someone would do something so atrocious, and find it in the most normal of places, that being things like common opinion of cohorts, and the lack of attention of those who could have guided them away from such wrongs…
I don't excuse wrongdoers, although I believe they don't fully grasp what they're doing a lot of the time, and don't consider people equal enough to really see what it feels like to be in the other person's shoes, so to speak… I do believe there is much we can do to educate and equalise the world, and part of the answers may come from the area of science (I think…)

To Chained Wings…
(thankyou also for your reply)
I believe you are quite correct when you say we don't fully know what Utopia should be, although we all would have something to say there… People see one thing for it's benefits and are often blind to the greater benefits of the alternative (especially if the alternative is somewhat more complex or difficult)…
Cultural differences play one of the most powerful of all the differences we may come across (due to it being so in-ground, and also it having to do with the remoteness of philosophies from each other)…

I like that you don't forgive easy and truly want to make the wrongdoers pay for their ‘sins', as it often takes a strong person to say that and back up their words…
The theory of the matter is really only theory, it's not something you (I reckon) find common in all criminal psychologists. But bringing that idea up, how do you explain what makes one person do one thing and someone in a similar situation do another, and on top of that, what makes you think that person feels they truly have an easy choice, when you consider what's in play for that person?
I think a certain amount of hate in us is justified, I just like to focus my hate toward the action more than the person, which is not that easy to do, but it's a little like your mum hitting you to punish you as a child (you love the person, but don't think that you deserve being hurt in such a way)…

Hitler was a bad example in some ways, as he's one of the worst ever examples of people who is seen as innocent in any way, it's just an extreme example… However, we are all humans, acting in co-operation with others, dependant on less than perfect logic, it's just some of us get into the category of the extreme… I have a deep hate to what was done by him, his army and his collaborators, but understand that the idea of ‘perfect choice' was not available. I mean wouldn't it just be easier (in Hitler's case) to ask to be created in an all Arian world, where the whole world was dominated by the one force, and so on… I'm sure he would have found it more convenient…

I think you are dead right that it is the people that make the leader, the only problem being that their choice is often compromised, perhaps in the choosing of the ‘lesser or two weevils'…
Everyone has a plan, and every leader must command an army as they see fit…
Poor choice and compromised choice can combine with lack of sufficient IQ in the required area, to cause poorer situations…
When you go on to give the examples of what happened between the Lebanese Australian men and the Caucasian Australian young women, you brought to attention something which horrifies me… Sexual torture can often be worse than more physically painful torture due to the psychology involved…

I appreciate that you have hate there, I think that is quite natural…
I say nothing to excuse the men there. All I could possibly say is that the way to try and stop this kind of thing is to reach the community on a large scale, with the true message…
To have such a powerful message, although I know it's there somewhere, feels near impossible…
You need to convince people of the idea of equality and freedom, something which a lot of people have some trouble with to say the least…

For example (please don't take this the wrong way) but if you hate a person, they are no longer your equal, is that right? Are people actually not equal after all? Does a crime change a person's equality?
Some would say yes, and others no…
I guess you could say we are all equal, just in the way that we are not all equal…
Or… you could say that we are all equal, we are simply driven by different circumstances…
Would those Lebanese Australian men choose to have someone to treat with such regard, or would they prefer a world where there was no-one worthy of treating that way? (knowing that no-one truly deserves that kind of treatment)

The world will address this issue, as it is the nature of humanity to do so. I can only help that the answer is in sight and will appear soon.
We all need the answer, all of us.
And… I believe we will all be thankful when that answer is here…

I still believe we all try our best, but there's a little more that meets the eye than that alone…
Sometimes the best we can do is relax and run with the crowd rather than fail to act and think about things for a great period. Sometimes we just do what we always do or what others have done before, because it's easier. Sometimes it's better not to make too great an effort, as it makes things easier in another realm. We can always improve on our best, but only if we act now and learn by our mistakes or realisation of failure to reach potential heights.
Our ‘best'… What does that term mean to you?

On a final note… This thread was about hate, perhaps you could tell us what you hate and why…

To contribute, I'll say I hate what wrongdoers do, and I would hate very little else…
My reasoning is that there is a purpose for everything in life, but some activities are there simply to be avoided, and you can only hate when you're involved with those activities, the people that involve themselves with the activity (at least once had or) have a ‘true purpose'…

You make some good points Black Gold.
But on the subject of what do you hate?...

I hate those who seek to enslave or imprison others (whether physically or intellectually). Enslaving a work-force for example, so that they spend their lives running on a hamster-wheel in dedication to the excessive wealth of a tiny minority.

But then I also hate servile obedience to such conditions and the closed mindedness of those who have become 'enslaved'.

And although it might seem that I say I hate the behavior and thinking of such conditioning, I think that this depends very much upon individual/group thinking, together with beliefs that house a reluctance to let go of useless ideas (being 'anally retentive' as the phrase goes) which must be tagged to individuals or else it remains abstract and therefore conveniently disowned by said individuals.

And the resulting intellectual cowardice (which I hate most of all because it cannot be excused by, or even necessarily attributed to ones day-to-day survival, but rather to just plain laziness).

I dislike having to use the word hate as it is a rather ambiguous word. Some people use the word when they talk about a certain flavour of ice-cream. So Ill give an excerpt of the definition of hate so people understand what I mean when I use hate in this post.

quote:

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Hatred is an emotion of intense revulsion, distaste, enmity, or antipathy for a person, thing, or phenomenon, generally attributed to a desire to avoid, restrict, remove, or destroy the hated object. Hatred is also among the most common emotions that humans experience. It can be based on fear of an object or past negative consequences of dealing with that object.

According to evolutionary psychologists, hate is a rational reaction to people whose interests consistently conflict with one's own. Hate is an emotion, hence it serves the protective mode of a person. People whose behaviour threatens one's own survival interests are to be hated, while people whose behaviour enhances one's survival prospects are to be liked or even loved (as in the case of offspring and other genetic kin).

The passions of hate arise from several features of our thinking process. These include wanting to assign blame to others for our misfortune, protecting our self-esteem, a desire to strengthen our community or alleviating our fears. (by destroying the evil others.)

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First of all, I dont think Im brave for saying I hate the gang rapists. I wish I didn't loathe them and wish they didn't exist. And as I mentioned, they are just one example I was trying to use as people that do horrific acts and dont have very good reasons for doing them.

I would actually say that you are a braver man for bringing all this up first Black Gold. And a better man, because you are able to not let hate get to you like it does me.

Right now there is so much injustice and so much negativity in the world. And yet people are so jaded and blinded to it they are more interested in wether they should buy a DVD player or a new mobile phone.

And I cant help but see all these terrible things and feel sadness in my heart at them. And then that sadness becomes bitter and I find I dislike certain elements of society. And if I go one step further, I find myself hating them.

So to me, hatred is like an infection that I fight daily and I hope that I will not be consumed by what I consider the most negative emotion of all. I dont want to keep hate going by hating others myself. My hate and my actions because of it, will only cause more hate to fester in the community.

This would make me no better than those I hate.

Sadly, I know its impossible to take all the people that are doing wrong and put then on some Quarantine Island. But if we're talking about "what if's" and utopia then that's how I would get rid of all the people who I consider a threat to society.

And hope by this method we would gradually ween out the more "negative" members of humanity. I think there are far too many people on this planet and we dont need them all. So it would actually be a good thing if those holding society back were slowly bred out.

As I wrote in one of my threads, I believe the world consists of two kinds of people. Those that do positive in their lifetime. And those that do negative in their lifetime.

Of course you could look at it like a slider, with the extreme positive one end, and the extreme negative on the other, with various degrees in the middle.

The gang rapists I would put at the extreme negative and would class them as some of the people that I would like to not exist.

People like Hitler and Pol Pot are more famous members of that extreme negative side.

We can do without them.

But this is where it gets difficult to answer about who I hate..

Who am I to judge who should be put on an island because their actions are so appalling we can do without them in our lives?

I am a very liberal minded person. I don't think I have the right to say who is right and who is wrong. As I mentioned, what can be considered "good" in one time period or culture can be considered bad in others.

Look at paedophiles as an example:

These are people who have an inbuilt desire to have sex with minors. I think that they are an abomination and should be locked up- but I have never understood the absolute hatred directed toward them as a group.

Yet I cannot think of a crime that engenders more hate and sheer bile and the urge to kill than when someone has sex with a minor.

I have tried to understand this hatred that places paedophiles below all other forms of life.

The closest I can come is to imagine I have a child. And the thought of someone using the person I love the most in the world's innocence and naivety to do something their minds and emotions are not ready for. And I feel anger build in me the more I picture it.

I guess that anger, and if I let my emotions go to the extreme, that hate, is a strong desire to protect the weak and helpless, especially when they are those I care for the most, from what I consider a dangerous threat.

But, like you BG, I try to look at the people that commit atrocious acts and WHY they do them. I feel that if you are doing them because you cannot help it I too cannot help but feel some kind of sympathy.

Though you and I differ in that I would still hate them (or dislike them at the very least) and wish them to no longer be in existence.

When I was younger there were things I could not fathom the reason for people doing. And I thought those people were weak or pathetic. But as Ive grown older and had my own share of hard times, or just life's experiences, I have sometimes found myself understanding the very people I once felt scorn for.

And now I can sometimes see why those people do the things they do, because I have too have found myself in their situation. It has taught me not to judge too hastily.

You really must walk in another's shoes before you can understand them and therefore judge them or hate them.


Once again using paedophilia as an example:

Imagine if you had a sexual attraction that was considered not the norm in today's society? Say you woke up and heterosexuality was suddenly the most loathsome thing you could do in today's society?

You could not change your sexual desires. You would feel ashamed of them and try to repress them. Yet sexual desires can be very hard to resist or control. Imagine being hated with a vengeance for having sex with a member of the opposite sex. And have people hunt you down and try to kill you for that?

Im sure homosexuals could relate to this the most. They know how terrible it is to be persecuted just because their sexual desires dont fit the norm.

You cannot help who you are attracted to and yet you are judged by this attraction that is beyond your control.

But, please, before anyone replies and accuses me of sympathising with paedophiles and calling me some kind of pervert:

I DO NOT CONDONE CHILD SEX. IT IS WRONG.

Sadly, Id have to put paedophiles who did not seek counselling and who could not control their urges on my Quarantine Island too.

But I just don't understand how someone can be hated and hunted almost like witches in the dark ages for their sexual preferences, when I so often see stories of torture, animal cruelty and hear such appalling tales of man at his worst and no one batters an eyelid.

And there is no reason behind what the things these offenders do- other than for kicks.

So Im using paedophilia (which seems to engender the most hate in society) as an example that right and wrong depends totally on the society, the time, and even moreso, the individual.

And that as I pointed out with paedophiles, for whatever reason, hatred can be very irrational and unbalanced.

So, after all that, who do I "hate"

I would say that I hate the people that fit the extremities of the negativity end of the slider. In their time they cause nothing but misery and suffering.

And to a lesser extent, I dont hate but dislike, the people who are close to the middle. These are the ones that do nothing to make society a better place. They just exist. They live on this planet, use its valuable resources, dont care about anyone but themselves yet still contribute indirectly to the planets suffering health.

So I guess you could say I hate a certain aspect of society and the way it seems to be screwing itself over. There is just this general apathy I see nowadays and a blind rush to consume and to hell with tomorrow.

And the result of this is when a student feels so alienated and rejected and knows no other way to deal with his problems or his growing hatred of society than to express it in its most abhorrent form.

I really related to what Wyote said about feeling sorry for the gunman who killed those people at Virginia Tech.

I too was thinking the same thing. Though I class Cho Seung-Hui as one of the negative people in this world and am glad he is no longer part of the human race, I cannot help feel a heartfelt sadness at the pain and suffering he must have been going through to have become what he became.

Anyone who disagrees, must ask themselves this one question: Would they like to have been him?

Society is so unsympathetic to those who are different, it is creating these gunmen and then people wonder why such tragedies occur.

Because the average person in today's society wouldn't care if he was suffering. They are too interested in "Ange" and "Brad" splitting up for the 1000th time and whose going to keep what kid.

At the very least, if they thought anything of someone who is not rich or famous- it would be to think less of them as a human being because they fail to fit in.

A man who is obviously mentally lacking was totally ignored as his hatred grew and grew to the point of breaking. And look at all the pain he caused. And Im sure his acts will cause alot more hate to come.

Hatred of him. Hatred of his family. Hatred of loners. Hatred of those who are different. Hatred of those who do not fit in. And from what Im now hearing, even hatred of Asians.

Like I said, hate breeds hate.

I try my best to not fall into that trap but it is very hard.

The gunman over here is being called "The Face of Hate."

But isn't he merely the result of a society that has lost its compassion?

Isn't he just all the revolting things about us as humans put into physical form?

Maybe he should be called "The Face of Modern Society"

I would say I hate only one person, and this person is someone that I have come into direct contact with and has had absolutely no positive impact in my life or the lives of anyone else I know who has met her. I cannot pity her as her problems appear to be all of her own making, she is entirely self centred and ruins the lives of those who care about her as she fails to return their interest and concern.

The people who you hear about in the news and from history who fit between the middle and the extreme negative end of your scale it is almost hard to hate. The apathetic view of the world is almost a survival instinct to anyone with a heart, it would be impossible for anyone to carry the emotional weight of caring for the suffering of everyone around the world, and therefore we tend to care only for those directly linked to us (and in some cases only for ourselves). If we do not weep for the suffering of the victim, then how can we claim to hate the perpetrator.

This apathy is unfortunately increased by worldwide media coverage, the more suffering we see, the less attention we can pay to each individual case, and the more helpless we feel as it is blindingly obvious that one person can do nothing against the evil that exists in this world. If we were to hate all the evildoers we would be almost unable to see anything left to live for in this world.

There are people in this world whose actions are wrong by anyone's standards and who have no reason for committing the atrocities that they do, and I cannot begrudge their victims the feelings of hate that they harbour. And society as a whole should hold an abhorrence of their actions, though I doubt could be said to specifically hate each individual case.

Then there are people whose actions depend on your relative morality, and in this section I would put forward paedophilia. In ancient Greece, homosexual paedophilia was an accepted part of everyday life, a young teenage boy would be in a relationship with an older male (until the older married), this relationship would be part mentor and part sexual partner. In this day and age, such a situation would be highly illegal and the older male would be shunned by society as a paedophile. There are some differences between that situation and most paedophilia, partly in that any teenager was probably not considered a minor in ancient Greece (and there could be some consideration of whether anyone post puberty is capable of deciding about their readiness to have sex). However paedophiles do often have intercourse with prepubescent minors, or non-consensual intercourse with a minor (which is simply rape) and both of these situations should be morally abhorrent to anyone. Is it right to hate people whose social norm differs so highly from ours? (perhaps paedophilia however is not the best of examples however) Take for example extra-marital intercourse or divorce, within the lifetimes of my grandparents, these have gone from morally reprehensible to social norm.

Then we have people whose actions are wrong, but who have a reason behind their action. Often this reason will be unsound mind as we must assume in the case of Cho Seung-Hui, No-one could use logical reasoning to come to the conclusion that his situation warranted the massacre of innocent fellow students. I feel pity for people who lack the strength of character to stand in the face of such adversity and find their place in society, and instead resort to such displays of desperation.

It is a depressing fact that stupidity and mass hatred so often go hand in hand, I can understand hating the gunman as one of those directly affected by him, it was a senseless act which his situation did not merit. But as an observer while obviously the majority of the sympathy goes to the victims (emotional and physical), some must be given by any thinking person to anyone who felt so depressed and alone, however suicide would have increased the sympathy for them.

It is understandable to feel fear of loners and others in similar situations to the one that drove the gunman to murder, but it should be an offer of help that is extended to them no our hatred. Directing hatred towards them is more likely to create a self fulfilling prophecy, as Chained said, hatred breeds hatred. If however they were offered help and someone to talk to about their problems, then maybe these issues could be resolved (or in the case of actual mental instability, treated) to decrease the likelihood of another such scenario.