On the Pleasure of Hating

Journal Response - On the Pleasure of Hating
Viktor Moskalenko

The first conceptual conflict that rises in the mind of the reader when he sees the title of the essay “On the Pleasure of Hating” is the contradiction enclosed in it. How could the two diametrically opposed emotions be melted into a single one? There is a reason to be skeptical, though, I believe it is hard to confront a desire to find out the rationale behind this provocative statement.
I suppose, most of the people resist the assumption that pleasure may be found in such socially sinful act as hating. The laws of publicly acceptable moral prohibit a desire of an individual to demonstrate hatred. By the unwritten agreement that you’ve signed when you were born, you are obliged to “appreciate” every single person around you. In case you don’t, just cover it up with a grin of pure insincerity, or as some people may call it – the “American smile”.
How can a well-educated, rationally thinking person technically have a strong feeling of hatred? Isn’t this emotion a remnant of Dark Ages? I believe it is very much alive and is in the core of all human interaction. The desire for “success”, interpreted in terms of objective reality, appears to be a desire to eliminate competition. The popular media is soaked in hatred. It is being projected from posters, speakers and TV screens, in every other video on YouTube and music channels. We are constantly searching for a subject to hate and ready to pay those who can provide one. Sex and hatred, both quite pleasurable, are the driving forces of our motivation.
As Darwin once put in the introduction to “The Origin of Species”, there is a “struggle for existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase.” Hazlitt also states, “Without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action.” We can’t survive without hating our opponents. The hatred is the fuel that drives our desires, technology and civilization.
What about those who support us? Do we hate them too? I believe there is a short path from love to hatred, since both are strong emotions and, likely, similar in origin. Love is like a stored potential energy, convertible between two extremes. It quickly changes its polarity when one’s hindering your ability to survive. Hopefully, they never will.