Download
RTF version
Read
part one of this essay
5. Love Against Love
The experience of hatred is altogether secondary
to the experience of love: it is the experience of a withdrawal of
love, just as cold is experienced as a withdrawal of warmth. And is
just as bewildering. How could it happen? We feel hatred from
others before we feel hatred for them - the glare that frightens
us comes from apparently nowhere and seems to have no cause, except
for one fact: it is preeminently human. |
|
Sometimes we are able to make a connection
between an action of ours and the hatred of another: we have done
wrong, harmed someone, broken a rule. Soon, according to some, we
anticipate the anger that might, as a result, come our way, plus the
pain of the angry blow, and indulge in a little of the civilizing
self-hatred (essential for seeing oneself in proportion to the world)
called "feelings of guilt.
But it goes too far to equate anger and hatred:
hatred is, after all, a far more fearsome thing, involving deeper
and longer lasting layers of feeling. Anger is a kind of geyser of
emotion that goes off irregularly. Hatred, on the other hand, is the
slow and relentless feeding of a volcano:
|