Why ‘Hatred’?

Yes, why?

Well, let me see.

There are two reasons, really.

The first one is obvious but, still, I have set out on this road so I will pace the distance it takes to travel it.

All of my life has been taken up with observation and reflection. Even in the depths of drunkenness there were still occasions that caused me to sit back and dwell for a moment or two on what was happening.

Perhaps, it is just possible, that these occasions were especially during periods of drunkenness. Unfortunately, these occasions were frequent and prolonged for a long time until eventually, I managed to emerge from living in a bottle to find that the real world was not as rosy as I thought it was going to be.

A story for another day.

I have noticed, for example, that people like to taunt. They like to hurl accusations and blame – whether true or false seems immaterial.

Commensurate with that is that the best response is, wherever possible, to ignore them.

That really stirs their pot.

It would seem that the point of goading someone is to make them respond. Once a response is obtained from the ‘goadee’ then the ‘goader’ has won.

Another good thing is to stay calm. Used soft, measured responses.

That gets them going, too. They want you to lose your temper, they want you to shout so that you lose control and say something they can use against you.

In both instances the person proffering the taunts is trying to bring you down to their level.

A friend of mine, Jim Mac., has the perfect solution. He says absolutely nothing until the whole thing gets to a point where nothing is going to help and then he knocks them out and walks away. I have never known Jim to lose his temper but, then, he doesn’t need to because he is assured of his own capabilities, he is confident that, whatever happens, he will win.

Is violence the answer? Asimov famously said, “Violence is the final recourse of the incompetent.”

Sadly, there are times when violence is the only answer in spite of what our conscience and the pacifists tell us.

As a small boy it was important, in the school particularly, to establish a pecking order amongst our peers. This is now being stamped out (they will not succeed, of course) by the left wing, politically correct crowd who are set on abolishing, for example, school sports. They are doing this on the grounds that someone losing a race will get a ‘complex’. Poor dears. Coming last in life will give you a much bigger complex! Coming second in a firefight with an enemy will remove that complex.

Getting the pecking order sorted out was a matter for fists and still is. The PC people will not stop that, it is the natural order of things amongst school children.

This extends into the growing up and grown up world where the tendency is for the fists to be replaced by words.

In order to gain superiority over a rival it becomes necessary to hurl abuse. This is not just something that happens occasionally—no, it happens all the time.

You hear it every day.

You hear someone telling you, or another person, that so-and-so is fat, that Mrs G is hideously ugly. This is said, not just as a matter of fact, but to gain superiority over the fat or ugly person. It is rarely said in a kind manner as a form of sympathy; the words are formed in a kind of gloat.

These are negatives, they are abuse. They give rise, as do the fists in the playground, to hatred.

This happens at every level. It is most pronounced at a political level because it becomes public property.

It is part of our competitive world.

Hatred abounds.

In spite of the idea that we are bound by charity towards our brothers and sisters in the world.

The second reason?

Ha! You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?

You may have noticed that I write things down. When I’m not writing stories I’m writing books on jet engines. When I’m resting from writing about jet engines I write, what are generally, philosophical ramblings on this ‘Blog’. When I’m not writing I draw cartoons and write captions, very often.

So. I write.

Stories. Mostly.

What are stories about?

Read Shakespeare. Or Chaucer. Then gradually come up to date through Bacon, Dickens, HG Wells, Verne, Conan-Doyle, Asimov, Clarke, et al.

Look for common threads.

Sex.

Yes. Shakespeare was obsessed with sex. He really went to town with Titania in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

Violence.

Most stories contain violence because most stories rotate about crime or war.

Power (money).

At some point every story is about power or the acquisition of it.

Many stories contain elements of all these things and somewhere within it there is hatred. Always hatred.

We are inured to it. It is so much a part of our everyday life that, in all probability, we have ceased to notice it.

It is there. It lurks in every corner of our lives.

The latest one to hit America is the ‘Occupy’ thing that most people outside of America barely understand—if at all. But there are images of policemen pepper-spraying citizens with the accompanying captions proclaiming ‘police violence’ or ‘police justification’ depending which side of the fence you reside.

We don’t have to look far for other sources of hatred. It is not necessary to rake over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict however distasteful that is to see other examples.

Homophobia, racism, hatred of drug dealers, homeless vagrants, government health policies (or lack of, notwithstanding), the neighbour’s dog/cat/goldfish, that teenager with a face full of safety pins and spiked hair... The list is endless.

For all of us there is something that makes our spleen tingle and the veins in our neck stand out.

And that, as a writer, is what we have to observe. What is it that makes people tick, lust, drool, salivate, itch, throw up?

Not just the obvious. The devil is in the detail.

Now I’m just off to study a bit of lust... er... I mean for food—gluttony!  Yes, that’s it. Gluttony.

Don’t you just hate gluttons?