When I look at the kinds of articles people post on social media and the comments under them, it feels like there’s an overwhelming amount of hate and anger in the world - or at least among the people posting and commenting. (Maybe it’s just that non-angry people don’t spend much time in this kind of spaces.)
In contrast, when I think about my own life, I realize that I’m almost never angry. I feel many other negative emotions, sure, but anger isn’t one of them, and even when it arises it’s usually quite short-lived. I can’t even name a single person I hate - neither in my personal life nor in the media. I simply don’t spend time dwelling on people I’m not interested in or being angry at the world for not meeting my expectations.
This makes me wonder: is my experience rare or unusual? Or is hate and anger simply overrepresented in the media because those emotions motivate people to engage, making them seem far more widespread than they actually are?
I’m trying to understand rather than criticize. I can’t take credit for not being angry because whatever tha skill is doesn’t translate into other things like anxiety. I’m anxious about equally trivial things and I can’t help myself. I guess I’m just glad I don’t need to deal with this constant anger too.
Anger and hate are not the same. Anger can be a healthy emotion to signal your (personal) boundaries. Not feeling hate is admirable and I think it’s entirely possible, sure.
I’d argue that hating concepts can lead to productive societal growth, and could even lead to personal growth depending on what is hated and for what reason.
For example, I hate capitalism, corruption, greed etc., which led me to learn more about alternatives that I would have not learned about otherwise. This could also go both ways, though, since hate for the exact same things have also led people down a fascist road, as human nature makes it so that we always want an enemy to blame. Whether that enemy is the ultra-wealthy or whether it’s the common man (ex: trans people, women, immigrants, etc.) is largely dictated by the media they consume and the people they surround themselves with.
Mob mentality is alive and well, and it’s up to all of us (as non-billionaires) to focus that energy in the correct places. Billionaires are the ones who started the culture war and keep feeding it, since that distracts normal people away from themselves, since they know that if they didn’t give the masses a group to hate (the common man), that they would find their own group to hate (billiomaires).
There’s a reason Luigi has so much support even though he allegedly murdered someone.
Economic instability will always lead to resentment over something and/or someone/group.