The solution to hating

The Hater app (icon: an upside down heart) is loosely based on the Tinder dating app. You are presented with a list of items like ‘vegan food’, ‘crocs’ or ‘tangled earphones’ and then asked to swipe each item - right if you like it, left if you hate it, or skip if you don’t feel strongly. The app’s algorithm then attempts to match you with others who share your dislikes - not, as you might have excepted, your likes. You are then presented with a suggested date - a ‘match’ and told what you and he or she hate in common.

I was initially shocked that connecting through common hates would make anyone remotely attractive, but it seems to be true. A 2006 article in interdisciplinary journal Personal Relationships found that sharing a negative - as compared to a positive - attitude about a third party is particularly effective in promoting closeness between people. And on reflection, I can well think of times where I have seen people seek to bond with others by finding a common enemy. The same article suggests that sharing negative attitudes is alluring because it establishes group boundaries, and the same wisdom is expressed in the Bedouin proverb: I against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.

It may not be an accident that this app has arisen now, when the politics of the world seems to be largely about hatred. Democrat, Republican, Remainer, Leaver, are some obvious categories - but it goes much further than any of them; and we can all think of religious, racial, gender and sexuality hatreds.  What all these hatreds, arguably, have in common is that they derive from group identify as much from genuine hatred of the opposition.  I am reminded of 1984, where George Orwell describes the daily ‘two minutes hate’, which is compulsory for all citizens.  There was no fixed thing to hate - the object of the hate was given by the government, and for two minutes citizens simply abused and screamed and and shouted at whatever was presented.  Odd as this sounds, the idea of presenting hate object is clear in politics today, and Orwell writes that the horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in - in other words, that the seductive nature of in-group and out-group pressure was irresistible.

Ugly as all this sounds, there is some room for optimism here. When Orwell writes yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp it sounds so depressing, but actually, underlying the hate is the fact that the object of hate itself is not really that important; what's important here is that the hater is hating as a misguided way of seeking connection with others. This is quite encouraging, because it suggests that roots of hatred might not run so deep; that the focus is not a genuine one, and that it might be based more in peer-pressure and insecurity than anything else. Critically, it often seems to me that the haters choose to hate people they hardly know - to demonise people of difference.

As far as school goes this observation provides an entry point to addressing this; it's always easier to hate people you don't know and so this simple fact explains why the most effective way of dealing with bullying incidents, for example, is often via a restorative justice approach.  That's one which does not seek to reduce people to their behaviours by punishing them - because punishment is likely to reinforce, not overcome difference.  As such, punishment can lay the foundations for further hatred.  But once we recognise that once we know each other better, most of us can change our attention, change our feelings, change our minds, then other options open up.  Very few people are genuinely hateable once you get to know them; connecting people is often the best approach.

Even knowing that people are knowable can help.   Anyone who can identify and name within themselves a tendency to want to demonise others who are different, while connecting with people who are the same, can fight it. No-one writes about this better than Ursula le Guin:

It’s not satan vs angels, goodies vs baddies; holy warriors vs infidels, or even hobbits vs orcs. It’s just people against people. Of course you can take sides, and nearly everyone does. But if you do not, then there are no winners and losers, just a tragic story. It may be less important to condemn [it] than to perceive it as tragic.



References

• Bosson J, Johnson A. , Niederhoffer, K. and Swann, W. (2006), Interpersonal chemistry through negativity: Bonding by sharing negative attitudes about others. Personal Relationships, 13: 135-150.
• Le Guin, U. K., (2017) No time to spare; thinking about what matters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• O’Brien, J (2019) How to be Right
• Semly, J. (2018) Hater: On the Virtues of Utter Disagreeability Viking Press