The Two Primary Causes of Hate

Hatred has plagued humanity since its dawn. It has caused more death, more suffering, and more war than we can possibly reckon with. From my observations, I look at hatred as having two primary causes;

Fear...and disgust.

Fear causes people to want to eliminate the source of their fear. Fear drives hatred because of this. You end up hating what frightens you and it's a basic defense instinct. If you want to get people to hate someone or something over time, make them afraid of it. Make them see it as a threat.

Disgust is the second major cause of hatred. Disgust has less to do with fear and more to do with revulsion. A sense that something is so lowly and gross that it doesn't deserve to exist. It doesn't even have to be a threat to you like the fear situation. It can be something harmless, like a bug, but the revulsion and grossness that this thing causes leads you to want to destroy it even when it poses no threat.

Disgust, I've noticed, has caused far more potent hatred than even fear. A hatred that shows little remorse and gives no mercy, even to harmless things. This is the kind of hate that Nazis had to the Jews. They looked at them like vermin. Like rats or cockroaches and that disgust-based dehumanization led to an even deadlier hatred than hating what you are afraid of. You can respect something you fear, even if you hate it. With disgust-hatred respect isn't even considered. It leads to a more potent, less changeable hatred because you see what you hate as so low and so lesser it doesn't remotely deserve to exist. That's a far deadlier hatred.

Both things, disgust and fear, are very primal. They come from our animal lineage, and both are not very advanced emotions. Both can be overcome by people who work to overcome it. A doctor can overcome disgust of bodily fluids, and a biologist can overcome a fear of lions.

What I've learned about hatred is that it never actually solves problems. It never cures diseases or makes peace with enemies, nor does it tame the beasts or learn how to get to the moon. Hatred doesn't solve problems, it only creates more or kicks the ball down the road for our future generations to deal with since we didn't solve it.

If you want to solve problems and be a good healer or repair, hatred can't be a factor of your mind.