Re: MidEast. Is there a point where people become addicted to hate?

[Hoping4Change]

There is only one outcome to Israel's barbaric bombardment of Lebanon and that is to strengthen Hezbollah throughout the Muslim world and harden virulent anti-Israeli sentiment amongst Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide.

After a certain point of continuous hostility, does hostility becomes a drug? At a certain point does hatred act like the drug Ectasy, transporting the user to a different realm?

It seems to me that Israelis revel in the hatred directed against them in the same way that violent Islamists revel in the hate their actions engender. If this is not this case, why go out of the way to provoke hatred with barbaric acts that will NOT in any way imagineable lead to any sort of peace?

[azurnoir]

1. Don't know if addicted

is exactly right, but comfortable with hate is a definate possiblity, most humans hate change even if that change is not hating.

[Hoping4Change]

5. The word hate is often used loosely such as in the phrase "hating

change". Hate, at least in a theological sense is when you want someone dead, when you wish evil and death to befall on the object of your hatred.

[azurnoir]

7. That's what I was talking about

the ing was because I was talking about an action.

[Warpy]

2. Sure there is.

You only have to look at the far right to see that phenomenon. It happens every time people under stress are given a target for their anxiety. It quickly turns into hate, and that hate becomes an addiction. It gives the hater a self righteous charge, a buzz of pleasurable brain chemicals.

It's just as destructive as any other addiction, generally destroying the addict as well as people around him or her.

Hate is roughly equivalent to meth in its destruction.

[Hoping4Change]

6. I hadn't considered hate being a response to anxiety,

its an illuminating observation.

[Warpy]

12. It's an observation gained from picking people's brains

when they're in hospital or staying with family members and it's 3 AM and they can't sleep.

People will generally tell you exactly what's going on with themselves if you allow them the chance.

[Ian David]

3. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield- Episode 70, Season 3

The U.S.S. Enterprise intercepts a stolen Federation shuttlecraft which contains a humanoid named Lokai. Taken aboard the ship, Lokai tells the crew he is from the planet Cheron, and asks for asylum on the U.S.S. Enterprise. His most distinctive feature is that he is half black and half white, starkly separated down the middle of his body.

The U.S.S. Enterprise tracks another vessel, pursuing at great speed. The ship's only passenger beams on board and is discovers to be another humanoid from Cheron. The difference in this man, Bele, is that his black and white skin is reversed from Lokai's. Bele claims to be Cheron's chief officer sent out to bring in political traitors, and has been pursuing Lokai. The more the two men are aboard the starship, the more Kirk realizes that the basic problem between them — and their entire race, apparently — is their opposite color. Tiring of their bigotry, Kirk decides to ignore the two guests and concentrate on his original mission; to decontaminate the planet Ariannus, plagued with a bacteria that endangers billions of lives.

When Bele takes control of the U.S.S. Enterprise in a desperate attempt, Kirk sets the ships auto-destruct sequence instead of allowing the hijacking to continue, and the alien returns command to the captain. However, once planet Ariannus is decontaminated, Bele takes back his control over the starship and leads it back to Cheron. What they find is a long-dead planet, annihilated by their interracial bigotry. Lokai beams down to the surface to escape Bele, who follows. The U.S.S. Enterprise leaves them on the surface, to decide their own fates.

More:
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/68800.html

[Igel]

8. I usually think of the situation as more in keeping with

Spock's musings in "The Savage Curtain." Not that I'm that hard core a trekker, but still ...

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/68814.html

[Hoping4Change]

10. I remember the episode but not Spock's musings. Could you

fill in some details?:-)

[Igel]

11. The folks that set up the

encounter (with Lincoln, Spock, Kirk and some Vulcan versus Klingons and others) were perplexed.

The situation was set up to display differences in morality: good versus bad. But both sides used essentially the same means, so those in control were unable to detect any difference in what apparently a deeply felt difference. The experiment was declared a failure.

Spock's reply was that good and evil mostly used the same means, but for different goals. Good versus bad isn't in behavior during a conflict, but goals during the conflict and behavior after the conflict.

I'd quibble around the edges, but as folk philosophy goes, it beats some of what I hear and read. Very essentialist, and thoroughly anti-behavioralist.

[BuyingThyme]

4. Israel is exactly what the Pukes are trying to make of the U.S.

The people are given no choice but to trust their "leaders" to protect them. And their leaders only offer violence as a solution. You're either with them or against them.

[Hoping4Change]

9. Interesting observation. Perhaps one could add that all the players

have embraced the bloodthirsty quick-to-anger god that crops up in the Old Testament. Bill Moyers on his series: Faith and Reason interviewed a Scandinavian writer who wrote a book about the Great Flood but written from the perspective off all the innocent creatures both human and animal left behind to drown. I mention this because your comments make me think of the Pukes all out effort to destroy any vestige of the Enlightenment with its belief that human reason.