Friday, July 11, 2008

You hate me, I hate him


Hatred or hate is a word that describes intense feelings of dislike. It can be used in a wide variety of contexts, from hatred of inanimate objects to hatred of other people. Prejudice or Bigotry against an entire class of people (e.g. racism) are examples of hatred.

Philosophers have offered many influential definitions of hatred. Rene Descartes viewed hate as an awareness that something is bad, combined with an urge to withdraw from it. Baruch Spinoza defined hate as a type of pain that is due to an external cause. Aristotle viewed hate as a desire for the annihilation of an object that is incurable by time. Finally, David Hume believed that hate is an irreducible feeling that is not definable at all.

In psychology, Sigmund Freud defined hate as an ego state that wishes to destroy the source of its unhappiness (source: wikipedia).

I say fuck faggot Freud and his gay shit. Descartes is right. (Now I know the etymology of the word, diskarte). You see something you don't like, you hate it. You withdraw from it. You stay away from it. You want it to have nothing to do with you. That is how simple the emotion of hate really is. You don't necessarily want to annihilate it like Aristotle would suggest, nor is it always a pain as described by Spinoza. Aristotle was gay too and Spinoza, well, was a Jew. My grandmother taught me when I was a small boy that Jews are bad people as they are the ones who crucified Christ. It's not that I really care about that shit, but hey, that's my grandmother who taught me that. She also told me that the Jews are like the Chinese, who are shrewd and cunning businessmen who kept to themselves and cheats the government on taxes. To her, all Jews and Chinese were evil merchants who tried to give her a bad bargain. God rest her soul in heaven. That's the reason why I find it hard to trust a Jew, or a Chink for that matter. No, my grandmother was not a Nazi.

(I am aware of the fact that the arguments I used against Freud, Aristotle and Spinoza are ad hominems but hell, I'm too lazy to do otherwise.)

Hate is cyclic and a common emotion felt by all people. Hate is cyclic because there is an orderly relation or a pattern of hate that progresses in a describable circular manner. Hate bites its tails, so to speak. It is common because all people have felt and will feel hate their whole lives. Now don't tell me somebody does not hate. Priests hate the devil, and in turn, (some) Muslims hate priests.

Hate is present in all aspects of our daily lives. It is present from the time we wake up, to the time we close our eyes to sleep. When I wake up and go to the bathroom to piss, I hate it when somebody is in there when I'm about to go, or whenever somebody did not flush to goddam toilet especially when there are still some residue of crap floating around fortuitously in the fucking bowl. When I eat my breakfast, I want to turn the TV on and watch the morning news show Unang Hirit, because I hate that SOB named A.T. on the other channel. I almost threw my plate once on the small screen after watching that fucker deliver his opinions on national TV like he knows shit. I hate that guy with a passion. I mean, who the fuck does he think he is? He's got absolutely no respect to the people he interviews on air and some of those people have made their bones probably when he was still sucking her mom's blackish tits. Not only that, he talks about issues and stuff that he doesn't have any inkling about like laws, government policy, and in general, the goddam English language. The only people who does not hate him are those folks who are as dumb or ever dumber than him. A.T. is one of the people in the media who thinks that they are gods and they can do whatever the fuck they want and say whatever the fuck they want to say. If I ever get a chance to meet him personally, I will probably collar him and whisper, "be very careful boy, this is the Philippines, where journalists and reporters get shot in the head or cemented alive in steel drums. This is my country, you just live here."

Then after breakfast, I drive to my wife and myself to work. I drive a sleeper Honda Civic Ferio from the mid-nineties, and I don't hate my car. I actually like it. But I absolutely hate most capampangan drivers. They are the absolutely the dumbest drivers in the world, tied at the bottom with Koreans. They have never heard of the signal light switch, or if they do discover the same serendipitously, they don't know how to properly use the damn thing. When they use the signal light to turn, they do it after making the corner. They haven't heard of the horn button too. But what kills me is that they drive insanely slow, especially on open roads. They speed up in traffic but they go 20-25 kph in a clear, well paved, and rain-dry national road. Sometimes I tell myself that the driver is getting a blow-job from his bitch and that's the reason why he's so slow. Then I pass him only to find out that he's intensely concentrated on driving with the driver's seat pushed forward so much that there is no space between the steering wheel, his chest and the seat. I'm serious. Almost all drivers from Pampanga drive like that. Like they all have difficulty seeing the road so they have to sit ridiculously upright, hugging the steering wheel.

Don't get me started on motorcycles. As a self-respecting motorist and car affecionado, I hate most people who "zoom-zoom" (my apologies to the Mazda Corp.) in their crotch rockets. They simply think they are invincible. (My wife always tells me that as she drives too. And mind you, she doesn't drive like a lady.) They have no sense of road courtesy and think that they own the fuckin' road. Perhaps they are of the seriously erroneous belief that traffic rules do not apply to them. To me and others like me (like my brothers and cousins), they are like big roaches on the street, crawling and infesting the highways with filth. The worst are the 4-stroke mopeds and tricycles. Those fuckers mostly do not have licenses to drive anyhow. A Chinese or Korean moped designed for 1 to 2 passengers over-loaded with 4 passengers one or two of which are children is a common sore sight all over Luzon. Indeed, that is a recipe for disaster. I have known and heard about senseless deaths via motorbike accidents over the years but the number of casualties still increase over the years. I do not hate the motorcycle per se, as I have driven one in the past (which ultimately led to an accident and injuries, of course) but that shit is totally dangerous if not driven with a clear head and responsibility. It is a mode of transportation like any other vehicle on the street so the same amount of responsibility should be practiced in driving the same. A couple of weeks ago, my car was rammed in the back by a big bike style motorcycle. It smashed my right tail-light. Immediately after impact, I got out of the car and got psychologically ready to beat the guy down if he made any remark I didn't like hearing. Turned out, he was a really nice guy and admitted his fault instantly. My car sustained no other damage apart from the busted tail-light. He made areglo and gave me 1400 Pesos to buy a replacement headlight. I got a perfect fit JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) one for a thousand bucks. Good thing I didn't shower him with profanities when I came out of the vehicle as I usually do in times like those, or took a swing on him with my big and heavy Maglite flashlight that I keep under the driver's seat--or I wouldn't have emerged from that situation with a small profit.

Since we're talking about cars, let me tell you that I hate clueless ricers. They give a bad name to self-respecting, Japanese car loving fellows like myself. They are the people who put huge-ass speakers in their cars or graphics and worst, those enormous but dysfunctional rear wings. Fuck Fast & the Furious and Pimp my Ride, man. That ain't the right shit. I also hate people who think they hate ricers but in reality, they don't really know what's a ricer. These are the people who drive American and European cars and hate Japanese cars. These are the people who lump Honda and Hyundai in the same category. (Just because they both have an [H] in the hood does not mean they are both made by the same manufacturer and have the same qualities.) These are the schmucks who look down at Civics but wonder why their gas-guzzling V6s and V8s get smoked on the freeway by a 2.0 K series engine-swapped early nineties Honda CRX. So people in BMWs and Chryslers must hate me a whole damn lot because I pass 'em all the fucking time like they were parked on the road.

But all these hating stops when I get to work. There, I have got to do my duty as a public servant and live according to my oath as a lawyer. I have learned to channel my hate and my aggression to more productive things. Hate is everywhere, all around us, present even without our knowledge. That is acceptable. What is not is when we get consumed by our hate and fail to function as a rational human being. Remember the lesson of Descartes:

"You see something you don't like, you hate it. You withdraw from it. You stay the fuck away from it. You want it to have nothing to do with you. That is how simple the emotion of hate really is."

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