What is it like
to be a Hater?

A couple years back a friend told me his new years resolution was to "be more of a hater". He was probably thinking about this mainly because of that verse in that Kendrick Lamar song but he did genuinely mean it. He wanted to become more mean and critical and hating.

And this sort of baffled me. I don't like hating. It's a lot of effort and it's not very fun. Neither do I like being mean, or getting angry.

But I am also a very suggestible person, so I wonder, what if he's right? Aren't there good reasons to be mean? That's why I'm writing this. I want to figure out how to think about this.

Tongue-Biter Behaviour

I like to think I'm a nice person, but that's mainly just out of habit, really. Like, if someone is taking too long in line, you'll start to get frustrated at them. You can wait out that anger, or you can voice it, and this is gonna depend on which is more habitually comfortable. I, as a habitual people pleaser, find voicing my anger uncomfortable; my mouth doesn't like moving in that way.

Of course, when the discomfort of keeping my mouth shut is so strong, I will be mean. But different people have different habitual dispositions. Agreeable people it easier to wait out frustration, such that they barely experience the discomfort at all. Assertive people find it easier to voice their feelings, such that they don't have trouble dealing with them. And so sometimes people might think I'm a "tongue-biter" but I think I'm so used to not speaking up that I just genuinely don't care enough.

Go read Aristotle or something. Anyways some obvious clarifications:

1) There's reasons for me to be mean besides impatience. If I have an aesthetic aversion to you---I find you ugly or annoying or whatever---there is a similar emotional reaction which must be vented or subsided. I might also have a moral aversion to you, and feel the same kind of physiological disgust. And if you get in my way, just generally, I'll probably have a personal aversion to you.

2) There's a social aspect to meanness: It's a lot easier going along with whatever your ingroup is doing. In this way it's not context neutral; if my group hates on a particular kind of people---say, rich pedophiles---that doesn't translate to hating people in general.

3) Being mean is kinda fun? And its not just the kind of pleasure you get from teasing or ragebaiting people, the kind of things you do without malice. The malice itself is fun, in this "Freudian death drive" sort of way. It's cathartic.

So that's what it is to be mean, to be more of a hater than a tongue-biter. So...

What should we do?

Suppose I am a bit of a tongue-biter---I don't know this for sure, I'm probably more average than I think, but anyhow---should I be more of a hater? Or consider my friend, who seeks to be more mean. Should I encourage him otherwise?

If I should be more mean, that should go for everyone else too, and if I should be more nice, then the same applies. Essentially I can't just say I should be more mean to get my own way, unless I also consent to other people responding in kind. So either my friend is right, and I should follow him, or he's wrong, and I need to bring him back to reason.

Hold on; that doesn't actually follow. It's not crazy to think "We need both tongue-biters and haters in the world." We need both leaders and followers, we need those who are easy and those who are assertive. Maybe it's fine for me to be a tongue-biter, while also thiking its fine for my friend to want to become more mean.

Put it another way; how can rules apply to everyone if everyone is so different? People grow up and live in such seperate worlds that saying we should "behave the same in the same contexts" is meaningless. It's never going to be the same for me to live genuine to myself than it is for you.

So really I'm not directly asking whether the world should be more or less mean. It's a much more person question; what kind of person should I be?

What should I do?

You should hate on people more to discourage their bad behaviour.

If true, I probably don't have enough hate in my heart for people like Trump and Netanyahu. Maybe I would justify this with something like "by hating these people, I normalise that feeling", but like we said before, hating is social and contextual.

So what about people I know personally? When I meet bullies and bigots, should I respond in kind? Of course. I'm a people-pleaser, I have no need to please these people. What about my friends or relatives? When they do something that doesn't sit right with me, how should I respond?

I'd like to think in these cases there's ways to be assertive without, well, rocking the boat. These are people I want continued relationships with, and so even if just for selfish reasons I won't want to be mean. But maybe I underestimate how much my friends can handle?

If someone can handle it, it's fine to be mean to them.

I have had people tell me that they are mean to people only when they think they can handle it. I think this is a little silly to be honest. Why do you get to decide what people can handle? It's a very austere, "tough love" mentality.

In my experience, the world is already mean enough and I'd rather more kindness in my life. Sure, I could handle more adversity, but I don't want to. And unless I get more or less explicit permission from other people, I'm not gonna assume other people are struggling any less.

But...

Maybe you're wrong. Maybe you do need more meanness in your life, because it's what motivates you to be better.

Woah, so we're just calling me a pussy now? I say, "I want my life to be kinder,"" but that's actually just making myself into more of a weak, docile pathetic thing than I already am? Very Nietzchean take.

I kind of really want to oppose this. Is it meanness that makes people better? Really? Meanness feels too untargeted. People are mean for all sorts of unnecessary reasons. All my life I've been mean to myself for unnecessary reasons.

Like, why should I be mean to someone for how they dress? Or what shows they like? Why should I tolerate people being mean to me on the same grounds? Is that something that really matters that much?

Really I should only tolerate people being mean to me, or be mean to others myself, when its justified.

Conclusion

Maybe towards the end there I got back to the "everyone is the same" rhetoric I tried to avoid but oh well. I don't know what I really learnt here I just wanted to get my thoughts out. I've been thinking a lot about virtue ethics recently, and about what kind of person I am and want to be.

I guess because of that "everyone is different" thing I don't know if any of the things I talked about actually apply to anyone else. Maybe they do, but it's your decision to let them apply. I guess I really write this because I want to respond to people criticising me for being a pushover---yeah, it all circles back to people-pleasing. I need to please the people who think I please people too much. The brain is a prison, but life is an adventure :)