The Nature of Hate

[Galaxia2002]

I was discussing with some friend about the nature of hate, motivated to the situation that is being lived in my country Venezuela. The intention is to try to give a frame of understanding about the emotional part of all this chaos and great violence with the intention of (and this is perhaps something naive on my part) to help in some way. Maybe writting an article. The idea is to bring some understanding into this matter to see if anything useful can come out.

The first thing was to define what hate was, and this is how we realize that we came across with a concept that has many angles. I will put here an extract of what we talked:

Hate is a feeling rather than an emotion because it has a sustained character over time.

To develop it must exist some substrates like:
-Programs
-Unresolved traumas, wounds
- Fears (feel threatened by the object hated?)
-Culture.

This persistence of hate over time, could be said to be a negative crystallization of the personality? and hence, is this the justification about the so strong resistance to change?

How do you go from displeasure, rage, anger to hatred? What makes a person not stop before reaching that stage? Is there a justification for hatred, Is hate in any context useful?

By emitting hate, what the individual fails to see is that he is a prey of the same hatred and all that entails.

Can hate be induced by karma? Can political hatred be effectively induced and how can that be combated once is installed so to speak?

Can the need for justice lead to hatred?

There is also the neuropsychological aspect, the preeminence of the reptilian brain and the kidnapping of the amygdala.

So feel free to contribute to the discussion.

 

[Alejo]

This is fascinating to me.

I've also realized that I never quite sat down to define hate until I had painful experiences in the past. I came to understand hate as the opposite of love (as defined by the Cs) namely, knowing something and wishing it not to be so. The question that I could never quite get to was "is it a conscious process?" As it seems to take place in an awakened stated i.e. You're aware of what you hate. But as you pointed out, its origins seem to lie in unconscious behavioral patterns and programs that never go questioned.

So now I think of hate as a completely subjective approach to a given subject. Where the person is unable to step outside of himself to consider anything other than what his emotions dictate. Literally leaving reality to live within the framework of what's pleasantly accepted as "right". I hope that makes sense.

Can hate be induced? I would say so. We just have to look at the state of the world, for over a decade they have been scaring people with the Muslim terrorist ghost. So much so that people have grown to justify hate crimes against them, all this in a century of the self where what you want is more important than the truth. It's an awful mixture. In Venezuela for instance, the officialist hate the opposition and viceversa and seem unable to have a conversation that takes into account the other's point of view. And this I think is completely engineered.

As a rule, I'd like to think that every negative aspect of reality has a positive one. But I must admit that when defining it as I have above (and I'm just throwing out ideas) it's difficult for me to gleam a possitive aspect for a person who has effectively collapse inwards onto himself. Or perhaps that's it, hate could be a way to reach rock bottom and that's what some people need. I'm not sure.

I do however realize that this is a really interesting question to approach.

My two humble cents.

 

[Hesper]

How do you go from displeasure, rage, anger to hatred? What makes a person not stop before reaching that stage? Is there a justification for hatred, Is hate in any context useful?

By emitting hate, what the individual fails to see is that he is a prey of the same hatred and all that entails.

Can hate be induced by karma? Can political hatred be effectively induced and how can that be combated once is installed so to speak?

Can the need for justice lead to hatred?

There is also the neuropsychological aspect, the preeminence of the reptilian brain and the kidnapping of the amygdala.

Professor of Psychobiology Jaak Panksepp devotes only a small part of his book Affective Neuroscience to the problem of hatred. But what he writes could be useful. He speculates that it is something akin to the crystallization of anger:

Although anger appears to have several obvious precipitating stimuli in the environment, the emotion is not created out of environmental events but represents the ability of certain types of stimuli to access the neural circuity of RAGE within the brain. For instance, a human baby typically becomes enraged if its freedom of action is restricted simply by holding its arms to its sides. This highlights a general and lifelong principle. Anything that restricts our freedom will be viewed as an irritant deserving our anger, contempt, and revolutionary intent. Of course, restriction of freedom is not the only precipitant of our anger and scorn. The same response emerges when one's body surface is repeatedly irritated or when one does not receive expected rewards, namely, when one is frustrated....As will be explained in detail later, reward and expectation mis-matches may promote anger by downward neural influences that arouse RAGE circuits... - Page 189

[A]nger may provoke certain types of primitive thoughts and perceptual changes in all animals. During anger, rapid movement on the part of other animals may be viewed as provocations, as opposed to irrelevant pieces of information. Certain cues from other animals that have been repeatedly associated with the provocation of anger may also develop the ability to sustain angry moods for extended periods through classical conditioning. This type of learning, once it becomes cognitively represented, may be called "hatred". Is the feeling of hatred, then, little more than the emotion of anger, conditioned to specific cues, that has been cognitively extended in time? This may well be the case, and it would explain why hatred should not be called a basic emotion, even though it has certain features that differentiate it from anger. hatred is obviously more calculated, behaviorally constrained, and affectively "colder" than the passionate "heat" of rage. - Page 191

Assuming these speculations are accurate, we see that environmental stimuli trigger the RAGE circuitry which, when repeated over time, can crystallize a state of hatred in the subject. One would expect this to be potentially evolutionarily advantageous since it would prime an individual to be less trusting and more cautious in a relatively dangerous environment. And, in the situation Galaxia2002 writes about (Venezuela) it would prime the people for, as Panksepp writes, revolutionary actions to correct conditions and restore the 'rewards-expectations' balance. The main problem is that it will not solve their problems. People are being stampeded on purpose.

Clearly, as an emotion, hatred serves a purpose. Like Galaxia2002 writes, the frustrated need for justice, the frustrated need for money, food, freedom of expression, etc could all theoretically lead to a sustained state of hatred. However, there are more factors to violence, especially revolutionary violence, than hatred. For example, it's been found that the desire for social status in poor economic conditions is a powerful predictor of violence. During bad times some men find violence to be the easiest way to climb up their hierarchy. Jordan Peterson has an excellent interview with an evolutionary psychologist about that here. And some Venezuelan rioters have admitted to getting paid to incite violence. There are other sorts of opportunists in the crowd as well.

But, as far as the ordinary people are concerned, Panksepp writes that hatred can result after sustained "reward and expectation mis-matches' and that we can be angered or frustrated when 'we do not receive expected rewards'. This sounds a lot like the problem of not being aware of the reason for these mis-matches and adjusting one's thinking and behavior accordingly. So perhaps the best thing we can do is, like what SOTT does, spread the truth of the situation, so that people at least have a chance to become aware of what the situation really is, what's causing them to feel and act a certain way, and make their choices accordingly. I think an article or video about it would be a great idea.

 

[obyvatel]

I think hate has both mental/cognitive and emotional components. The emotional components have been mentioned already. The mental/cognitive aspect of hate involves devaluing and dehumanizing the other party. This takes time to develop. One repeatedly uses faulty thinking with a host of psychological biases to strip the other party of humanity. A couple of these biases (not exhaustive) can be

- fundamental attribution error where any perceived affront, real or imaginary, caused by the other is treated as a case of intentional malice instead of considering other causal factors like environmental influence, unintentional error, or a temporary lapse in judgement. Interpersonal hatred can be caused by this type of bias

- over-generalization and demonization where a person is stereotyped as a member of an out-of-favor group and any misdeed of the group is put upon the shoulders of the individual. Class hatred, racial hatred, religious hatred can result from such biases



As this process of devaluation and dehumanization proceeds in the mind of the hater, it becomes justifiable to treat the other party as sub-human.

I do not think there is any useful or redeeming feature of hatred. The underlying cognitive biases make hatred universally toxic. Anger on the other hand can sometimes be useful if the energy generated from it is used judiciously. Hatred is an example of the wrong use of the energy of anger.

 

[Phill4]

I think that Hate is composed or complex form of rage or anger.
Where anger is an spontaneous reaction toward something that is displeasing and lasts as long and as far as we are inclined to feeling disapproval in general.
The more unaccepting we are the more it will last.

So for hate, as a composed emotion, there need to be the conditions to support a cronic form or rage or depression, inwhich hate can sutain and last as such.

People would need to be taught/conditioned, or constructed , meaning their system of perception, would have to be inclined towards disapproval in order for hate to be apparent,
how are these conditions created, I think , that in essence it is a constant pattern of fear, anger, anxiety, depression and and inclination towards destruction, then hate blooms.

That is a theory at the personal level.

In the case of Venezuela, i think that the tendency is not much different that other countries, just that it remains latent because the discomfort is still acceptable for most people, here in the US it seems the latent fears of the population are still there and discomfort is growing in many areas of society , as I can imagine in other countries as well, though socially, there is a degree of acceptance of the conditions since people still have access to their "toys",
But that is not to say, that given the right conditions , this hatred cannot flourish here, or anywhere I am aware of, people are still at the degree of spontaneous anger since they perceive no changes in their environment even if the changes are taking place, but when they become perceivable it is when people do act upon the fears in and expression of anger, adding all previous discomforts to the equation.

When the division in opinions are evident and the anger is present, there are constant clashes.



I don't know that there is a function to hate, other than speculate that the function within the individual, who as I said would have to be polarized enough to the negative side, to be a mayor factor in their inner constitution in their system of perception, or that it is a function at higher levels of their consciousness, in terms of repression, division and destruction, I can't say.
But there are always non-linear consequences to actions of hate, as any other emotion.

Like a drop in a bucked to water forms a wave, where the drop was intended as a reaction, but the after wave may not have been planned, and can have positive as well as negative effects in terms of balancing a situation.

Some thoughts.

 

[SocietyoftheSpectacle]

It is said by the church that the greatest SIN is Despair.

In the work I learned to examine emotions in two ways.

One was the amount of energy they drain from a person,
and the other was weather the
Emotion was Active or passive.

In this way we can develop a Ladder of emotions , with the most draining at the bottom.

So from Despair,
A PASSIVE Emotion,
where the whole body is simply wide open and all energy is draining away ,
a small step UP and across the ladder, is Anger,
An ACTIVE Emotion,

which at leasts trains some of the energy to a focus point.
Something to Blame.

Using these criteria Hate seems to be a sliding back from the Active Focused anger ,
to the passive state,
Retaining the Focus.
( The Object of Hate )
Which may or may not have been cause of the despair to start with.

 

[Joe]

I was discussing with some friend about the nature of hate, motivated to the situation that is being lived in my country Venezuela.

Maybe it would be useful to describe what is the apparent object of the hatred that you are talking about in this instance. Or to put it another way, towards whom or what is the hatred directed in this instance?

 

[Galaxia2002]

Very interesting their point of views in general.

I was discussing with some friend about the nature of hate, motivated to the situation that is being lived in my country Venezuela.

Maybe it would be useful to describe what is the apparent object of the hatred that you are talking about in this instance. Or to put it another way, towards whom or what is the hatred directed in this instance?

Both parts in conflict Joe. I have seen hate manifestations between common people by political differences, at work for example and this scale to big mass of persons in protests, and also between politicians of contrary tendency on TV and in the way people are expressing. So this seems to be political hatred. I think at this moment that is what has stuck the country because any party want to give in their positions nor make a concession for peace.

 

[3DStudent]

Hate is interesting for me because anger runs on my dad's side of the family. And it's something I've talked to my sister about. I agree with everything that was said, and it seems it's a crystallization. For me, hatred is much stronger than anger though. And it seems it's a choice, something that you may even revel in.

But it's based in ignorance. Because you're missing something. Where you can have righteous anger that may be rooted on seeing things for what they are, hatred is something that blinds you. And as it was said, programming may come to play here. I guess if there is enough transmarginal inhibition over time, hatred is the state they build into people.

 

[Woodsman]

But, as far as the ordinary people are concerned, Panksepp writes that hatred can result after sustained "reward and expectation mis-matches' and that we can be angered or frustrated when 'we do not receive expected rewards'. This sounds a lot like the problem of not being aware of the reason for these mis-matches and adjusting one's thinking and behavior accordingly. So perhaps the best thing we can do is, like what SOTT does, spread the truth of the situation, so that people at least have a chance to become aware of what the situation really is, what's causing them to feel and act a certain way, and make their choices accordingly. I think an article or video about it would be a great idea.

This resonates with me.

A few years ago, I found myself whammied with a lot of hate towards a former friend of many years.

-He was one of those smart and friendly but thoroughly helpless individuals who I was constantly rescuing and lending energy and time to as he "grew" through his various rough spots. Everybody liked him, and so did I. He would listen to my stuff and often offer useful insights and support. It was unbalanced, and I found myself often gritting my teeth and counting to ten rather than bark at him for doing stupid, dangerous things (which in many cases I would find myself having to mitigate and repair).

Then after a relationship I was in came to an end, my ex-partner started spreading false stories about how I'd been incredibly mean to her her. It completely sucked, but I held my tongue and figured anybody who knew me and knew her and took the time would see through it. But this guy took everything she said and believed it and threw a host of crazy accusations at me. I was astonished. He'd known me for years, I'd even lived with him for a stretch and I figured he knew from experience that I was patient and supportive with everybody I know. I figured if I 'deserved' the benefit of the doubt from anybody, it was him. I'd "invested", you see, so much patience in him, after all. We talked and argued and I plead my case for a week, but to no avail. He'd made up his mind. I was a bad guy! I finally cut him off and told him to leave me alone and not call me anymore. I was furious! Something snapped. He came to my door at least once afterwards, tapping quietly, but I refused to answer.

In the middle of that last week, between bouts of arguing, he told me a curious thing; he'd been in therapy, and had been advised that while he was making progress, he was due for a blow up, at both the therapist and at the parties who had hurt him in the past, (I suspect his parents). He told me frankly at one point that he didn't feel safe getting angry with the people who probably deserved it, but that I was 'safe' for him to get angry at.

That blew me away.

Anyway.., my reaction was very intense. It was like all that bottled up frustration over the years suddenly crystallized and, I am still amazed to say it, it took over a YEAR for my anger to finally subside. I feel uncomfortable calling it 'hate', but it had all the corresponding labels. I'd be walking somewhere and find myself re-enacting old conversations, filled with fury I'd not allowed myself at the time.

One interesting part was that I could easily see things from his perspective, could make any number of logical allowances for his state of mind and all of that. But the anger was coming from somewhere else unrelated to reason and it remained very present.

I've not experienced anything like that, on that scale before. I'm glad it finally ran its course and subsided.

As it happens, I think I am far better off without that kind of person in my life. I don't miss him at all. In this case, I think the process was probably healthy, if extremely uncomfortable.

 

[obyvatel]

[quote author=Woodsman]
As it happens, I think I am far better off without that kind of person in my life. I don't miss him at all. In this case, I think the process was probably healthy, if extremely uncomfortable.
[/quote]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Woodsman. It was healthy to terminate the relationship you described. A question perhaps worth considering is: was it necessary to hate (if that is what happened) the other person to make it happen? If a similar experience was to be repeated, can the same outcome be achieved without taking as much energy out of you?

I have been in situations where I have stewed at length on how some other person was taking advantage of me. Eventually I learned to draw a line regarding what I would do and not do in the relationship and hold the line. Then, in some cases, the other people changed their behavior and the relationship changed. In some cases, the other people tried the same old moves and when they no longer worked, they went away and the relationship was terminated. In some cases, I cut off the relationship. From these experiences I learned that it is possible to draw and hold boundaries without hating others. That is a more energy efficient process - impeccability in terms of Castaneda .

I also learned that what fuels these type of relationships is an element of feeding from both sides. Feeding from the person who is taking advantage of another is obvious. There is also an element of feeding from the side of the person who is being taken advantage of. May be white knight syndrome or living up to an image of a "giving person", or running away from an image of a "selfish person who does not help those in need" etc. Whatever it may be, this feeding dynamic needs to be uncovered. Question to ask is "what am I really getting out of this?" Another related aspect is sort of the "sunk cost fallacy". The more emotional investment we put into a person or project, harder it is to pull back even when signs are clear that the dynamic is not healthy or productive.

Per my understanding, when a situation or relationship gives rise to anger or discomfort, it is worthwhile to use the energy of the emotion to analyze the situation with the tools at one's disposal. Alternative is to use the energy to stew, focus exclusively on the other party whose actions are largely beyond one's control, or to ignore the discomfort until it blows up. It is our choice to make.

As for the "evolutionary benefits" of various negative emotions - I have grown wary of such analyses to some degree, depending on context. Every emotion, simple or complex may serve some purpose , but the question to ask is if it serves the purpose which is more important to me.

 

[Woodsman]

[quote author=Woodsman]
As it happens, I think I am far better off without that kind of person in my life. I don't miss him at all. In this case, I think the process was probably healthy, if extremely uncomfortable.

Thanks for sharing your experience, Woodsman. It was healthy to terminate the relationship you described. A question perhaps worth considering is: was it necessary to hate (if that is what happened) the other person to make it happen? If a similar experience was to be repeated, can the same outcome be achieved without taking as much energy out of you?

I have been in situations where I have stewed at length on how some other person was taking advantage of me. Eventually I learned to draw a line regarding what I would do and not do in the relationship and hold the line. Then, in some cases, the other people changed their behavior and the relationship changed. In some cases, the other people tried the same old moves and when they no longer worked, they went away and the relationship was terminated. In some cases, I cut off the relationship. From these experiences I learned that it is possible to draw and hold boundaries without hating others. That is a more energy efficient process - impeccability in terms of Castaneda .

I also learned that what fuels these type of relationships is an element of feeding from both sides. Feeding from the person who is taking advantage of another is obvious. There is also an element of feeding from the side of the person who is being taken advantage of. May be white knight syndrome or living up to an image of a "giving person", or running away from an image of a "selfish person who does not help those in need" etc. Whatever it may be, this feeding dynamic needs to be uncovered. Question to ask is "what am I really getting out of this?" Another related aspect is sort of the "sunk cost fallacy". The more emotional investment we put into a person or project, harder it is to pull back even when signs are clear that the dynamic is not healthy or productive.

Per my understanding, when a situation or relationship gives rise to anger or discomfort, it is worthwhile to use the energy of the emotion to analyze the situation with the tools at one's disposal. Alternative is to use the energy to stew, focus exclusively on the other party whose actions are largely beyond one's control, or to ignore the discomfort until it blows up. It is our choice to make.

As for the "evolutionary benefits" of various negative emotions - I have grown wary of such analyses to some degree, depending on context. Every emotion, simple or complex may serve some purpose , but the question to ask is if it serves the purpose which is more important to me.
[/quote]

Those are some very worthy observations.

As it happens, this 'friendship' began before I'd dug into the psychology books on the recommended reading list.

I think I could have better implemented what I'd been reading about as the patterns began to become clear, but I like to think I've learned my lesson at this point.

I suspect I've swung perhaps a little too far in the other direction, cutting off new people rather quickly now at the first signs of patterns emerging.

I sometimes think that perhaps these types of relationships are not necessarily all bad, that they serve a purpose. -Souls traveling together so that we can help each other work through stuff by providing room to explore. I've done my time for now, though. I think a lot of my patience in this life has been spent.

 

[zak]

Hate is not only ignorance, hate is the ignorance of what you know.
To apply what the Cass said about knowledge protects, and ignorance endangered, in this case in the hate not only
you deny your knowledge and also you put yourself and certainely the "nature" of "your" self and the nature of "your" hate in a danger.

In the Love Light Knowledge's CASS quote, the nature of hate is as the same as the nature of a snake biting its own tail,and in the same time
the tails of others again and again, without wanting to feel the effects of the venom on itself, but only want to see on others until the total annihilation of all.

From Wiki:

Saverio Tomasella
It connects hatred with fantasy, especially social fantasies of "normality." Hatred is a powerful engine of "social success" and the seizure of power, at work in business as well as in religious institutions and political parties.

"One of the main levers of hatred is the non-appealed conviction, such as an assignment of identity. The accusation that annuls the other implies: I know who you are; I say that you are worth nothing, you are worth nothing. Hate speech kills; It is not a word but a destructive act.

Hatred is disguised. "It can only be perceived from the impact of its intention on the soul resonating in interiority in the form of sensations and images such as cold, frozen, immobilization, petrification, 'Illustrates the dream. Hatred, the world of the negation of the soul, excludes what is its expression, the feeling, and prevents the manifestation of its qualities: mobility, warmth and freedom. "

As such, it is possible to define hate as the radical negation of a person. It corresponds to the intention to destroy the other, attacking it in its being and its humanity.

A frequent pretext for hatred is to accuse the other party of being animated. As an accusation, it is in this sense a tool for manipulating the masses. Orwell gives an example with Goldstein's character in 1984, which the regime uses to derive discontent from its population to another object than itself.

And CassWiki:

In the Name of Sanity is a book by historian Lewis Mumford, first published in 1954.

This book is a collection of essays/lectures, and as he wrote on the first page, "the aim of this book is to give fresh insight - and with that insight hope and courage - to those who are disquieted by the violence and irrationality of our times". There are nine chapters, with parts of them were written before 1950s. Before the cold war broken out, the author was describing the foundations of the war and the issues surrounding it with brief discussions and comparisons with the previous wars and the severe consequences for the humanity at large.

The author also discusses the coming of the times of hate, violence, fears, and most of all, irrationality, which are quite fitting for our present times. He implores us, the reader, to come to our senses during a time of "irrational violence" and strongly suggested to us to utilize the "techniques of Creativity" for national security, which had been relying so much on those disintegrating forces, before it's too late. Humanity, as the author points out, is heading to its own destruction as long as people paying attention to "less important things" like wars, atom bombs, violence, fears, - all that contributes to one's disintegration and dehumanization. In order to unite "men," he illustrated an action begins with "conversations" at the lowest level and then out to the humanity at large.

From Laura Knight-Jadczyk's review on Amazon:

Parts of this book were written in 1946 just as the world was emerging from the insanity of the second World War. What Mumford described was, basically, the foundations of the ensuing cold war. It's chilling to realize that what he predicted did happen, and even more chilling to see how his predictions have played out in 9-11 and everything that has happened since then.

Mumford was very concerned about the planet and humanity at a time when very few other people had the same vision that he did. He wrote about the coming of an era of hate, fear, suspicion and violence which is most certainly the norm of our present day in almost the exact terms he predicted.

Mumford's primary concern was that humanity has come to rely on aggression for national security instead of making peace and helping others and accepting a multi-cultural world. He saw clearly that we were becoming the barbarians we think are "over there" somewhere else, that we need to control or destroy.

A timeless and timely book, simply and eloquently argued; a must read for everyone.

https://thecasswiki.net/index.php?title=In_the_Name_of_Sanity

 

[Hesper]

Anyway.., my reaction was very intense. It was like all that bottled up frustration over the years suddenly crystallized and, I am still amazed to say it, it took over a YEAR for my anger to finally subside. I feel uncomfortable calling it 'hate', but it had all the corresponding labels. I'd be walking somewhere and find myself re-enacting old conversations, filled with fury I'd not allowed myself at the time.

It does sound like a sort of emotional immune system was working in your situation. Thanks for sharing - sounds like you got rid of a really nasty 'friend'.

I suspect I've swung perhaps a little too far in the other direction, cutting off new people rather quickly now at the first signs of patterns emerging.

Yeah that can be tricky. Maybe over time you'll find the balance that's right for you, but being aware of those patterns (and the impact they're making on you) sounds like the important thing to me. As the C's said (forgive me, I'm paraphrasing) once you learn something, plug it in. Knowledge protects.

As for the "evolutionary benefits" of various negative emotions - I have grown wary of such analyses to some degree, depending on context. Every emotion, simple or complex may serve some purpose , but the question to ask is if it serves the purpose which is more important to me.

I agree, though I think that there's a lot in the 'evolutionary perspective' that could be unpacked. A basic overview reads:

Evolutionary psychology is an approach that views human nature as the product of a universal set of evolved psychological adaptations to recurring problems in the ancestral environment. Proponents suggest that it seeks to integrate psychology into the other natural sciences, rooting it in the organizing theory of biology (evolutionary theory), and thus understanding psychology as a branch of biology. [...]

Evolutionary psychology is founded on several core premises.

• The brain is an information processing device, and it produces behavior in response to external and internal inputs.[2][14]
• The brain's adaptive mechanisms were shaped by natural and sexual selection.[2][14]
• Different neural mechanisms are specialized for solving problems in humanity's evolutionary past.[2][14]
• The brain has evolved specialized neural mechanisms that were designed for solving problems that recurred over deep evolutionary time,[14] giving modern humans stone-age minds.[2]
• Most contents and processes of the brain are unconscious; and most mental problems that seem easy to solve are actually extremely difficult problems that are solved unconsciously by complicated neural mechanisms.[2]
• Human psychology consists of many specialized mechanisms, each sensitive to different classes of information or inputs. These mechanisms combine to produce manifest behavior.[14]

There are a number of criticisms of the field,

Criticism of evolutionary psychology involves questions of testability, cognitive and evolutionary assumptions (such as modular functioning of the brain, and large uncertainty about the ancestral environment), importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, as well as political and ethical issues due to interpretations of research results.

The evolutionary perspective comes very close to the perspective shared here - that we are mostly unconscious, functioning based on mechanical 'programs' which we may or may not be aware of, etc. However, the main difference is the 'why' we have these - as in, for an evolutionary psychologist they each serve some specific functional purpose. There is no 'predator's mind' or 'flyer' in evolutionary psychology. There is no '4th Way,' no positive disintegration, no higher purpose in life, just mechanics. So, context is important, as we know that emotions are necessary, but can have many faces depending on the situation - the same emotion can be creative or destructive depending on how we use them / how they use us.

 

[luc]

The evolutionary perspective comes very close to the perspective shared here - that we are mostly unconscious, functioning based on mechanical 'programs' which we may or may not be aware of, etc. However, the main difference is the 'why' we have these - as in, for an evolutionary psychologist they each serve some specific functional purpose. There is no 'predator's mind' or 'flyer' in evolutionary psychology. There is no '4th Way,' no positive disintegration, no higher purpose in life, just mechanics. So, context is important, as we know that emotions are necessary, but can have many faces depending on the situation - the same emotion can be creative or destructive depending on how we use them / how they use us.

Thanks Hesper for your thoughts and quotes. I first stumbled upon the concept of evolutionary psychology through Peterson and guys like Gad Saad - without knowing too much about it, it strikes me as a bit simplistic when taken to the extreme and IMO can lead to a "when your only tool is a hammer, all you see are nails" situation. Plus, as you said, the concept relies on many assumptions - even if those are correct in a general sense, the details do matter a great deal, so we should be cautious about drawing conclusions too fast using evolutionary arguments.

There's also Sheldrake's work on morphic fields to consider, which brings a whole new perspective into evolution, although it is compatible with evolutionary theory in general - but grants consciousness and mass consciousness a much bigger role than traditional evolutionary thinking, even compared to an evolutionary theory that factors in sexual selection (which is quite different from purely natural selection). Sheldrake's theory is compatible with esoteric development, because it allows consciousness to 'choose' or 'work towards' different morphic fields, which then change our mode of being and bring us under a different kind of evolutionary influence.

I also thought about it in terms of 4D influence and all that - one way to look at it may be that the programming of the human race by 4D forces is not so much a direct hacking of our brains in the present; since there is no time in 4D, maybe they 'hacked' directly into our evolution! This would explain why we have a 'flyer's' or 'predator's' mind. It also means that in order to grow spiritually, we have to go counter our evolutionary programming to an extent, or at least 'debug' those things from our evolutionary history that are of malevolent origin.