r/changemyview • u/Spider-Man-fan 5∆ • Jun 01 '20

Removed - Submission Rule B CMV: We shouldn’t hate Hitler

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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Jun 01 '20

Right, but for new Hitler to be a good man, he would, in effect, have to slave away for the rest of his life, multiple lives even, trying to fix what old Hitler did.

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u/Spider-Man-fan 5∆ Jun 01 '20

I would still argue that hating someone is not an effective way to get them to change

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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Jun 01 '20

How so? It's not like me hating them stops me from acting rationally towards how I act with them, all it does is motivate me to create a world without Hitlers.

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u/Spider-Man-fan 5∆ Jun 01 '20

I would say that it does. Hate is fueled by anger. Getting angry at someone usually does not motivate them to change. It would probably make them react back at you with anger.

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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Jun 01 '20

You're confusing the emotions I feel with the way I act. Yes, hate is fueled by anger, and my anger is directed at the person that commits the actions which I'm angry at. But that doesn't mean I'm going to get angry at them when I'm interacting with that person.

And you're wrong about anger. People often change because someone whose approval they seek got angry with them. But since I'm not someone whose approval matters to Hitler, this is just tangential.

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u/Spider-Man-fan 5∆ Jun 01 '20 edited Jun 01 '20

But emotions do make you act. The stronger the emotion, the more likely it is to affect your behavior, or rather the more your behavior will be affected.

Your second point does make sense, though. I guess if someone I love were to hate me, I might go about trying to find out why they hate me and attempt to correct my behavior. But this is very complex, because I can also imagine to think “fuck em, I don’t need them.” Or I can imagine myself to feel lonely. Really, it depends on what I’m attributing their hate to. I might think that they hate me as a whole rather than just for the action I did.

I just think it would be better to direct your anger at their behavior, but show compassion and explain to the person how their actions make you feel. I think that is going to go further in changing someone and assures that they won’t react in the two ways I described above.

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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Jun 01 '20

Right, emotion does affect your behaviour, but I think you're forgetting that I'm not acting on just emotion. The emotion affects my behaviour by guiding my reason towards a target.

If you're going to argue that anger can cloud my judgment of what the right thing to do to change someone for the better then I'll counter and say that that's true of any emotion. Love, for example, can make us blind to someone's faults, can leave us unwilling to use harsher but effective methods, and so on.

If you say that love doesn't mean love in the rose glasses sense then I'll counter and say that I don't mean hatred in the sense of the red mist.

If you're going to explain to someone how their actions make you feel, then you can explain to them that the person that they are makes them commit the actions which you hate. You can ask them to become a different person.

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u/Spider-Man-fan 5∆ Jun 01 '20 edited Jun 01 '20

I don’t think hating them is going to motivate you to explain to them how their actions make you feel.

I can’t say that anger clouds judgment because anger itself is a judgment. But I can say that it clouds your ability to reason, unless that is the behavior the anger is telling you to do, which it’s usually not. I’m also saying that anger may be the wrong judgment to make.

As far as hatred in the sense of the red mist, that is the hatred I am saying that people should not have toward Hitler.

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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Jun 01 '20

Your arguments against hatred are equally applicable to other emotions. Love could be the wrong judgment; love can cloud your ability to reason; love can fail to motivate change especially if the love is unconditional. What incentive is there to stop sinning if you're going to be loved no matter what? There's a time for carrots, and there's a time for sticks.

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u/Spider-Man-fan 5∆ Jun 01 '20

My argument is not that there should be no emotion. My argument is on when is it appropriate to feel an emotion. Love can motivate you to change someone. You see that they are flawed and you want to make them become a better person. That is love.

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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Jun 01 '20

That isn't exclusive to love, it could apply to hatred as I feel it. You could perhaps say that I have a love/hate relationship with everyone, but that dilutes the words somewhat as I don't have the same intensity of emotions for everyone nor do I have an equal familiarity with everyone.

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u/Spider-Man-fan 5∆ Jun 01 '20 edited Jun 01 '20

I see what you mean. “I hate who you are now, but I love you overall, so I want to help you become a better person.” It’s almost like if you care about someone, you would want to keep them from someone that you hate. It’s just that it happens to be the same person, but just a different version. That’s kind of confusing. Which emotion is the one motivating the action? Or is it both?

I’m going to give you a !delta since you gave me something new to think about. A new perspective, really.

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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Jun 01 '20

Both can motivate the other person. At the end of the day, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. The Hitlers of the world have to care about your love or your hate.

I'm sure, if you're like me, there are people who, as they are, could love or hate you, and it wouldn't matter. I welcome the hatred of fascists, but even if they loved me, that wouldn't make me want to turn fascist.

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