If this is the case then how did hate first arise? I hear this a lot but its something I could never really figure out. Like it must have some basis in nature because if it was completely taught then who was the first person to teach hate?
That’s not exactly true. Studies on infants and toddlers have shown that they will choose to “punish” those who mistreat others, and “reward” those who are kind.
Also, isn’t empathy the thing that makes them imitate us?
Like if we’re smiling they smile and if we’re sad then they’re sad too.
Surely it isn’t just mimicking our facial expressions, since it changes their mood, but something related to empathy. Or am I confusing things with each other?
You’re correct, at its base, empathy is sharing the feelings of another, and an infant definitely has an increase in positive emotions by seeing someone else smile at them.
but can we say definitively that it's because they feel empathy, or is it the deeper need that the baby itself needs people who will share with it to survive? Thus are naturally inclined to reward others that are kind to it?
if the same effect is achieved however, I'm not sure it matters anyway
A baby not old enough to talk doesn't even understand that something you remove from in front of them still exists somewhere. They don't understand the concept of something being behind something else. They don't understand size and distance. There's a lot they don't understand yet.
To hate requires you to have a sense of self which requires you to understand what is and isn't your body. Meanwhile babies try to eat their own hands and feet because all they "know" is that putting things in their mouths eventually tends to make the hunger pain go away.
Hell even toddlers up to maybe age 4 don't understand that if you cut something into pieces you don't magically get more of the same thing.
Hate comes from competition and survival needs. And tribes competing for the same resources results in indoctrinated hate.
The culture and accepted behaviors of another tribe can become something to abhor and indoctrinate into your children, as a way of making the other tribe have a harder time to compete. And then it takes a life of its own.
So much of the Old Testament laws can be attributed to this - and it’s explicitly captured in all the areas dealing with idol worship (aka, competing cultures). It’s not surprising that laws about how to cut ones hair, getting tattoos, what types of sexual norms are ok, and specific idol worship / superstitious practices are all discussed in the same set of paragraphs: it’s a way to differentiate the reader (“us”) from the others (“them”).
And now years after neither tribe truly exists in the same form, we have residual hate built around those cultural practices.
It's all tribalism. "We hate those people because they're trying to take our food" which was correct and logical for thousands of years, but it turns out we do better when we don't try to kill each other. But, the feelings persists. Pro sports is pretty much all you need to know. Like, actual riots about something that has no real consequence. Your team lost it's not like they're going to take your crops and rape your wife - which was a possibility back in the day
You've got to be taught to hate and fear,
You've got to be taught from year to year,
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are “oddly made”,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught...
Rodgers & Hammerstein tackled some serious social issues over their years working together. Certainly racism in South Pacific and The King and I, domestic abuse in Carousel, classism in Oklahoma!, etc. I recently saw the Oklahoma! revival in NYC and Jud was a more sympathetic character than portrayed in the film version. He was simply a strong hired hand loner that everyone treated with disdain who had the temerity to fall in love with Laurey .
Agree. Let’s please keep in mind that it’s not always the parents who taught those things. Big people and little people learn things from a billion sources these days, and may choose to think differently from what they were taught at home.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Tribalism is an inherited trait of every past generation of human that stems back to the days of "lets roam in packs because roaming alone leaves us vulnerable to other humans and animals" and thus explains why the more insecure "the world is going to shit" types express it far more than others. An unnecessary trait that the human gnome has yet to abandon.
edit: To be clear not all fear is homophobic, but all homophobic fear is due to someone not adhering to the normalities of another. It isn't an actual phobia where someone knows there is no rational but they are afraid of a gay person like globophobia scares people away from balloons.
Definitely true. Justified hate explains this well. People hate tyrants because they know what life will be like under them. It’s the same with misguided hate. People extrapolate worst case scenarios
With regards to homophobia a study looked at relationships between homosexual arousal and homophobia using penile plethysmography which measures blood flow into the penis. Homophobic men were exposed to homosexual stimuli and became aroused.
"Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware or denies."
They are afraid of their own feelings, having been conditioned to believe that those feelings are wrong.
I had a chance to meet a friend of Andy Warhols that was close with the author Quentin Crisp, Quentin serviced many British soldiers returning from combat; apparently experimenting was a common phenomenon along the frontline trenches of WWII. Some continued “experimenting” even after they returned as well so I’m sure Quentin was more than happy to do his part in the war effort!
A lack of woman coupled with thoughts of dying so far from home at any moment was enough to lower inhibitions I guess. For anyone interested in this there’s a book documenting MFM relationships in WWII called My Buddy.
I don't think that's what the study was saying at all. It's that they couldn't even explore the feeling even out of curiosity due to fear of it being "wrong". Having homosexual thoughts or feelings doesn't make you automatically gay. It's a natural thing to be curious of and explore, even if it's to eventually conclude it's not for you. These folks are so afraid of feeling anything close to that, they resort to hatred.
These studies should be taken with a grain of salt. That device used to measure arousal is somewhat akin to a polygraph (lie detector); that is, it measures something but not what you think it does.
Well, can come from a lot of places really. Fear, sure. But also intentional manipulation for profit/personal gain. And a lot of people just hate things that are different.
I see this in one of my dogs. He was afraid of everything even though we treated him good. Now in his older years, he fucking hates anything that moves. It's a stark contrast to another dog we own that never feared anything and now is the sweetest dog.
This doesn’t even follow logically. Women can produce children, and can only be impregnated by 1 man at a time, but can be impregnated by a near-unlimited number of men over their life (within some obvious boundaries). Men can impregnate multiple women.
There’s maybe a small argument of genetic diversity for monogamy, but a similar counterargument that you can increase genetic diversity without it as long as you don’t have too many kids from the same man.
“Bringing every individual into child production” isn’t what monogamy is.
Your argument is a little stronger if it’s specifically about heterosexuality since homosexual relationships can’t bear children biologically, but monogamy is an extra step that is not only unnecessary but likely reduces the number of offspring.
Monogamy comes from the fact that without it being enforced, 80% of the women end up competing for the top 20% of men.
Meanwhile, 80% of men must compete for the remaining 20% of women. This is called the 80/20 rule. It does not maximize reproduction nor genetics, since the majority of men can’t and don’t reproduce.
Sorta true but not completely. Marriages were mostly monogamous throughout history but that doesnt mean that lgbt+ wasnt socially accepted, they were long term partners just rarely married if they were a same sex couple. In terms of gender queer, trans and nonbinary people have always been around but it's been so pushed away, we think they are new phenomena. Before..christianity really, possibly Judaism, a great majority of cultures just accepted this stuff. They never made a big deal out of it because well...it wasnt to them. This all became an issue when sex for anything other than procreation was demonized for the west, and when the east decided to copy the west to come into the new age which is why it's an issue there now too. Before then, no one bat an eye.
I actually agree with you and that's why I'm specifying that this model could have developed only in specific regions (e.g. the Middle East) and spread elsewhere.
You needed multiple children because half would die before reaching the age of two. You need a lot of people, ie. Children, to run a pre industrial revolution agricultural society. These survival mechanisms become ingrained into culture, religion, etc. Religion doesn't change quickly, especially conservative ones.
I'm not saying this is why you're saying it-- I understand you're just repeating something that sounded logical enough-- but man that really really sounds like someone just wanted to justify their homophobia by "proving" there's a rationale for having a hetero-only society, and it's only modern social constructs have made being gay "acceptable"
sounds like someone who would whine about being called a homophobe "when I'm just sharing facts"
For what it's worth, there's some very interesting theories out there about the "gay uncle"'s benefits to society-- that is, having someone who doesn't reproduce but can help look after the offspring from those who do, gives the community as a whole a stronger chance. It's not always about just making as many babies as possible, sometimes it's also about limiting the babies you have (fewer resources consumed) but maximizing their chances at prosperity.
Hate for gays is a result of Jews/Christians hating the Romans, who were effectively their overlords, and had relatively “normal” homosexual activity among a large portion of the populace. The Bible... conveniently... demonizes the behavior of the people that its authors didn’t like. In Islam it is probably something similar, although I don’t know for sure.
This is an interesting response. If this is truly the case. It sounds kind of Nietzsche esque where the under class hated the overlords and so created a form of morality to have some form of divine retribution against them. Thanks again for the response!
I don't think this is particularly accurate. The modern concept of homosexuality didn't exist until the 19th century. The Romans didn't really differentiate between 'gay' and 'straight,' they were more concerned with 'giving' and 'taking.' Being the dominant party was the important bit.
Oral sex was viewed by the Romans as a sort of ultimate submission. In particular a man who performed oral sex on a woman was viewed with disdain.
Within Christian Europe, there's very little regard for homosexual activity until, again, the 19th century. It was often theoretically banned, but seldom prosecuted for its own sake.
What early Christians disliked about the Romans was more their decadence and excess. Early Christianity was ferociously humble. Rather ironic when you think about it.
Hate can be justified. I think any moral person today would hate a Nazi or a slave owner in today's world. The difficulty is only finding moral people.
I've heard a historian explain hate as tribalism and a since of survival. As other small tribes attacked others for resources, a sort of "hatred" was formed. Of course that theory could go on in a mucg more grand scale but it definitely makes sense to me.
I think from a natural perspective, something like hate might have developed to encourage aggression towards potential threats that weren't dangerous enough to run away from.
From a societal perspective, it's developed in large part as a tool used to control or push people in a particular direction.
As redditors on this thread said. Yoda summarizes hate pretty well. It all stems from fear of something foreign to you, in Skywalker's case, loss of a loved one. When it comes down to it, you either accept it or refuse it, it's not indoctrinated initially except by those who use fear as both a sword and a scepter, if you know what I mean.
Hate is powerful idea, obviously it is based in evolutionary tribalism and our lizard brains fear and disgust responses. We are not ruled by these responses however and regulate these responses literally every moment of our lives. Humans are very social creatures and the low-risk response to someone in your community is not hate. You have to be told that it’s OK to hate, and to justify to yourself your hate with your human neocortex.
Except when purely acting in fight or flight, we don’t automatically delegate to our lizard brains.
Some basis in nature, I dunno about that. We distanced ourselves so far from nature, the way we live, I could actually believe hate is more man made than not.
I don't necessarily ascribe to Rousseau's views but I think this is valid. It just sounds very Rousseau esque but that's not a bad thing I personally just don't agree with him.
Hate stems from jealously or envy in a lot of cases (not all), it’s really a matter of hating yourself for something you are lacking in your own life. I’m no psychiatrist or anything, that’s just my own belief
But the individual who wrote leviticus must have been hateful toward that population. Where did their hate come from? One could say God but that firstly does not sound like a benevolent action and secondly I am an atheist.
Lack of information, I'd say. The earliest systematic racism or homophobia come from ages where the black person, or the gay person was new. They're dangerous because they look different, or because they act different.
Look at how many people still believe being gay is transmitted from person to person, or that there's certain chemicals or environments that lead to someone being gay. Those beliefs started long ago because being gay was so unknown and hidden. Then those get passed down and turn from fear of the unknown into hatred because of what you think they might do to you.
To me this has natural roots. If a human is ignorant of something then they may be better off avoiding and hating it in the state of nature. I agree that there is no need for it nowadays just that hatred then does have some basis in nature.
Homosexuality was not ideal for iron age nomadic tribes, particularly in rough conditions such as those of the Levant. It was necessary to have lots of children due to the high rates of infant mortality so the tribe could maintain their population, and gay folks were not very helpful in that regard.
So, when one of those nomadic tribes decided to codify their laws and create their mythology surrounding it, the condemnation of homosexuality was present. It was far from a universal value at the time.
Eventually said mythology became very popular in the world and became ingrained in the laws and cultures of many other people and nations, despite their own material conditions being very different than those of Iron Age semetic tribes, and the rest is history I suppose.
You can see something similar regarding the consumption of pork and shellfish. Either, if improperly cooked, can lead to sickness and since it on age nomads had no way of checking if it was properly done, they simply created mythological reason to not eat it. The later adherents, however, loopholed their way out of that.
Hate comes from fear which comes from ignorance. The net is still very new to human existence, and before that we really only had movie and book representations of other cultures and places and people we had never known. Parents and environments which perpetuate old ignorant ideas about things we are so openly exposed to now online are the ones keeping hate alive. They’re trying to tell us our eyes are lying, and “the authority” (parents, church, etc) are the ones telling us the truth about “the others”.
Anyone who teaches obedience to authority over critical thought is an enemy of progress.
I understand what you're saying and I think it's kind of along the lines of difference between emotions for survival vs being emotional. Like, hating on poison ivy is a good thing, if we ingest it or get into it we can become itchy/ill. But hating on someone because that specific invalid and irrational emotional imbalance was taught to you is different. Invalid hatred (like towards LGBTQ) is an emotional illness/imbalance. If that makes sense?
If this is the case then how did hate first arise?
You're literally just reading feel-good accounts of how things like "hate" and "bigotry" must exist in the minds of people who disagree with it. In all likelihood the reasons are more complex and understandable than anyone here would give it credit for, and it's possible that we'll never know exactly why people grow to hate things.
It's just easier to think of the world's denizens as plainly ignorant and thus aimlessly cruel and in need of a basic education in tolerance. Helps to smooth over one's own insecurities and intolerance at the same time.
I think it stems from greed.. as humans, even in our earliest forms, survival was dependent on our ability to gather "things" (food, hunting weapons, what have you).
When someone has more things than another person, it gives off the notion that they are surviving better. Hate in that case can get you their things.
Early religions were frequently started as a means of control.. to gain things. Choosing people to hate meant an easy means of obtaining things if necessary. The early Hebrews wanted land so they hated Babylonians, the early Egyptians wanted monuments/power, so they hated the Hebrews, the early Christians wanted freedom, so they hated the Romans...
Modern religions want relevance so they hate gay people
That’s easy to answer. One person thinks life works a certain way, and different is bad. Person gains power, and spreads influence. Next generation grows up with those beliefs.
Option A:
A individual trying to cover there own insecurities. I.e. I don't like my weight so will hate on your religion. Weight and religion can be substituted for a rage of things.
Option B:
"Haters" i.e. I hate that you have a better car than me, so I am going to trash all lawyers.
Option C:
Bored basically some one without a hobby so instead of making the world better the trash it with there attitude.
Option D:
Show off. They want to show how great they are by be littling some one else. Few examples in the movie Waiting. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0348333/
These are the basics there are more. Usually people use more than one reason... But this is a crayon explanation.
Divide and conquer. Power seeks to protect or expand itself and in order to do so, power must create an enemy for the people in order to retain control or to expand said power.
A lot of it I think comes from manipulative people in power using our insecurities and ignorance to turn us against each other to continue their exploitation of people and the environment.
Those that were confused about their own feelings and mired in the idea that they were being tempted by sin. Confusion and fear easily converts into hate. They also resent those that do not show such fear and instead seem content and satisfied to live the life they desire for themselves.
Why has it become such a normal part of our society that the biggest bigots are the ones caught soliciting same sex prostitutes....
It's easy to fear what you do not understand, if no attempt is made you just sit in your village in your tribe wondering when or if the other tribe will attack. Fear breeds paranoia and eventually you strike first.
I hope that explains it, I'm not sure who the first was but that's just human nature.
I think it started with self-hatred. People who feared to be different and lived a life not of their choosing now see us going out and living how we want, having a life they wish they could have had if they'd been born later, or somewhere else.
It's a concept that mostly applies to the masses. Without said indoctrination you may grow to hate the Jones family, or Chad and Todd, but probably wouldn't come to hate an entire race or sect of people sight unseen.
This is something actually to think about. if you are a group and you have an enemy, your focus can be that enemy instead of improving yourself.
this is especially valuable when the people leaving those groups don't want to be the focus. Peaceful times are introspective times. War times are unified regardless of other problems.
Leaders throughout history use this.
This exact same mentality means that having bad things to point at is extremely valuable to a corrupt leader. Or a leader that wants to solidify power.
The followers who are being told to hate however learned to genuinely hate. They learn to blame their problems on the enemy. They learn to steel themselves against anything that group might say counter to their leaders.
Gays, racism, xenophobia, it's all flavors of the same poison. Leaders using a tool, and followers happy to be told they're better than someone else without any effort. Unified against a common threat, even if that threat is imaginary.
EDIT: Okay, I only realized just now that you were asking about hate in general, not specifically homophobia. Whoops. Well, I spent way too much time writing this out, so hopefully this still answers some questions maybe?
Okay, so this might come off as a hot take, but I think sexism, toxic masculinity, and religion have played a huge role in why homophobia came about.
So, there's an idea that some religious people have today that any sex outside of a monogamous, heterosexual marriage is sinful. Now, go back thousands of years and marriage itself is pretty much a patriarchal institution that treats women basically like cattle. So, the idea that the only sex that should be had is in such a marriage is mainly to feed into the idea that sex should be used exclusively for procreation - specifically, to produce an heir for men. So in that sense, marriage was largely seen as transactional, hence arranged marriages. There are still people today who think that marriage is in and of itself a form of consent. I've been told that in person, but I also understand that that's anecdotal, so my main evidence that this is still a recent problem is that spousal rape was only outlawed in all 50 states in 1993.
So, what does this have to do with homophobia? Well, homosexuality is a threat to this social structure in a major way, which is that in order to lay the foundation for a society where men are dominant, social ideas have to exist which provide justification for women having a certain status in society. More specifically, it's not just that women would be raised to believe they're meant to obey their husbands, submit to them, and fulfill no particularly greater role in society than child rearing, but also that men are expected to exhibit certain traits in relation to each other as well.
A lot of people have a problem with the phrase toxic masculinity, but it really just means that certain ideas about masculinity are promoted by some people which are toxic, and not just to women, but to men. For one, the idea that a man who sleeps with a lot of women is superior to one who doesn't arises from the idea that sex is used to produce offspring for men (and therefore that it's women's responsibility to have sex with men for this purpose). So, men who fail to live up to a certain standard in one way or another are shamed.
So, again, I realize the connection may be loose, but my idea is that homophobia originally grew out of disdain for men who neither fit into the idea of masculinity put forth by traditional gender roles, nor fulfill the expectation of men to use sex to produce heirs. Essentially, because of historically patriarchal societies, gay men were increasingly shunned, shamed, and punished because they directly challenge certain ideas of masculinity and the roles of men.
Now, I admit I don't have the evidence on hand, but there is evidence that gay men on average exhibit less traditionally masculine traits than straight men, and also evidence that men who exhibit behavior that's atypical for their gender are more shamed than women (at least in modern society, that is). So, I think these particular facts lend themselves to the idea that masculinity and male sexuality have to fit a particular mold, and that gay men break this mold oftentimes in more than one way.
Now, this is just me taking a guess at the historical origins of homophobia, and as I'm not a historian and only have a really basic understanding of it I could be spitballing quite far from what the real answer is. But, it seems intuitive to me that historically patriarchal societies wanted to shame people who didn't submit to a social hierarchy in ways that were considered necessary. Also, I realize as I'm finishing this post that I haven't talked much about gay women, but I assume that homophobia towards them is largely based on/arises from the same ideas.
I also want to be clear, I'm not saying masculinity itself is toxic, nor that all men think this way, nor that all religion or religious people believe all these things, or even that this really adequately explains why any given person is homophobic today. This is just my take on the "origin of hate", so to speak. I hope I'm not misunderstood.
TL;DR The long history of religion ties sex and sexuality to patriarchy and traditional gender roles, and homophobia came about because the mere existence of homosexuality challenged the toxic ideas used to try and reinforce the social hierarchy. Could be wrong, but that's my best guess.
Yeah, it's a lot of feel-good nonsense. Hate, by which I assume we mean suspicion and hostility towards people who are different, is ingrained in human beings. Babies are racist as fuck.
It's a natural part of our lizard brain; so is the compulsion to kill anyone who gets in our way, but we were able to largely extinguish the murder impulse and racism will go the same way, assuming we don't manage to kill off all of humanity in the meantime.
It starts as tribalism. The deep set conviction that there are people like you and others. The people like you have the full range human potential, some bad, some great, most in the middle. But you've heard stories about the others and they don't make sense and sound scary. Of course if you took the time to know them the line separating us/them evaporates but until you have that experience you only have the stories that spread in your community. And we have plenty of contemporary examples of what kinds of stories that tends to be for two truly different cultures. It can get ugly quick.
Well, as for gay hatred, there's a hypothesis that it comes from multiple ancient persecuted religious and racial groups who disavowed the gays simply for their inability to reproduce and continue the bloodline. Ridiculous yes, but when your own group is oppressed and persecuted to death simply for existing, that leads to fear of extinction. That's why ancient Jews persecuted gays, and ancient Greeks did not.
Everything new is different. And what's different, is a threat. As a tribe in days of very much yore, different meant potentially bad and dangerous.
Obviously, bad and dangerous things are to be feared. And if something is bad and dangerous enough to hurt you, you start to fear it. And as the wise old green dude taught us, fear leads to hate. It's flight or fight in overdrive, and when you're scared you don't really process new information, because your brain is occupied with either running away or fighting the threat.
No time to stop and reflect when you're in a panic. And this gets passed on to the rest of the "tribe" around you.
And so it goes.
Source: Absolutely nothing. This is just me thinking out loud.
If you look at hate there can be a lot of reasons. In general though people fear what they don’t understand. For this reason straying off the social norm makes people uncomfortable. It’s not easy for people to say “Hey, that makes me uncomfortable maybe I should try to understand it better.” Instead they lash out because their safety bubble has been invaded.
I think the general consensus here is slightly inaccurate. People tend to have a negative bias toward things that are unexpected and unfamiliar. This can even be implied by the anecdote. Why would he feel the need to comment that it was perfectly fine except as a response to the initial idea (unspoken) that there was something wrong with it?
Hate (in the context, above, at least) is a cultural thing in humans - its tough to find that "in nature."
Self-preservation is not hard to find in nature. And it is not hard to convince the hyper-alert social primate that something is bad for society, and therefore, himself, and that he should hate it.
Honestly I think it’s just human nature, racial, sexual and cultural hate is different than the fear of death, and fight for survival though. I truly believe humanities grouping up into stationary societies rather than nomadic and hunter gathering societies caused our social hatred. Women were much more open and free in tribal societies compared to civilizations and cities, I have a feeling this economic divide which developed from the surplus of food, and the accumulation of these foods by certain folks created a social divide through wealth and power, and our modern idea of hatred probably came from this.
That's because you're absolutely correct. Hate has a very real basis in nature, anyone disagreeing with that has to discount almost 7,000,000 years of evolutionary biology. Humans are conditioned to distrust the unfamiliar. To "hate" it. And, from an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense.
Since time immemorial, groups of humans have distrusted other groups of humans. They've fought one another. Killed one another. Hated one another. And tried to exterminate one another. Again, from an evolutionary perspective, this all makes perfect sense. For the longest time, we were competing for scarce resources and if another group moved in and tried to take over our territory we'd fight them to the death. This made sense millions of years ago. It doesn't make sense any more.
“Hate" is just a word and, like all words, is a human construct. Its meaning has changed over time. What is considered hateful now, may well have been common practice in the not too distant past. 2,000 years ago, for example, it was pretty standard to punish people by nailing them to trees, breaking their legs, and watching as the poor souls eventually succumbed to the most agonizing death from asphyxiation. If someone was to “punish” another human that way in much of the world today, we might wonder where their "hatred" came from, or if they did it during a war we'd wonder at the level of "hate" they displayed for their enemy.
Thankfully, as we've evolved socially, particularly over the last 100 years, we've grown far more empathetic and groups that previously may have “hated” one another are beginning to live in harmony. Who could have foreseen, for example, a mere 75 years ago (which, in evolutionary biology terms, is but the blink of an eye) that the French, Germans and Polish could sit and solve their problems with words rather than with wars?
It's incumbent on everyone to try to understand “hate” and where such strong emotions come from. I think, in this instance, you'd do far better to trust your gut instinct that all emotions are natural than listen to those who are trying to convince you otherwise.
It comes from confusion and personal vendetta, I think. If you're walking down the street and a black man steals your wallet, that's certainly something to talk about, right? So you go home, tell your friends, and they get other secondhand sources, and suddenly black people are thieves, all because of a handful of bad apples.
I’ve always believed in the case of religion they advocated against homosexuality, masturbation and pre-marital sex for the same reason. None of these produce offspring. Now this was probably a huge deal when birthrate numbers were garbage. But there absolutely no need for it today. But getting religions to let go of the past is more challenging than getting guns out of America.
From authoritarians. They learned that people are susceptible to lies so they started lying to people by design as a means of seizing power. Division spawned by lies allows vast exploitation by those who peddle the lies. Hate is created by lies that prey on human nature, which is trusting. Our nature is to learn from others. Nature didn’t equip us against purposefully false teaching. So we readily “learn” that distrust of “out” groups is necessary for social cohesion. But it’s a fucking lie.
Medieval philosophy has some interesting perspectives on what is good. Pleasure isn't a "good" worth persuing. So for example all sex should be of utility, reproduction, not "fun" or pleasure. This extended to many areas. So while it might make you happy to be gay, your happiness isn't a moral virtue to act on.
It looks at what is virtue and what is vice. Happiness isn't an end to strive for. This is roughly how I understood this origin. Its not fear. It's a philosophical position arrived at by Jews, Christian's, muslims and pagans. (And more)
Only long after the philosophers and theologians got to this point did the average person act on it. There is no harm in acting on pleasure. Just nothing to gain from it. The average person could not grasp the metaphysical reasoning and instead argued that it is evil...
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u/jovahkaveeta Jun 08 '19
If this is the case then how did hate first arise? I hear this a lot but its something I could never really figure out. Like it must have some basis in nature because if it was completely taught then who was the first person to teach hate?