{"id":176150,"date":"2020-08-23T18:54:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-23T23:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/23\/dont-accentuate-the-positive\/"},"modified":"2020-08-23T18:54:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T23:54:00","slug":"dont-accentuate-the-positive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/23\/dont-accentuate-the-positive\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Accentuate the Positive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ian Welsh makes a valid point, that there are times when negative emotions, even hate, are appropriate to the circumstances<\/a>, and exhortations to eschew hate are self destructive:<\/p>\n

There are no human emotions which are always<\/i> bad. Every emotion is useful in certain circumstances. Emotions are bad when they provide incorrect guidance or they hijack you. <\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>That said, even an emotion like hate has utility, if it\u2019s correctly pointed. People like the person below have a problem.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Hate exists to tell you when someone is a threat, and you should do something about it. It often is hijacked, as with Americans thinking that foreign leaders like Putin are the primary threat, when it\u2019s their own leaders who kill and impoverish them. When hate operates correctly, it points at actual threats.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Trump\u2019s actually dangerous to a lot of people, and hating him is an appropriate emotion. Being consumed by it isn\u2019t, but wishing that Trump would die of natural causes is entirely reasonable. (Granted, Pence might be worse, but you can hate him too.)<\/span>

<\/span>Emotions have purposes. Hate is meant to tell you who is a threat. Anger is meant to tell you that someone is doing something they really shouldn\u2019t be doing. (This is one reason why, in spiritual communities which say one should never be angry, abusers manage to get away with abusing for a long, long time.) Jealousy tells you you\u2019re falling behind and not living up to your potential.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Anyway, the main problem with hate and anger is that they are easily hijacked and hook onto targets who aren\u2019t actually dangerous, but merely \u201cforeign.\u201d As with the companion feeling of loyalty, most of modern \u201cleadership\u201d is hijacking tribal emotions and pointing them in the wrong direction. Loyalty to Biden or Trump (both evil men who have done, and will do, horrible things) is insane unless you\u2019re directly part of the gravy train.<\/span>

<\/span>We humans have very badly f%$#ed up our emotional guidance systems. They\u2019re supposed to point you towards what\u2019s good for you and warn you about what\u2019s bad for you. Trump is bad for almost everyone, and so is Biden. So are most Democratic and Republican politicians, almost all CEOs of major companies, and so on and so forth.<\/span>

<\/span>So go ahead and hate them, just don\u2019t let it be chronic or hijack your ability to make decisions. It\u2019s definitely appropriate.<\/span>

<\/span>The people who are dangerous to you and who have, over 40 years, impoverished Americans, are your own leaders. Hate threats, they are a threat.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(%$# mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n

People who say that you should not hate are wrong.<\/p>\n

You should watch yourself and make sure that your hate does not make you stupid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ian Welsh makes a valid point, that there are times when negative emotions, even hate, are appropriate to the circumstances, and exhortations to eschew hate are self destructive: There are no human emotions which are always bad. Every emotion is useful in certain circumstances. Emotions are bad when they provide incorrect guidance or they hijack …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[464,374,414],"class_list":["post-176150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-good-writing","tag-politics","tag-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}