On Hatred

Hatred is usually directed toward others.

First, as a reaction.

Suppose one suffers physical harm. For example, being hit, punched, kicked, or having one’s foot stepped on. In such cases, one feels pain, surprise, anger, hatred, and resentment. Whether or not there was a reason or cause on one’s part, when hurt by others, these emotions arise spontaneously.

This does not change even when the object is inanimate. Suppose, on a winter morning, while walking to the bathroom, one stubs the little toe against a chair leg. After intense pain, one might, in anger, kick the chair (which may hurt even more) or shout at it. Even though it's just a chair. Even though one bumped into it on one's own.

This kind of reaction is not limited to physical pain, but applies just as well to emotional wounds. Being scolded. Insulted. Shouted at. Humiliated. Especially if these things occur in front of others, not just between oneself and the other party. Whether or not there was a cause on one’s part makes no difference. Unlike physical blows, here it is enough for one to feel hurt by the other’s words or actions—their intention or emotion does not matter. Up to this point, hatred arises as a reaction in a person-to-person relationship, triggered by the other’s words or deeds toward oneself. But there is another source.

The second is hatred that arises as the reverse side of envy and jealousy toward others.

When someone else has what one does not, cannot, or must not have; or when someone else freely does what one does not, cannot, or must not do—one feels envy, longing, jealousy, and resentment. These emotions may, for a time, turn inward—one might grieve or pity oneself (self-pity), or feel anger and hatred toward oneself (self-hatred, self-loathing). But people cannot pity or hate themselves for long. It is too exhausting and fruitless. Then, these feelings are redirected toward others. Even though it was one’s own envy or jealousy, the frustration is projected onto others as resentment, anger, and hatred. Ideally, this would become a driving force to surpass oneself and take new actions. But things are rarely so simple. More often, it smolders like a dark, demonic flame of emotion. The feeling of hatred does not easily dissipate.

In Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s Rashōmon, there is a scene in which a servant, cornered by the hopelessness of life, suddenly loses his fear when he witnesses an old woman plucking hair from a corpse beneath the Rashō Gate. His fear, which had kept him rigid just moments before, is swept away by a surge of anger toward the woman. The author attributes this shift to the servant's sense of justice—conveniently disregarding his own moral ambiguity—but that explanation is not entirely convincing. It seems more likely that what the servant felt was a reversed form of envy or jealousy—hatred rooted in comparison.

Just moments earlier, the servant had been hesitating beneath the Rashō Gate, caught in inner turmoil over whether or not to commit an “evil” act. He was mired in indecision, brooding in uncertainty. But then, he witnessed a figure seemingly more base than himself—the old woman—committing a more blatant evil without hesitation: stealing from the dead. Upon seeing that, he must have felt a sudden surge of jealousy and hatred. For the old woman, whom he deemed inferior, was able to act without doubt, while he could not. Had he felt sympathy or compassion for her, he might have joined her in robbing the dead. But instead, he makes a startling choice.

He robs the feeble old woman herself with a startling clarity, almost with a sense of liberation. That is because, for the servant, to steal from the living was an even greater evil than to steal from the dead. In the woman’s act, he found both the conviction to choose a life of evil and the courage to enact it. And so, the servant disappears boldly into the rainy capital.

羅生門 蜘蛛の糸 杜子春外十八篇 (文春文庫 あ 29-1 現代日本文学館) | 芥川 龍之介
羅生門 (まんがで読破) | 芥川龍之介

Indeed, one is inclined to agree with David Hume:

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”
(A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Section III)