Hate and love

28/02/2025 Nilson Lattari

Honoré de Balzac said that our minds hold more moments of hate than love. In line with this thinking, I wonder: What do hate and love mean in this context?
People feel hate for many reasons: they may have been despised or humiliated by others, or they may experience jealousy or envy. On the other hand, people love for different reasons: they find joy supporting others, showing generosity and compassion for those in need, and understanding the struggles of people who cannot survive on their own while facing challenges of living in a society like ours.
Nowadays, hate has lost its original meaning and taken on a new connotation. It’s fair to say that people have different perspectives on solving the world’s problems. People disagree ideologically and have different opinions about social and economic situations. Individuals or social groups have different arguments for the same issues. What seems perfect for some people may be completely different for others.
People, generally, want to live in a world without social and economic inequality. They wish for an end to despotism, oppression, and inequality, which, in their view, provoke criminality. However, solving these issues is complex and involves multiple perspectives. Hate is one of the factors that dismantle divergent opinions.
The question is: why do people feel hate instead of love? Why do some people hate and distance themselves from others based on superficial reasons, such as their way of dressing or living? Is it because others come from different countries to live in theirs? Why do some people act as if poverty is acceptable? Similarly, why do some people tolerate poverty and inequality as an emergency reserve to serve the privileged?
Some people have different perspectives on equality, practically when it involves opportunities for all. For some, equality means creating opportunities for everyone, not just for an exclusive group of privileged, and “well-born” individuals who see themselves as the rightful owners of the planet. The world cannot continue to exist in this reality. No one is born with the same level of intelligence or health, and no one chooses their origin, skin colour, home or place of birth. Only those who believe in karma as an explanation for our differences tend to accept these excuses for our social problems.
There are two types of confrontations in our society. The first group consists of a silent, uncultured population, that is socially and politically abandoned by others for their political ambitions. These individuals are used in their speeches about freedom and justice to attend their political power ambitions. The second group consists of those who argue that the existence of poverty is due to a lack of ambition among people in need. For this last group, poverty disrupts the world and that perspective indicates insensitivity and a lack of love, which results in hate.
Both groups are similar in the wrong way: they accuse each other of corruption in the handling of public resources. One group hides corruption when it is favourable for them, while the other group ignores corruption as a solution to support and help the poorest in the community. Both policies generate hate, not love.
Love is fugacious and dissolves even when faces basic and fragile challenges. Hate, on the other hand, is eternal, feeding itself and persisting over time. Hate contaminates people like a poison and it is difficult to eliminate it from their souls. Hate exists in our society because the poor accuses the rich of abandoning them, while the rich accuses the poor of being the curse of their existence. The consequence is hate not love.
Rich and “well-born” people are those who had the opportunity to be born in the right place, where they found better conditions for self-development. They are often unconcerned in changing their communities. To understand this, it is necessary to feel love. When they donate to charity, they are playing their social role, but they remain distant from reality: this is hate, hidden hate.
The world is a divided place, split among the rich, the poor, and those who aspire to wealth and justice for others. There is no place for everyone in this concept of the world. Competition generates hate, not love, because there is no love in battles.
Hate holds the memory of unpleasant experiences and suffering, and there will never been enough love to prevent confrontation. This confrontation is inevitable. Meanwhile, we continue to live amidst traps and hypocrisy, until memory becomes reality.