Critique of HatredHatred can be something that is either inborn or learned. There are many determining factors but people are plagued by the idea that a young child can show anger even when no anger is presented to them beforehand. Maybe there is something deep within us all that causes hatred to be close enough to the surface of our being that it can be conjured up at any time. Hatred for another group or person causes domination and submission in many forms; examples of this have been eminent throughout history. Just as different forms of psychology have tried to discover what hatred really is. Social Psychology would probably say that hatred is something that is learned from the group in which, people are born into. Developmental Psychology would try to prove that hatred is something that you are born with, without peer influence. No matter what form of psychology takes the stand they still do not know what or how hatred is developed.Hatred is as old as time. There have always been wars, conflicts, and tension throughout the world and throughout history. Even in times of peace there is always some kind of tension or hatred for another group or race. For someone who never knew anything but their own kind can still have hatred for another group that is unlike their own even though they have never been in contact with that other group. Why is that? It may be something that they experienced through other people because of stories they heard. Or it could be they learned it from parents, peers, or another outside influence.Outside influence, that could be anyone a person comes in contact with, even newspapers, or television. Developmental Psychology can categorize the stages of development in a person's life. There are the ever-popular Freud's stages of development, which are, Oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital in that order. Yet hatred or anger is not discussed in these stages these are basically just a sexual or non-sexual stages in Freud's mind. But aggression seems to be a major issue if you watch any two to six year old.From personal experience I have been around a lot of children from birth to young adult meaning about 14. And in that time with these children I have noticed some consistencies, they all show hatred or aggression for something. A young child is expected to have innocence and be unbiased to certain things because they have not been exposed to the whole world yet. Like the saying, "out of the mouth of babes" children are known for being blunt but not hateful toward other people. Take for example my two-year-old nephew. He now watches a little television, he does not really get hit for being bad we have adopted the time-out method of discipline but yet he shows anger and frustration toward certain things. He may have picked up some of it from tension when people around him were angry but at the same time he has never witnesses anyone get mad to the point of hitting another person. He adamantly tells anyone of authority, "NO" if he does not like something that we are doing. He has also been known to throw things or hit another person for doing something that he doesn't want done. But this has been going on since he was a little over one-year-old. I would expect this behavior from a much older child because they would have had more exposure to such behavior either because of peers or just television.On the same note another two year old slightly older than my nephew was around parents who beat each other and he also was exposed to certain violent programs on television. He does not show any aggression, if anything he is a gentle child who loves to cuddle and quietly play. It seems funny how the child that is exposed to violence does not show any signs of aggression yet the child who is not exposed to violence shows aggression. This observation could rule out the possibility of a learned experience from outside sources. It would support the idea that some people are just born to hate.The question of whether people are born to hate naturally is a scary thought that might mean there is no changing their ways. There seems to be a lot more hate in this world than there is love for one another. So if people were born to hate a certain group, race or person then it would be very hard to undo the process and make more loving people. If people were born to hate that would clear up the age-old question of why someone committed at heinous crime like murder. The committed the murder because they were born to do so. But if they were born to do so then should they be allowed to commit the murders, after all it's in their genes. Of course we would never allow anyone to get away with murder just because they were prone to do so. That idea seems ridiculous but what can be done to change hate if it is inborn.Older children have much more experience with aggression and even hatred because they can understand the world better and people around them have more influence. A fourteen year old can go to school, get in a fight and know why they are fighting with the other person. That same fourteen year old can watch the news and learn about the suicide bombers in Palestine. They have more of a concept of the world and that hate in the world. So for a fourteen year old to say " I hate Palestinian people" is a lot more justified than a toddler saying it. So the idea of the teenager hating a particular group could support the social psychologists theory. The idea that hate gets developed from the surrounding situation and people in the environment of that individual. Take for example if that fourteen year old was a little Israeli child, that child would probably say they hate the Palestinians because of the environment the Israeli child lives in. The Israeli child lives in an environment where their people are being killed because of the Palestinians. We would not find this to be an unusual way of thinking for this child, the surrounding environment taught the child to think that way and their way of thinking would not go unjustified.An unjustified way of thinking would be a fourteen-year-old white child living in a primarily white suburban middle-class neighborhood saying "I hate blacks." What would this child have to base that statement? The child may never have even seen a black or been in a situation where blacks were present and they certainly were not in a situation where blacks wronged the child in any way. So why do they hate them, probably because of influences like peers, parents, and media. These influences are what shaped hatred toward this race/group and it was not an inborn affliction.It seems the coin has not landed on any one-way, aggression or hatred can start young or not show up until later in life. I remember when I was younger my grandfather was open minded to all walks of life. I have always had diverse friends ranging from the Philippines, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, and Africa; living in a primarily white neighborhood this was quite interesting. But I never questioned the fact that the friends I had were different from me either better or worse, they were just my friends. Now that I am older the same friends I had when I was younger are lesser than me in the eyes of my grandfather. In fifteen years his opinion changed from being open minded to discriminating and hating certain groups of people. When he once had no problems with people of different groups he now does. His age and life experiences may have been the cause for this change in attitude. He may have had a bad experience of someone of a different culture and therefore his opinion of the group changed with it. But if that is the case then he was not born with the ability to hate it was developed over time. Or maybe the ability to hate has just been suppressed until something triggered it like a bad encounter with another group or race. Whichever the case he now has a strong hatred from anyone who is different from him, which is a white middle class man living in a suburb of long island. Living in New York is probably not the best thing for him considering all the diverse people that live and interact with him everyday.My feelings on hate are that they are inborn that people have tendency's to hate from birth just some people show this hatred at an earlier time than others. I also believe that the world around people triggers hatred at different times. A person who believes they are unbiased toward everyone can find himself or herself having hatred for a group of people. I know I try to be unbiased toward all walks of life but I do find myself occasionally making comment of aggression toward certain groups. I am not sure where these biases come from but it does reinforce my thought that all people do have the ability to hate from birth. That proves that there is hatred in all people no matter what the background of that person and the life they grew up in. As mentioned earlier the child who has little interaction with hatred and violence can show aggression even though they were not exposed to it in large doses.Hatred and aggression seems to be within all people. There always seems to be a power struggle between groups, someone always wants to be the oppressors and if there are oppressors then there are sure to be oppressed people. I think hatred is needed to oppress people; their needs to be a strong negative passion toward a race or group that would cause the oppressors to oppress people. We have seen this during World War II when Hitler decided he wanted to make a perfect Arian race and that did not include the Jewish people. He must have had hatred to kill so many people just because they had one determining factor that made them different from him, their religious belief. A very confusing issue is that hate and love do not go together they are not anonyms of each other, "the opposite of love is not hate it is indifference, to hate someone means you have a passion toward them even if that passion is negative. Indifference would be that you did not even acknowledge their existence." More people in this world need to be indifferent and just take things with the grain of salt. This is a small world and we all need to live here together in harmony. There is no need to have such an extreme passion for someone that you would kill, oppress or torture them everyone is different and we should learn to accept these differences.
