[extropy-chat] Hating versus Loving

[Keith Henson]

At 03:50 AM 12/14/2006 -0800, Stuart wrote:
>--- Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> > You always drift off into Bush-hate.  Why do you
> > hate so much?    :-)
>
>Because he threatens everything I love about America
>and the world.

I am about as far from being a Bush fan as you can get.

Yet from an EP viewpoint, he is the correct sort of leader for a tribe that 
feels they are under attack.  I.e., irrational, or if you don't want to use 
that word, "the thinking impaired state induced by xenophobic memes."

>Yet I don't hate him. I just want to
>see him and his co-conspirators expatriated and or
>imprisoned. They are the toxin America's kidneys need
>to cleanse from our system in order for us to survive
>and preserve our way of life.

"Our way of life" is far more dependant on an economy growing faster than 
the population and relatively low cost energy.  I would far rather see 
nanotube/space elevator/solar power satellites being developed or lot of 
high temp nuclear reactors being installed than Bush being impeached.

(Though impeaching Bush for lying the US into a war is a good idea too.)

An alternative is to kill (by starvation for example) a few hundred million 
Arabs and take the oil in that region.  I really don't like saying it, but 
a Bush type leader is what you need for something like this.

snip

>Without hate, Rome WOULD not have destroyed Carthage.
>But did not Carthage hate Rome just as much? Why did
>hate serve one and not the other? Hate is the most
>treacherous of all emotions. It makes you *feel*
>invincible and beligerent all the way up to point
>where you run up against someone stronger.

You are exactly on target here, but you need to take it a little further, 
namely back to the stone age.  Why do we have hate if if makes us so crazy?

You have to look at this "feature" from the viewpoint of genes in the stone 
age.

Population growth eventually resulted in a bleak future where it was 
obvious the tribe was going to starve.  So genes get selected that detect 
this condition approaching and turn up the gain on xenophobic (hate) 
memes.  Eventually the warriors get hyped up to a do or die attack on 
neighbors.

I make the case that this was better for genes *even for those genes in the 
tribe that lost.*  Even if all the males in a tribe were killed, copies of 
their genes existed in the young women who were usually booty and were 
incorporated into the tribe that killed all the men folk.

snip

>Love on the other hand *makes* you strong. Stronger
>than you ever thought you could be. You contend that
>without hate, the U.S. could not have brought the
>Pacific War to an end. That is not so. Our anger at
>Pearl Harbor gave us the courage to enter the fray but
>did not sustain us.

snip

The subjects you discuss here are complicated beyond what I can respond to 
in a reasonable time.  But you really should try to recast them in light of 
understanding EP.

> > But you're wrong about hate.  It was right for the
> > Jews to hate Hitler and the Nazis, right for
> > Americans
> > to hate Japs in the war, and right for any people to
> > hate those who would destroy them.  If your emotions
> > are not going to truly be on your side when the
> > chips
>
>You think so huh? Then why did the Lord of Hate end
>his days in a bunker abandoned by all, hating even
>himself enough to put a bullet in his own brain?

I think the bad guys of history need to be reconsidered in the light of 
EP.  When there exist a widespread belief in a population that there is a 
need to slaughter neighbors or some sub group in their population, then 
people like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot will rise to leadership.  In some 
ways it isn't their fault.  If Hitler had been born plus or minus 20 years 
from when he was, we never would have heard about him.

>Hate is entropy. Love is spontaneous self-organizing
>complexity.

Unfortunately, human "spontaneous self-organizing complexity" eventually 
overloads the the ecosystem.  And since we are the top predator . . .

Keith