Hatred is a powerful emotion. So powerful that even the word itself is somewhat taboo--no one wants to talk about hatred, except the people who are using it as leverage against an opponent. Racial hatred, hate crimes--true or not, the mere accusation can stain a person's reputation forever.
But when you come right down to it, hatred is just an emotion like love, fear, anger, affection, trust, or desire. All of these are tools that the nonexistent hand of evolution has used to program survival behaviors into us. Love and trust make us take care of our mates and children, ensuring the survival of our genes. Anger and hatred make us fight back against the other caveman who stole our haunch of meat so that he doesn't keep doing it.
The bad news for society is that hatred is one of the most powerful emotions for motivating action, and it generally motivates negative actions. The good news for society is that hatred isn't really that common. Sure, most of us have had a boss or a girl- / boyfriend who got on our nerves, but how many of us can point to a person or individual that we completely and sincerely wish would vanish from the face of the Earth--preferably in a painful fashion? There is only one entity that I really feel such a desire towards (I'm deliberately being vague over whether it's a person, a group, or a company). This will be my Recipient (see below).
For the month of April, I'm going to try an experiment: I'm going to use hatred as a motivation to improve myself--or, as the psychtechs would say, "to instill desired behaviors and eliminate undesired ones".
( The rules of the game.... )I'd really appreciate it if everyone reading this would help me out by offering the occasional comment or poking me if I miss a progress update. I'll make liberal use of LJ-cut so that people are not swarmed with my daily task lists and if you'd like to be filtered off of them completely, just let me know.
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