What can cause people to hate others?

Answer 1

This is a question, that doesn't have an exact answer. Every body's perspective is different to the word and feeling "hate". Some people, don't like hating people. They don't get mad easily, so if they don't get mad, then they don't hate. Other people, get mad very easily. Even if it was just an accident, they might yell at you for something you did. They might say that they hate you when they don't mean it. So what causes people to hate is different for everyone. There is not just one answer to this question.

Short answer:Anything that causes the one who hates to feel used, abused, or threatened, be that real or imagined.

Consider for a moment that many people feel they hate those who have been convicted of a crime and done time in prison. Although the one who hates may have never knowingly come into contact with a convict, or know any convict, or had their life even remotely affected by a convict.

On the other hand, the one who hates may have been the victim of a crime, say assault. That person has every right and reason to hate his assaulter, but has no reason to hate anyone else who has been convicted of the same crime with whom they have never had contact.

Enlightened perspective:

(The quoted portions below are not used to proselytize or illustrate any specific morality. Instead, they represent what should be common logic, what many would label common sense.)

Everything any person (or every person) does, be it a physical action, a thought, a direction of perspective, and for the most part the various forms of inaction is a choice. That is he chooses to do or not to do, much as Shakespeare highlighted in the immortal words of Prince Hamlet (Hamlet, Act III, scene i, lines 66-100). Where Hamlet was examining the pros and cons of continued existence, adopting or refusing a perspective of hate is no different. It's still a choice. What Hamlet does in the play is a verbal cost analysis; he wonders aloud if it is worth it to continue life. Every other decision we make is the same sort of cost analysis. In the case of this question that is, "Is it worth it to hate?" For those who answer "yes," there must be some sort of pay-out.

Those who hate must believe they garner some benefit from the activity/emotion. If they didn't, they wouldn't do it. People by definition are egocentric They can't help it. They live inside their minds, and cannot perceive the world around them any other way than from their own perspective. (Try to conceive of something you have never had experience. You will soon see the futility of the exercise.) Everything we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and feel (emote) is largely automatically labeled and categorized; we practice the activity from birth, and get really good at it between the ages of 3 and 30. Humans have been labeling and grouping things for a very long time ("God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." Gen. 2:19). It is this grouping or categorizing that hate is.

Look at it this way. My sister hates the dish spaghetti. She will not even be in the same room where it is being served. The reason why lies in an experience that occurred when we were children. Our mother served spaghetti one night for dinner. At the time it was my sister's favorite dish. That night, she ate two full plates. She over did it, and it made her sick. She has connected the negative to a food where only positive existed before. Now, those who try to serve her spaghetti are presumed to be acting in a negative way toward her, which leads to some level of annoyance or anger reaction from her. She hates the food because of what she perceives it did to her, and she associates that emotion with anyone who would try to serve it to her now.

The fact is that the food did nothing to her. The food has no volition so could not have caused the reaction she had to it. She chose to eat too much. Her action made her ill, although she chooses to believe it was the food that did so. She chooses to still see the experience through the eyes of a nine-year-old child (although she is five times that age now). And, she attaches the feelings she has for a food to anyone who might try to serve it to her. The all fall into the same category.

All over the place here, right? No, just coming at the same target from different coordinates.

Try this:

• We examine everything in our experiences, give it a name, and place it in a category. We label those categories, for the most part: good, bad, & indifferent.
• We decide what we hate, love, long for, shun, or what is innocuous by deciding what is in it for us. What do we get in return? Part of that is deciding what might or might not be harmful to us in some way.
• If the things we love or hate cannot be easily disentangled from a person or a thing, we associate the emotion we have for the things we love or hate with the other person or thing. (I dislike the conjoined colors blue and orange because of past negative experiences in my life. I automatically have feelings of distrust for anyone or anything displaying the colors blue and orange).

This changes only when we make a conscious choice to change it.

To illustrate:

We all have past negative experiences with other people. Say for example you were robbed at gun point by someone wearing a green Izod shirt. If several days after the robbery you ran into someone wearing a similar Izod shirt, you would automatically associate this new person with the robber. Human nature. The new person might not even match the physical description of the robber in any other way than the shirt they wear, but the association will be made. You can choose at that point to allow the association to remain, or you can logically dismiss it and let the new person make his own impression.

There is another part to this. By nature or nurture, or a combination of the two (more likely), we associate people with what they do. That is the worth of a person is determined by the actions we witness. Let me use a recent, real world situation to explain:

On Thursday 13 October 13 2011, two armed men robbed a bank in the small west Michigan town of Ravenna. Over the next several hours, they ran from police over surface roads, and back and forth over a five mile stretch of Interstate 96. In the final minutes of the chase, Walker police officer Trevor Slot was hit at a high rate of speed by the suspect vehicle and killed. Seconds later, both robbers were dispatched by members of the Ottawa, Kent, and Muskegon County Sheriffs' Departments, the Michigan State Police, and village of Walker police. During and after the chase, those who reported and watched the media demonized the two men who were at the center of this chaos. What came out later was more an illustration of desperation.

There is no way to justify the actions of Kristopher Cheyne and Derryl Lafave, Jr. (the robbery suspects). For what ever reasons, they broke the law and endangered the public. The results of their actions led to the death of a husband and father, and a representative of law enforcement. But the picture painted of these two men, their short-comings not withstanding, was quite different. Both were tearfully described by neighbors as wonderful people, helpful to everyone, always cheerful and humorous. One was carrying for his wife who is suffering from cancer that they could not afford treatment for, the other was supporting his disabled and failing father. The point is that the situation the two men found themselves in was one of some level of desperation. They made a choice, and many have similarly made a choice to hate them because of the one Cheyne and Lafave made. Thing is, when you look deeper at the two men so many hate, it becomes more difficult. It gets easier to separate the person from his actions. What people do is not necessarily who they are.

By and large, before anyone chooses to hate another, it is necessary that the hater looks deeper into the life and purpose of the hated. No one does anything for no reason. Also, it is important to honestly examine the reason why one would choose to hate. In the case of Chenye and Lafave, most people look at the two and can soliloquize, "I'm not as bad as those guys." No truer statement can be made, at least in this illustration; it's true in that those who hold this perspective are not as bad. They're worse. By the evidence available, the two most hated men in West Michigan did what they did (twisted as the logic was) to rescue those they loved. "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's [family and] friends." (John 15:13) Sadly, in this example, it was illustrated from competing perspectives, because Officer Slot sacrificed his life for the same reason. What makes the act of hating two bank robbers worse than what the actions of those two men is that it compounds the worst of what they did, and makes no attempt to separate the person from the actions. Motivation is key.

We can allow ourselves to fail victim to the trap of associating the person with his behavior and labeling him thusly; or, we can make the effort to look objectively at the person and his actions and make the separation. Remember, no one does anything for no reason; hate the sin love the sinner.

Answer 2

People may hate others due to jealousy, insecurity, fear, past negative experiences, differing beliefs or values, and societal influences. Hate often stems from a lack of understanding or empathy towards others.