The Power of Hate (or, Dickweeds) · 12:00pm Aug 18th, 2017
After spending ninety minutes telling us we are all special and that we have to chase our dreams and life is wonderful and money is not the most important thing in the world and shit, my Human Resources teacher pointed at me and asked “You! What’s your dream?!”
“To die a fucking millionaire.”
Emphasis on the fucking.
Teacher didn’t like me much after that exchange, no.
Later on he made rounds asking people for their talents so we could ~~chase our dreams~~, and everybody got humble all of a sudden. Turns out, if you randomly choose a girl, surrounded by her friends and classmates, and ask her what is the thing that makes you better than others, she ain’t gonna get up and yell “SIR I QUEEF AND I SWEAR TO GOD THE ANGELS CRY TEARS OF JOY.”
So he arranged us in groups of five [1] and made us talk among ourselves for a bit, to help each other find our own talent. “Seeing what others are good at is always easier than seeing what you yourself are good at” was his reasoning.
[1] This is not highschool, by the way. This is university. I’m spending 2k a year and wasting my life and health in studying to the point of physical pain for this shit.
I hated every single motherfucker in my group, and to this day I still think that was the biggest waste of time I’ve ever experienced in my adult lifetime.
But here’s the thing:
That teacher was probably the best one I’ve got in years. By far.
I learned things from that man that transcend the fucking job of a teacher. Life lessons, from that motherfucker. Life lessons. I need a helper to write my thesis (or whatever it’s called – final essay? I’m not getting a PhD yet, I’m just wrapping up my degrees) and if I can, I’ll get him.
Even if the whole follow your dreams shit is poppycock. Precisely because the whole follow your dreams shit is poppycock.
I understand hate.
Fuck, scratch that – I love hate. Hate keeps me going. Hate is pretty much what fuels me and makes me get over shit quickly so I can keep on hating, no matter how rough stuff gets. And it gets rough! You can’t live a life being this goddamn stupid and not go through rough spots. That just doesn’t happen.
Okay, “hate” is a strong word. I can’t really hate everything, because then I’d be an angsty teen going all My Chemical Romance on your asses, and I respect my audience too much to do that. You can just go and read MrNumbers’ blog if you want that kind of content.
So nah, it’s more like spite, I suppose. Cynicism? Bleh. The thing is: I get it. I get why people use it, I get why it’s addictive, I get why it’s necessary. I use it myself. I need it myself.
Y’see, I had kind of a shitty childhood.
I don’t really talk about it, because why the hell would I? Everybody has their own things going on, everybody deals with them their own way. Whenever I talk about my childhood, it bums people out, and that ain’t my job.
Now—how shitty was the childhood, you ask? Was it, say, shittier than yours? There is no fucking way I can answer that without coming up as either a bragging child or a patronizing asshole. But yes. Yes, it was shittier than yours. Go hug your mom.
Anyway – so yeah, cynicism, hate, yaddah yaddah. What do I mean by hate, if we’re calling it that? Oh, you know it. It’s knowing the people in the porn video don’t really love each other. It’s seeing someone go all “MY PRAYERS AND THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOU” in the Helping the Homeless Facebook page but noticing they never spare a single fucking coin for the beggar.
It’s having your teacher asking what your personal dreams and aspirations are, knowing he wants some kind of uplifting, humanitarian, anti-capitalist message, and replying “To die a fucking millionaire.”
Emphasis on the fucking.
Hate – calling it that – this kind of “too cool for school” attitude we all adopt now and then, is something that I think we sorta need to survive. I mean, fuck, the real world’s out there and it’s a scary place. I’m all for magical pastel talking horses telling me that I gotta be myself, but I’m gonna lie my tits out at the job interview, like it or not. Excel? Fuck, I’m so good at Excel, sir. I once got Excel pregnant is how good I’m at it, sir.
In the words of that book y’all can’t stand, hate is just calling out the phonies without being a phony yourself. It’s seeing a person whose entire personality is “he smokes marijuana” and calling him a fucking wanker. It’s seeing someone be an obnoxious fucking asshole and go all “Man. What an obnoxious fucking asshole.” It’s not embarrassing yourself with shit like—
Okay, I’m rambling. Look. You know when you see someone and you just roll your eyes at it? Like, when you see things you wrote or said four years ago. A goth being all goth in your face. A girl going all Superwholock and screeching in front of normal people.
Embarrassing shit. Lack of self-awareness. Rolling your eyes at that, clacking your tongue, being slightly annoyed. That’s hate.
It’s also calling out people who deserve to be called out. Feeling your blood boil when that fucking idiot in your group won’t do his share of the essay so you have to pull an all-nighter to get a goddamn B+. Seeing someone who doesn’t deserve praise get praise for shit you did.
It’s being in a bus and noticing the guy sitting behind you is listening to obnoxious music without headphones, and bothering the entirety of the place, and going fucking hell, really? It’s getting worked up on an internet argument, because did this guy seriously just say rape is okay if the girl deserves it?
Somewhere along the line, it seems like the definition changed, but it didn’t. In the end, hate is about being better than others. That’s why you hate them. That’s why you keep going. Because you see something you despise, something that embarrasses you or annoys your or makes you suffer, and going “I am not like them. I am not like that.”
So I understand hate. ‘Cause we can’t go on without it. Yeah you go on saying all you want is to make it far in life and never betray your morals, or that your dream is to set an example for the next generation and make the world a better place, but you know what my dream is? To die a fucking millionaire, and you know the goddamn emphasis.
Hate breeds determination. Hate breeds competition, and self-improvement, because you feel you’re better than others, you want to become better than others. Hate gets shit done. Hate makes you a better person.
I really, really understand hate.
But.
But.
Hate is selfish. By nature. You don’t change others with hate. If you’re hateful, if you’re better, if you look down on others out of necessity, you’re working only for yourself. My childhood was horribly abusive, this is how I cope, and you know what? It works. I became better than anybody thought I’d ever be, and it was purely through hate, and that doesn’t make me a bad person—it just makes me less fucking stupid than you.
But you don’t change others through hate.
Look, I don’t want to preach, I need you to understand that. And, if you know when I’m writing this, you probably know why I’m writing this. Something terrible happened in my country, something extremely scary and extremely hateful went down in the city where I live, and it could have ended my life. It ended many already. And this blog is supposedly not about that, but it’s also a little bit about that, because right now, everything is.
And hate makes you preachy, because you need to vocalize all the shit you’re getting. You go all ‘can you believe this? Motherfucking Poodle McFuck over there didn’t do shit in this essay, and I had to work my ass off to make up for his share! Son of a whore! How does he fucking sleep at night?!’
Entirely justified, but that’s just for your own sake. Maybe, if you’re talking to someone who shares your opinions and values you, they’ll listen and maybe learn from this venting, too. But chances are—they’ll relate. They’ll just get mad with you.
See, nobody ever convinced anybody else through hate. It just doesn’t work. And maybe I can be cynical here and say it’s because people won’t listen to anything unless you wrap up the message nicely—but fuck, it’s still true, isn’t it? You don’t listen to that. You don’t learn through that.
Hate works for you, but it doesn’t work for anybody else. If you are always logical, always realistic, always realistic and self-aware, you’re just a fucking prick, is what you are.
Sources? Sure. Have you ever argued with someone who goes all “I ONLY USE HARD LOGIC – IF YOU TRY TO APPEAL TO EMOTION IN A DEBATE, YOU’RE A RETARD AND YOU SHOULDN’T EVEN DARE TALK TO ME”? If you haven’t, don’t. All that will happen is that you’ll get a hateful, holier-than-thou cunt who won’t listen to anything you say, because he’s too busy listening to what he’s saying.
Sentimentality exists for a reason. We’re all emotional creatures. We get sappy, we get embarrassing, and we say shit that is simply not true. “Everything will be all right,” “you just gotta stay true to yourself.” “I’ll always be there for you.” Etcetera.
And those things are good. They’re good, even if they can be damaging in the long term, they can be stupid, they can be there just so idiots feel better about themselves without ever trying anything new. Be yourself? Shit, that’s just an excuse to avoid self-growth and we both know it. Go to the gym, fatso. Your self-esteem is low because you’re ugly, you stutter, and you spend your entire life in front of a laptop. Girls don’t talk to you because you have nothing to talk about.
Right. Go and try to tell that to somebody, even if you think it’s true. I’m sure you’ll make a lot of friends, bud.
Don’t get me wrong here. I love roasting others. Go to the Fimfic Discord server, take a bit at the Writing_help server. Chances are, you’ll see me and MrNumbers relentlessly roasting some shitty piece of writing. Especially Numbers. He’s so much better than me at it.
But, see, we never changed anybody’s life with that.
You know what changed my life, though? The day when I was vulnerable due to a lot of stuff that had happened, and I was really close to breaking down, and Numbers just came to me and said, hey. You’re a good person. No matter what—you’re a good person, okay? You’re not a sociopath.
And that meant the world to me, because I needed it.
Why? Because I couldn’t have told that to myself. I’m full of hate. So is he. We don’t pat ourselves on the back, we know too much about life to do that. But it’s easier to point out the good things in others than it is to point it out to ourselves.
Hate is self-propelling, but love is not. And yes, fuck it, I’m saying it. I’m defending the power of love in this blog. Because that’s where we’re at. Give me a tiara and I become a magical girl at this rate.
You change others with love. You touch others with love, and sappiness, and sentimentality, and lies. You do the things you yourself hate to make others feel better, and they’ll learn from that feeling, and they’ll change themselves.
Probably through hate, yes, but through their hate. Nobody changed anybody’s mind through being cynical. That’s just a self-defense mechanism, and it’s the easy way out. Be embarrassing, because if you manage to change one person’s life it will have been worth it, and that’s way easier than you think it is.
That Human Resources teacher? He was a bitter son of a bitch. He slip up now and then, and it was clear he saw us as idiots at best, cunts at worst.
But he tried his best, and he talked about dreams, and life, and talking to people. He gave his class and he made it as uplifting and idealistic as possible. He tried to scrap all cynicism away from his words. We all saw through it. We noticed it was artificial and downright idiotic at times. It worked nonetheless.
‘Cause my little brother also asked me about my career choices the other day. He said, I don’t really know what to do with my life, y’see. I’m about to graduate from highschool and I’ve no idea what the fuck I’m going to do from now on. How did you choose what to study?
And I thought well, I mostly looked at the list of Most Profitable Degrees and chose one, in spite of what I wanted, or what I liked, or what I enjoyed. ‘Cause I want to die a fucking millionaire, and you know where the emphasis is.
But I didn’t say that. I just said, pipsqueak, I just followed my dreams and tried to be happy. You should do the same.
So we got in groups of five, in that Human Resources class, and I hated every motherfucker that teamed up with me. And they were humble, too, the fuckers. Or insecure. I don’t give a shit.
“Okay,” I said. “We have like three minutes, let’s get over with this as soon as possible.” I pointed at one of them. “What are you good at?”
“I… I don’t know, I’m not really—”
“Holy shit, the teacher is not going to check, he can’t possibly give less of a fuck. Just lie! Do you have any hobby, anything you do that others don’t?”
“I, uh. I…” The girl stuttered stupidly. “I’m… I volunteer at an animal shelter?”
“Bitching, so you’re great with animals, that’s your talent. YOU. NEXT ONE.”
And so on. I had to force it out of them. One of the girls said she was a natural born leader, and I didn’t point the irony out because I legitimately think she’s too stupid to get the joke.
When the teacher asked around for every single person to say their talents out loud, everybody said lame shit like “I’m good at studying,” or “I’m a natural-born leader,” except for my group. We all had wonderful talents that nobody else had, apparently.
And fuck, they were all really smiley afterwards. They felt great about themselves, like they’d accomplished everything, including Leadership Girl, who thought she was the VIP of the situation. (I forced her to come up with another talent, she immediately gave in and asked me if ‘I can play guitar’ was better. I gave her my approval.) Every single one of them had a bit more self-esteem now.
Me? Full of hate. Fuming. My blood was boiling. But I kept it to myself, and I smiled to them, and I made their day without even trying.
Because my hate is what keeps me going.
But it doesn’t work for anybody else.
/fingerguns
So is that a "no" to the hate-sex then?
Don't mind me, just need to return some whips and paddles from the store.
Why does this sound like a fanfic?
How did you manage that one?
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Because I write like I talk, mostly.
That did happen, in case you're wondering. I said my talents were writing and speaking in other languages. Teacher asked me which one I was better at. I said "I write in English, so kinda both." He nodded and moved to the next person.
Hm...
Parts of this I can actually relate to.
There's a lot of annoying people around me...
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I more mean that it seems you're living in a fanfic.
Or maybe you're the protagonist of an anime, who knows. :V
...I'm not sure hate is the right word for what you're describing. Granted, I have a very specific definition of hate.
This seems more like a combination of disgust and anger, maybe passed through a filter of hate? I dunno.
I also have a very specific definition of love, and while your use seems closer to what I think then your use of hate, it also seems... off.
I am all for the power of love, and wear my imaginary tiara with pride.
(Not my actual tiara. That is only worn in private.)
Oh gosh, after all that previous stuff, I could never have guessed /s. You too, eh?
That actually sounds a lot more exhausting and edgy than just wanting things, but ok.
That's... not how it works
.
No, hold on, who says that shit!? In the end, it's much kinder just to tell the actual truth.
Fine, I'll say it. Tiara firmly on. i.pinimg.com/736x/32/bd/24/32bd244362fc490f2c2a7640da70befd--princess-twilight-sparkle-mlp-twilight.jpg
Hate is not self-propelling. Love is. Negative stimulus pushes you away from your current place and path in life. Positive stimulus pulls you toward a prospective place and path in life. Depending on how you start out, it can take more energy to go towards some things than away, but since towards anything is more precise, more constrained, than away from everything, the positive side has more power. You can do harder things with love than you can with hate.
And I'm telling you this as the hateful bitter prick with the abused childhood, the snide sense of humor, and more years on my tired slog of a life than yours so far.
Fucking rubbish! You don't have to tell him he needs to die with more money than everyone else. You have to point him to the tables showing prospective incomes for each degree or trade training, and point the fuck out that crapitalism is gonna expect him to keep himself housed and fed, so he'd better pick something practical.
My little brother decided he wanted to be a goddamned mystic or something. Ruined the past... seven or eight years of his life, so far. It wasn't even a dream or an ideal to him, just a fucking delusion. Better for him to be a plumber.
I'm guessing that after the stuttering girl with the animals and the natural-born leader, you got the lazy athlete, the party planner, the fashionista, and the farmer too. Or at least, that's what you told them all they were, to see if they got the joke.
... Huh. I may need to save this. It is a fascinating discourse on a personal philosophy almost completely alien to mine that still manages to work. (For you, anyway.)
My mind went straight here when you said "million dollars"
You see, I'm one of those people who hears the section where Flynn Rider says his dream is to be alone on an island that he owns, all alone and surrounded by money, then says to myself "So, what is he going to spend that money on?"
Your HR teacher has a very sharp point, once made by a very wise man named Mark "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Putting that aside for the moment, in the business world, how do you motivate a grown man to slog through an hour of traffic, drink burnt coffee-flavored sludge, and productively contribute to a whole day meeting? Simple cash does not answer that question.
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It sounds like the author is trying to paint the narrator of the story as an unsympathetic protagonist the author wants you to detest... except here, the author is the narrator.
I have a degree in psychology with clinical experience, but I'll leave the armchair analysis out.
...I like making people smile.
4639096 *nods in agreement* But i already knew I was weird.
Well, you know how you realise all of a sudden that you're wearing neither pants nor underwear and you've got to decide whether to:
A. Awkwardly stumble about with your hands over your crotch, asking people if they've got a spare item of clothing you can use.
or B. Own the situation and stride back to wherever you live, with whatever parts you have flapping in the breeze and saying "Hope you don't mind, but I'm naked. It's not my fault, these things happen."
Yeah, that's my dream. One of them anyway.
You're an interesting person, that's for sure.
Sorry about what happened in Barcelona.
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If I was ever picked to be an astronaut, I would stand up behind the podium at the press conference and say:
"Ever since I was a child, becoming an astronaut has been a recurring dream of mine. You know, like that one where you get up to speak and you're not wearing any pants.
"And today, at least one of those dreams has come true..."
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Of course not. It's not the money that matters, it's the debt. So you convince them they need expensive stuff they can't afford, and then pay them like crap1. And if you can get them to buy those things they can't afford on credit, well, you're golden.
1 Or just crank up the price on necessities, if you can swing it-- this is how mining companies and such used to get cheap labor. Illegal now, of course, in civilized parts of the world, but undeniably effective.
Heh. Not on your life.
Though I suppose that statement could sound a bit insensitive, considering all of your recent daring brushes with death. Um... hope that stops happening soon?
Anyhow, I wouldn't label what you described here as "hatred", but "pride". Pride, by the definition I subscribe to, is looking down on others. Because you're better than them. Now, pride is an excellent way to breed hatred (especially when others refuse to respect their betters), but it's hardly the only place hatred comes from.
Semantics aside, an interesting personal philosophy you've expounded here. Seems to be self-consistent, too, which is more than many such things amount to. Personally, though, I'd disagree with you on what love looks like. I believe you can show love without being all fluffy clouds and baselessly saccharine. For instance, you could tell someone whose aspiration is to be an astronaut when they grow up that they darn-well better study for it now. Or by showing them a better method of grinding to get that sweet loot in the game they like. Or you could remind someone that they aren't a horrible person, like you said MrNumbers did.
Keep writing awesome, crazy, and crazy awesome stuff. And keep not dying, too.
I can empathise very hard with a lot of this, but honestly I'm doing my best to not be propelled by hate. Often the clever, cynical, hateful people are the people I really cannot stand to be around, because they remind me of what I was like or might still be like or may very well end up being like, and it bothers me a lot.
I like being optimistic. I put a special value on it. There is a time to be honest and straight with people but being supportive and optimistic and, yes, loving is the most important thing for a person to be, in my mind.
So yeah. Good blog. I already basically suspected that you were like this on the inside but obviously you're self aware enough to not let it twist you up into being
MrNumbersan arsehole, so 'sall good.4639198 Dear Life,
I've been grinding for levels in your game for many years now, but recently I've started to doubt that my investment is paying off in the way I wanted. For starters, the 'Retirement' level in the game seems to be receding as I approach, and just when I got out of the complicated gameplay that 'College' 'Childbirth' and 'School' put me through, I then had to go right back into a combo of 'College/Child' which wiped me out again. Now that I'm on what has been called the 'Middle-Age' path, I've found my accumulated assets drained by the unfair taxation in your game, as well as a quantity of tuition which exceeded by far my original expenditure during my 'College' phase. When do I get out of this and see a return on my investment?
Sincerely,
Player One.
Dear Player One,
Your complaint has been received, and a solution applied that I think you will appreciate.
Sincerely,
Life
<Player One has suffered a Heart Attack.>
<Player One has now left the game.>
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Thanks!
Gotta say, though, that game has some serious balance issues.
Wow
This is a great blog, with one flaw: it's entirely possible to hate people who are better than you, either without trying to surpass them or simply not being able to. Pride breeds hate - which is what you described here - but so does envy.
...
How do you manage?
I turned to anger and hate to get me through university after all my dreams were crushed by simple dint of my not being good enough; it burnt me out in under three years and left scars that effectively render me incapable of performing any activity I recognise primarily as "studying".
I also don't seem to be capable of achieving the levels of anger and hate I used to be able to, nor maintaining my new lower maximum for any significant length of time. Of course, that's probably because I just generally have a narrower emotional range with lower levels of intensity now, but, hey, positives right?
4639030 Sounds like Aragorn could've been a badass CMC.
4639051 Holy shit, book_burner, you wrote a lengthy comment that I agree with entirely.
<checks>
Still not a communist, though.
4639831
The end approaches.
I'm not one to advocate for hatred, but if it's the driving force behind your motivations, then at least you've got some way to let your emotions drive you in a positive direction. Better than what I can do, at least.
Deities damn it Aragon! I come into your blog posts expecting very few things and up until now you have never, NEVER, failed to deliver on them but today you have failed, FAILED I SAY, to deliver on one of the most important things I've come to expect from you in this regard.
Where the fuck are the funny, witty, some times down right surreal or disturbing TAGS?! You forgot the tags! How could you forget the tags?!
I just... I just can't be around you right now, I'm too disappointed.
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You're a good writer.
But call me silly, but I'm worried if hate is what keeps you going.
Of course, you write fanfiction about ponies so it all balances out
Good luck!
Wait... Is that why I have problems with interviews? I just say whatever the hell I feel like and stick to the truth? Huh. I would have assumed being hired for, to use your example, one's Excel skills and not being able to back it up would lead to being fired.
Shit, I probably should have been saying I wanted to work places to help the community instead of things like "It pays more than my current job and it's local".
Hate is what keeps me going...
So you're Darth Sion now?
Sometimes I feel like a revving engine on neutral. There is often a fire burning inside of me. Thousands of little, barely conscious judgements cast on people on a daily basis. I roast people in my head but keep up a friendly exterior despite. Very little cognitive dissonance for me when it comes to that tho. Im pretty agreeable. Very much a live and let live type. I'll roast you but I dont give a fuck what you do with that. Change or no change. Its not "hate" per se. More often just a serene elitism. I know I'm likely no better than they are, but it maintains the motivation for my advancement. I've always been very academically competitive. Its more or less the core of my identity. I sometimes wish it wasnt. That "Be yourself" is bullshit because I've spent my entire life wondering what it would be like to be someone completely different. I have a fascination with change. Physically, mentally, in perspective. Humans are too damn interesting to be just one. I want the sampler.
Good blog. Good thought fuel.
I find it fitting that the more common use of the word "dreams" refers to the random illogical shit your brain vomits left right and center when it's half switched-off and not working properly.
Of course, there's also "career", which refers to the wild zig-zagging an out-of-control car makes before it crashes and kills everyone it's carrying.
Good post. Reminds me of that speech from Glengarry Glen Ross, which, if you've never seen it, is brutal yet strangely awesome (starts 55s in):
I understand hate, too. I used to hate all the time. I still hate often.
But ...I prefer to love. Love changes things, used properly. I see it every day now. And so...I keep doing my best to do more.
But I get where you are, and I am glad you're urging the same.
hate love all about the same.
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Yeh I've come to regret this blogpost a little. It's really edgy and 'red-and-black'-ish, to put it in a certain way? A really teenager thing to write, or post, or think, really.
But on the other hand -- I wrote this less than 24 hours after the terrorist attack in Barcelona, so I was kind of in a vulnerable emotional state or some shit like that. If it reads angsty, is because I was legit horrorized when I wrote it, and I tried to sort shit out and try to justify some kind of, unno, thought process.
And I mean, yeah, this shit is painful to read now that I have a clear mind, but I'm not gonna apologize for being fucked up after the attacks happened. They were fucked up. Just take this as the ramblings of someone who's trying his hardest to toughen up or justify something or some shit, Iunno. I clearly wasn't thinking straight, but as I said -- I don't even find this embarrassing. I've visited the rambla after the attacks, so I find becoming an unthinking edgelord for like two days after it happened sorta justified, yo.
Still an unthinking edgelord, though. Yeeesh. Power of hate. Yeeeesh.
4639083 It's nice to have you here in the asylum with the rest of us. Quality companionship makes the medication taste better.
4639827 It would have made the CMC episodes a lot shorter. Still, they surfed a giant block of stone down a hill and through town to that little pegasus and fairly pointed him at it. "You. Stone. Chisel. Get to work!"
4646439 Venting keeps us sane. Well, as sane as we are. Gives us a break from the real cruel world by surrounding ourselves with cute, fuzzy ponies.
4646501
I have very literally been on both sides of being locked in an asylum.
In odd coincidence, I finally threw away my restraint keys earlier this week (used with temporary restraints for persons who have mental retardation or developmental disabilities). It seemed unlikely they'd come up again, so I tired of jangling them around on my keychain.
4646439
No, you do not toughen up after a terrorist attack.
25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m37vfjwMVF1r8tyjfo1_500.gif
Nobody toughens up after a terrorist attack, or after consistent, repeated terrorist attacks. You become scarred. It helps you survive, but it's not a good thing.
Likewise, there's nothing wrong with being an edgy, angry fuckwad just after a terrorist attack. Everyone expects the wounds to be open and bleeding right then.
Don't feel bad.
4646439
It's fine. Just... I don't know.
Just know that the trick to being suicidal is procrastination, okay?
(Seriously, not joking about that. It's my motto.)
4646610
I don't know about that. Scarred? Jaded, maybe. Or numb. So much of American domestic terrorism I see and go 'Well, we could stop that, but people insist on focusing on power squabbles instead of working to improve the world'. A touch of world-weary cynicism, perhaps, but...scarring? Not for me, at least.
Hate can be a great motivator, but it leaves you feeling hollow inside. I can understand the white-hot flash of rage after someone does something heinous against you or your people. It fades, however, leaving you with nothing.
I heard something profound from David Arquette, of all people (though he admitted he'd heard it from someone else) on the issue. He said: "Hate is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."
This is such a fascinating read. I tend to fall on the idealistic end of the sliding scale of idealism vs. cynicism, but I've found hate and jealousy and judgement start to slip into my thoughts. Rather than take the jaded view expressed here, however, I'm trying to bring more acceptance and love into my worldview.
(This is partially because I just started to study theatre in college, and I encountered this quote from Michael Chekov:
I recognized a lot of these qualities in myself, and I'm trying to improve them.)
I'm operating on the (perhaps too sincere and idealistic) belief that we can be better, that we must be better, to paraphrase Fallout: Equestria.
Why are you in the MLP fandom again?