I am angry about everyone who has ever been beaten up in a dark alley. I think people should not be beaten up in dark alleys. I am angry about racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia because they seem significant causes of people being beaten up in dark alleys
I agree they “seem” that way if you only superficially read the news. If you pay closer attention one notices that (at least in the US) fear of being precised as “racist” is a much larger cause of people being beaten up in dark alleys (and occasionally in broad daylight). It is the reason why cops don’t want to police high crime (black) neighborhoods, why programs that successfully reduce crime (like stop and frisk) are terminated.
Hatred of human beings is almost never appropriate. Hatred of things is fine.
I would argue the exact opposite. Hatred and anger evolved as methods that let us pre-commit to revenge/punishment by getting around the “once the offense has happened it’s no longer in one’s interest to carry out the punishment” problem. They do this by sabotaging one’s reasoning process to keep one from noticing that carrying out the punishment is not in one’s interest. Applied against things, i.e., anything that can’t be motivated by fear of punishment, all one gets is the partially sabotaged reasoning process without any countervailing benefits.
In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to be angry at a ‘thing’ like a disease. In order to do so one must either anthropomorphize the disease or actually get angry at some people (like say those people who refuse to give enough money to research for curing it).
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I agree they “seem” that way if you only superficially read the news. If you pay closer attention one notices that (at least in the US) fear of being precised as “racist” is a much larger cause of people being beaten up in dark alleys (and occasionally in broad daylight). It is the reason why cops don’t want to police high crime (black) neighborhoods, why programs that successfully reduce crime (like stop and frisk) are terminated.
I would argue the exact opposite. Hatred and anger evolved as methods that let us pre-commit to revenge/punishment by getting around the “once the offense has happened it’s no longer in one’s interest to carry out the punishment” problem. They do this by sabotaging one’s reasoning process to keep one from noticing that carrying out the punishment is not in one’s interest. Applied against things, i.e., anything that can’t be motivated by fear of punishment, all one gets is the partially sabotaged reasoning process without any countervailing benefits.
In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to be angry at a ‘thing’ like a disease. In order to do so one must either anthropomorphize the disease or actually get angry at some people (like say those people who refuse to give enough money to research for curing it).