| This book isn't saying it is a "signal of" introspection: it is saying it is a "call to" introspection. That is, if you choose to look into the feeling you can learn something about yourself you are not consciously aware of. I wonder if you've ever actually felt hatred. Not of some general concept (that is more likely disgust than hatred anyway, and as far as I've seen is usually rooted in insecurity about whether the person earned their relative status and fear that on a level playing field they will lose), but of an actual specific other person. I have. It was sparked in how someone was behaving towards me and the consequences his actions had, but my reaction was not some rational response: it was an intense vicious loathing that could have rationalized any response I chose to indulge. And when I looked into it, really sat and was honest with myself, it was because he was doing things I wouldn't let myself do. Now, I wouldn't let myself do them for very good reasons, because they were bad things with bad consequences that hurt people, but there was a part of me that wanted to do them anyway. The intensity of my emotional response, which actually got in the way of me effectively responding to his shitty actions, came because I saw the part of myself I liked least, that I had tried to stamp out and destroy, in him. The feeling was evidence that I had failed to eradicate the impulse from myself, and I externalized all of that onto the person who reminded me that that part of me existed. Once I acknowledged that, that some part of me was envious that he got to do these terrible things and get away with it and I wouldn't even let myself try, I could decide how I actually wanted to respond without being ruled by those feelings I had. |
> I wonder if you've ever actually felt hatred. Not of some general concept (that is more likely disgust than hatred anyway, and as far as I've seen is usually rooted in insecurity about whether the person earned their relative status and fear that on a level playing field they will lose), but of an actual specific other person.
> It was sparked in how someone was behaving towards me and the consequences his actions had, but my reaction was not some rational response: it was an intense vicious loathing that could have rationalized any response I chose to indulge.
> And when I looked into it, really sat and was honest with myself, it was because he was doing things I wouldn't let myself do. [...] Now, I wouldn't let myself do them for very good reasons, because they were bad things with bad consequences that hurt people, but there was a part of me that wanted to do them anyway.
This hits weirdly close to home, but you lose me at the end (I have to watch what I say since the individual has taken up cyberstalking). It's possible "disgust" is applicable, but I deal with disgusting people all day-- this one in particular evokes something more unpleasant. I have no interest in playing their games, and yet they're still at it years later. I'm not sure how to internalize that the way you have.