Fear, Hatred and Passion

 

I believe that fear and passion are opposites and that love and terror are polar opposites. The reasons I believe this are that I see fear as simply an aversion to pain and passion as a yearning for pleasure. I don’t regard faith, knowledge, trust or certainty as being opposites of fear, because I don’t believe that awareness necessarily negates fear. For example, if one was captured by a group of terrorists and knew that the terrorists wanted to film their captive getting shot then having knowledge would actually increase the fear. This is partly why I believe that awareness, knowledge, trust, faith and certainty go hand in hand with both fear and passion.  One who is certain that their fear is justified will be more afraid, because they’ll be more certain that their fear is a sign of impending aversive consequences. Likewise, one’s passion will become stronger if their certainty of that passion increases.

 

I don’t regard hate and fear to be the same thing, nor do I believe the two are always linked. Hate and fear are both physiological responses to aversion, but they’re experienced differently. I believe one could kill a cougar out of fear, yet harbour no hatred towards the cougar. Likewise, I believe that one could kill a cougar out of hate and yet harbour little to no fear of the cougar. The two emotions are confusing, because they can both trigger hostile responses. Fear can cause one to run or hide, but it can also cause one to act hostile the same as extreme hate can. My conclusion is that hate is the certainty that something is causing negative repercussions where as fear is the certainty that something will cause negative repercussions.

 

In this light, one may kill a cougar out of fear and do so without hate, because the cougar merely could have caused negative repercussions such as death. Likewise, one may kill the cougar out of hate, but not fear, because the cougar killed one of their beloved family members and the cougar itself is certainly a source of anguish. Alternatively, one may kill a cougar out of hate and fear, because they fear that the cougar will cause negative repercussions and also hate that the cougar is a source of anguish. From this perspective, it makes sense that fear and hate can be used to further empower one another. One may be afraid of something and hate the fact that, that something is making them feel afraid, because fear is such an aversive emotion. Ultimately, if one’s hate grows strong enough then it will overcome their fear.

 

As a side note I would like to mention that hate and passion can also go hand in hand, because eliminating something aversive can be quite pleasurable. Therefore, one could be happy that something repugnant exists simply for the sake of having the opportunity to eradicate it. I doubt that this is a healthy state of being because it involves strong, conflicting forces. I suspect that over time the two forces would eventually destroy one from within.