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Collective Hatred and RageCollective hatred, like collective "love," can achieve much higher levels of intensity than that of individuals, but the spiral is much more hidden and complex. To understand this process, it may be necessary to forego everyday, vernacular explanations. I propose that hatred is the commonly used word for hidden shame/rage sequences, humiliated fury. The elemental source of hatred may be the shame of not belonging, forming groups that reject the group(s) supposedly rejecting them. The culture of such groups generates techniques of neutralization that encourage hatred and mayhem. At the level of individuals, there is rage generated by threatened or damaged bonds. There are also social and cultural spirals that give rise to collective hatred and rage.
...At the group level, it may be that alienation and certain cultural beliefs militate toward states of hatred and rage, and violent behavior.
As already indicated, rage seems to be a composite affect, a sequence of two elemental emotions, shame and anger. This idea has been advanced by other authors, notably Heinz Kohut (1971), and Helen Lewis (1971). Kohut proposed that violent anger of the kind he called "narcissistic rage" was a shame/anger compound. Lewis suggested that shame and anger have a deep affinity, and that one can find indications of unacknowledged shame occurring just prior to any episode of intense hostility.
..When anger has its source in feelings of rejection or inadequacy, and when the latter feelings are not acknowledged, a continuous spiral of shame/anger may result, which may be experienced as hatred and rage. Rather than expressing and discharging one's shame through laughter ("Silly me" or "Silly us."), it is masked by rage and aggression. One can be angry one is ashamed, and ashamed that one is angry, and so on, working up to a loop of unlimited duration and intensity. This loop may be the emotional basis of lengthy episodes or even life-long hatred that seems intense beyond endurance.... Killing or maiming other humans would be intensely painful if the automatic shame response were still in play.
...Another essay (Scheff 1997, Ch. 3) described how bimodal alienation generates violence at the collective level. Bimodal alienation between groups occurs when there is "isolation" between them, but "engulfment" within them. On the one hand, members of group A are distant from members of group B, and vice versa. But on the other, members of each group are infatuated with each other, to the point that they give up important parts of themselves, in order to be completely loyal to the group. A very wealthy and influential person in my local community said to me: "I am a patriot. When my country wants something, I give it, no questions asked." I said, "Suppose you have doubts?" He said, "Not possible. My country comes first." Idealizing the nation means suppressing one’s thoughts and feelings.
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/scheff/36.htmlothers:
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/scheff/
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