"When you find yourself hating someone (who did not directly hurt you) with blinding rage, know for certain that it is not the person you hate at all, but rather something about them that threatens your identity. Find that thing. This single piece of advice can turn your life around, I guarantee it."
— The Last Psychiatrist, on a post called The Rape Tunnel
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"According to a widely accepted model, intimacy begins when one person expresses revealing feelings, builds when the listener responds with support and empathy and is achieved when the discloser hears these things and feels understood, validated and cared for."
— Elizabeth Weil, in her 8,000 NYT magazine piece on her quest to improve her marriage.
Ben,Talking of Hatred, it is essential to look at what Budhdha said:
“Hatred does not cease by Hatred at any time. Hatred ceases by love. This is an unalterable law”
I liked the first quote. It occurs to me thought, that once you have worked out “what bit” about person X makes you crazy, surely one of the main motivations to beat that will be competition?
So in some small way, althought you’ve identified the issue, the main way to turn it around ends up being via the feeling of competition/anger. That’s not all that useful. (Or is it just me?!)
Conversely, useful to remember when you are attacked with shocking vitriol that it most likely ain’t about you, but something you triggered.
Good stuff, Ben.
Interesting quote, but here’s the part of the article I wish people would discuss: “More importantly, why is this level of anger not directed at actual rapists? Years ago I lived near 180 and Broadway in NYC. That’s a Rape Tunnel. If you go there there will be a guy waiting to rape you, sometimes they change shifts but there’s always someone on duty. And they’re hiring. Go there, get raped. EOM.
But no one is taking the A train north to kill that guy. In fact, you’ve basically accepted his existence, you’ve ceded that entire neighborhood to him. You don’t like him, of course, but you don’t hate him, you just put him out of your mind, you put that entire area out of your mind.”
The Last Psychiatrist brings up an idea that doesn’t get enough attention when we talk about rape, which is that even supposedly anti-rape discussions often implicitly grant permission to rapists who rape in certain socially accepted circumstances (ie, they rape in areas that are accepted as dangerous, or target women who society has decided they can get away with raping because of what they’re wearing or what they’ve been drinking).