A Few Propositions #2: Hatred

There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude. 
Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of 
everything. Those who do not love, hate. In the spiritual 
life there is no such thing as indifference to love or hate. 
That is why tepidity (which seems to be indifferent) is so 
detestable. It is hate disguised as love.

-- Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude, p 41

A Few Propositions #1: Hatred

Hatred is not the opposite of love, but is the absence of love. It may or may not exist in tangent with familiar emotions we often think of as hatred. It could simply be the lack of desire of communion with or commitment to an object, idea or person. We may hate someone without wishing them any ill will. We may hate God while profoundly believing in God. Due to the disorder of the soul -- where everything is out of whack and the body or the emotions or appetite often rule the spirit, or due to some additional injury and its attendant pathology (i.e., the lack of parental love, or other abuses we have suffered), we may simply be incapable of love. The injury to our psyche, the inability to love as an act of the will without contingencies, without derailing into an infantile game of punishment and reward whereby pure self-interest masquarades as love, may result in a life totally absent of love: in other words, a life and soul filled with hatred, which manifests itself in profligate passions, addictions, high drama, manifold insecurities, a condition in which the human person becomes a plaything of its own fear.