Societal Change, and emotions
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Hey, I've been doing some thinking about what drives societal change among humans and i was wondering what you thought about my conclusion that hate is the most powerful emotion in that it can mobilize people do things that they otherwise wouldn't
It all started when i was thinking about the "Troubles" in Ireland. My grandfather was Irish, but he was from Belfast. He joined the B-Specials (B-Specials) and the story goes he did "something" (murder? idk) and was going to be shot but was given a 48 hour reprieve by the Father of the local church to leave Ireland. He left right away. Getting on a boat bound for Canada and worked for year on a farm there. According to my mother he was always very paranoid, always "watching" she said. Especially after the IRA moved into continental Europe and murdered people there.
Overall the death toll of the Troubles is quite large, over 3 000 people died. (The Troubles, scroll down you'll find the tables there)
Most surprisingly was the racism that was involved, in the 1980's one of our distant cousins who lives in Ireland came over and said things about the Republicans and Southern Irish that i would expect a member of the KKK to say about blacks. "Well, it has been proven that we are genetically superior to the Southern Irish." etc. etc.
Then in 1998 the Good Friday Agreement came into existence (GFA) I don't know if this has served to ease to tensions at all over there (i sincerely hope it has)
How many of those people wouldn't have thrown petrol bombs or set those nail bombs off if they didn't hate the people they were killing? Would the situation be any different if they hadn't? Would the Republic of Ireland still be dirt poor, which i have come to understand it largely still is. Or even more so? All "what if" questions but i don't think it invalidates them
This got me thinking about other things like the Civil Rights Movement, was it formed out of hate on both sides? But Martin Luther King Jr. used non-violent protests? Doesn't mean you can't hate the person your not kicking the shit out of.
I also thought about Rwanda and Darfur, all created by hate right? (i never said the societal change was positive) But in the end does it end up for the good? Or if not is it just swept under the rug by the winners and forgotten? What is something not spawned by hate, or even indirectly for that matter, that has caused great societal change? In all these cases i feel that hate has been a powerful motivational tool
What do you think of my conclusion that hate causes great societal change? what emotion would you say effects society the most?
My education is sadly lacking on these topics and if you can add anything or correct mistakes plz do. I would appreciate it very much
EDIT: god, i hope that doesn't sound like an angsty teen trying to make sense of the world
It all started when i was thinking about the "Troubles" in Ireland. My grandfather was Irish, but he was from Belfast. He joined the B-Specials (B-Specials) and the story goes he did "something" (murder? idk) and was going to be shot but was given a 48 hour reprieve by the Father of the local church to leave Ireland. He left right away. Getting on a boat bound for Canada and worked for year on a farm there. According to my mother he was always very paranoid, always "watching" she said. Especially after the IRA moved into continental Europe and murdered people there.
Overall the death toll of the Troubles is quite large, over 3 000 people died. (The Troubles, scroll down you'll find the tables there)
Most surprisingly was the racism that was involved, in the 1980's one of our distant cousins who lives in Ireland came over and said things about the Republicans and Southern Irish that i would expect a member of the KKK to say about blacks. "Well, it has been proven that we are genetically superior to the Southern Irish." etc. etc.
Then in 1998 the Good Friday Agreement came into existence (GFA) I don't know if this has served to ease to tensions at all over there (i sincerely hope it has)
How many of those people wouldn't have thrown petrol bombs or set those nail bombs off if they didn't hate the people they were killing? Would the situation be any different if they hadn't? Would the Republic of Ireland still be dirt poor, which i have come to understand it largely still is. Or even more so? All "what if" questions but i don't think it invalidates them
This got me thinking about other things like the Civil Rights Movement, was it formed out of hate on both sides? But Martin Luther King Jr. used non-violent protests? Doesn't mean you can't hate the person your not kicking the shit out of.
I also thought about Rwanda and Darfur, all created by hate right? (i never said the societal change was positive) But in the end does it end up for the good? Or if not is it just swept under the rug by the winners and forgotten? What is something not spawned by hate, or even indirectly for that matter, that has caused great societal change? In all these cases i feel that hate has been a powerful motivational tool
What do you think of my conclusion that hate causes great societal change? what emotion would you say effects society the most?
My education is sadly lacking on these topics and if you can add anything or correct mistakes plz do. I would appreciate it very much
EDIT: god, i hope that doesn't sound like an angsty teen trying to make sense of the world
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Hate, fear and ignorance. Fear starts so many things as does hate. One side fears the other and before you know it that leads to hate which leads to conflict. Side A fears side B because there ignorant. They don't know any thing about side B and thus they fear it. If there's one thing humans fear its the unknown. War is one of the largest causes of Societal Change. War originates from Hate, fear and ignorance.
Sorry if this is a little ruff. Its really late. *yawns
Sorry if this is a little ruff. Its really late. *yawns
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I don't know much about the conflict in Ireland, but I'd be happy to contribute some of my philosophy regarding hate:
Hate is really only a symptom, so it cannot be the 'cause' of anything. To put it in perspective, hate is a reaction that people have to certain things that happen. Hate cannot come first though, something else must always spark that hate.
But lets assume we were talking about the causes of hate instead. The most obvious causes of hate would be differing belief structures, and conflict over limited natural resources. If we are looking at the big picture though, differing belief structures are also a subset of the reactions caused by conflict over resources. This conflict is surely what creates differing belief structures in the first place.
You can argue of course that racism, religion and cultural biases are not tied to this original conflict, but I think if you could trace them to their roots they would be. So I guess my answer is that the age old conflict over resources is the most powerful driver of change.
But since you did ask specifically about emotions, I will delve into those briefly (even though again, emotions are not the original cause of anything, they are just reactions). I think that if you examine hate more closely, you will see that it is always tied to another emotion. Even among emotions, hate rarely comes first except in cases of racism and belief structure conflict (which cannot be said to be good reasons for hate). Righteous hate however, is nearly always tied to another emotion such as sadness, fear, greed, and probably others I can't think of.
I think you mean well, but maybe you are trying to hard. The truth is that people will always find reasons to kill each other, and even if you could pinpoint those reasons it wouldn't help. The only thing powerful enough to stop conflict is fear (think cold war), and people will always overcome fear eventually.
Hate is really only a symptom, so it cannot be the 'cause' of anything. To put it in perspective, hate is a reaction that people have to certain things that happen. Hate cannot come first though, something else must always spark that hate.
But lets assume we were talking about the causes of hate instead. The most obvious causes of hate would be differing belief structures, and conflict over limited natural resources. If we are looking at the big picture though, differing belief structures are also a subset of the reactions caused by conflict over resources. This conflict is surely what creates differing belief structures in the first place.
You can argue of course that racism, religion and cultural biases are not tied to this original conflict, but I think if you could trace them to their roots they would be. So I guess my answer is that the age old conflict over resources is the most powerful driver of change.
But since you did ask specifically about emotions, I will delve into those briefly (even though again, emotions are not the original cause of anything, they are just reactions). I think that if you examine hate more closely, you will see that it is always tied to another emotion. Even among emotions, hate rarely comes first except in cases of racism and belief structure conflict (which cannot be said to be good reasons for hate). Righteous hate however, is nearly always tied to another emotion such as sadness, fear, greed, and probably others I can't think of.
I think you mean well, but maybe you are trying to hard. The truth is that people will always find reasons to kill each other, and even if you could pinpoint those reasons it wouldn't help. The only thing powerful enough to stop conflict is fear (think cold war), and people will always overcome fear eventually.
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I think hate is a powerful tool used to influence the masses. people are stupid and easily manipulated. the larger the group the stupider and more easily controled.
now it's time for the irish catholic part* of me to speak.
I've not done a lot of reaserch on the subject, but as it's a part of my heritage, i pay attention when i hear something.
i can see it from the true irish side when the prodestants do fucked up shit like have parades through catholic areas comemorating their conquest of ireland. if someone fucked me over and then came by every year just to say, "hey, remember how i fucked you over?", i'd wanna blow their shit up too.
the english have been screwing the irish for a long long time.
you are only a terrorist until you win for your cause, then you become a freedom fighter.
*[size=10]all be it a small part. i got german, french, english, spainish, and a few other euro bits. a good old white american mish-mash. my red hair and freckles make me lean towards the irish part a little more than the rest.[/h]
now it's time for the irish catholic part* of me to speak.
I've not done a lot of reaserch on the subject, but as it's a part of my heritage, i pay attention when i hear something.
i can see it from the true irish side when the prodestants do fucked up shit like have parades through catholic areas comemorating their conquest of ireland. if someone fucked me over and then came by every year just to say, "hey, remember how i fucked you over?", i'd wanna blow their shit up too.
the english have been screwing the irish for a long long time.
you are only a terrorist until you win for your cause, then you become a freedom fighter.
*[size=10]all be it a small part. i got german, french, english, spainish, and a few other euro bits. a good old white american mish-mash. my red hair and freckles make me lean towards the irish part a little more than the rest.[/h]
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I don't think that hate is really a driving factor in changing society >.> like said before, hate is mostly following another reason. It's not that hate overwhelms people and causes them to discriminate and use violence, but that they feel as if there is no reason not to. *it's a bit late right now so ask if you want me to explain T.T*
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I agree with your core idea in that emotions can trigger actions, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that specific emotions are the causation of societal change. Emotions can accentuate people's desires to take action when it comes to defending/promoting their fundamental beliefs, but they do not cause societal change -- conflicts of fundamental beliefs do.