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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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I should hate the tiger that is trying to eat me

…Wait, what? Why? Feeling hatred for a non-sapient animal seems bizarre to me. Never mind whether it's ever good to feel hatred even about fellow human beings - I find your example baffling on its own terms. You may as well hate a thunderstorm when it threatens your town, or rage against the concept of gravity as you're falling off a bridge. Like… you can hate any one of those things if you really want, I guess. By definition it's not like they're going to mind. But it seems deeply pointless, bordering on maladaptive. I certainly don't see why you "should" hate the tiger, whether that's a moral argument of a practical one. If it's a moral one, what has the tiger done to 'deserve' hatred that the concept of gravity has not? If it's a practical one, what does hating the tiger accomplish that is not better accomplished, and in less stressful a way for you, by dispassionately, rationally accounting for the tiger's behavior, or indeed, by simply being afraid of the tiger?

The tiger, like a political opponent and unlike gravity, is a problem that you can at least theoretically end. And once you've made that decision to seek it's end, it is an adaptive simplification to just psychologically refer back to that seeking of ends as a terminal value.

Thus, it makes perfect sense to hate the tiger.

psychologically refer back to that seeking of ends as a terminal value

I think that's a very lacking definition of "hate". I would associate that word with an obsessive, rage-filled state of mind - which is both unpleasant for whoever feels it, and more likely to cloud one's judgement than to help with the task at hand. You don't need to hate a deer to successfully hunt and kill it; why should the tiger be any different?

The tiger is an active threat. The deer is not. Hate walls off the vile spark that spares the foe. And if you were at risk of starving, I bet you'd muster up the courage to hate that deer - for your family's sake.