Hate involves an appraisal of a person or group that develops over time, usually when combined with the emotions of anger, frustration, or revenge. The overall appraisal needed to declare hatred will and does change over time. You hate someone because of what they are, and you are angry at someone because of what they did.
When there is anger and nothing changes, contempt may arise with the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn. Contempt is feeling the other person is not worth your anger or the cold version of hate. Like hate, contempt is about who you are, your nature, and your personality. It might feel worse to be the object of someone’s contempt than it does to be the object of hate. With hatred comes engagement, but with contempt usually comes distancing or detachment.
Hate can dissolve over time, but damage to a relationship can become permanent. It takes emotional intelligence to understand the difference. But that is what we need today, more emotional intelligence (tee hee). Both contempt and hate could be related to the way we regulate our energy. Let’s regulate our emotions with a whisper on the subject:
The expression of contempt can be psychologically damaging. A pattern of behavior that lacks empathy or compassion is a sign of withdrawal that often leads to further pain and suffering. Attitudes and bias are woven into the personality in a way that leads to contemptuous behavior. Disengagement leaves no room for change or understanding. Contempt is an energetic way of controlling the emotion of anger, but can leave a wound on the mind.
A better way to regulate emotions is learning to channel energy through communication and expression. It’s okay to feel angry, as it is a necessary emotion. Hatred is part of an overall mechanism of learning through emotional expressions of life. Contempt can break energetic patterns that have developed through sustained emotional content with a group or individual as a target.
Growth comes from constructive communication. Finding avenues for expression requires learning the language of love and discernment around the primary negative unit of life, which is hatred. Contempt can be a sophisticated weapon of destruction used to humiliate, ridicule, fracture, or wound another person. Self-awareness could help identity the weakness or lack of maturity that led to contempt.
It takes courage to look within and to see what opposes empathy, to tolerate the shortcomings of others, and to accept the mantle of the one who needs to express compassion. To stay engaged with and to see a challenging situation to completion, whether in agreement or disagreement, is a benchmark of the willingness to be vulnerable and emotionally available. An awakened being can rise and meet any challenge, if there is enough illumination on the path that is the journey of your soul.
Bring joy, ease suffering and create beauty, then dance like you mean it!
Blessings, Russell
“Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life…”
Elizabeth Goudge
