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  • Writers I Loathe January 19, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite , trackback

    I hate you

    Why do we just latch onto some people and enjoy detesting them? Beach is not talking here about neurologists taking years off your life or architects stealing tens of thousands from loved one, the bastards, but those more random insidious despisings that arise with people who are barely known and who have not done anything to you. There seems to be a particularly interesting version of this that arises among people in creative subjects. Occasionally, people working on the fringe of the same circle or on the same fields start to grit their teeth when one another’s names are mentioned. Why should this be? Probably a lot of it comes down to a very human and very useful need to compete with our peers, but there are many cases where competition establishes, strangely enough, affection. Talking about this with a friend recently Beach hit upon the key: it is falsity. In his professional life Beach has had two serious hate-ins. Both were unaccountable but both were passionate and strong: thankfully neither were acted upon, because in one case Beach was young and impotent and in the other he was old and wise. But in both cases these two ‘enemies’ were utterly and astoundingly false and while that was self-evident to this blogger, others seemed strangely oblivious to their hollow nature and lack of human organs. Now, here’s a small rider. We are all false and true in part. Most people are too concerned about their own inadequacies to penetrate through the plasterwood lining of other people’s souls. But most of us are very good at sniffing out certain types of falsehood and certain types of deception: perhaps because they are so different from our own strategies or possibly because they are so similar. It is as if there is a dog whistle that only some of us can hear. These hates are, typically, symbolic (one of the things that make them worrying and yet so invigorating). There are people who you dislike, who have crossed you in your life, who it is difficult to feel sympathy for even when cancer or eye-operations pop up like mushrooms. These professional hates, unless you’ve been foolish enough to actually act on them, whither away to nothing in the face of bad news: even if on some levels you know that x or y is a bit of a prat. Other thoughts on creative hates: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com