Observations placeholder
Stapledon, Olaf - Odd John - On hate
Identifier
007288
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Olaf Stapledon – Odd John
‘You talk’ he said ‘as if hate were rational, as if men only hated what they had reason to hate. If you want to understand modern Europe and the World, you have to keep in mind …. there is this almost universal need to hate something, rationally and irrationally, to find something to unload your own sins onto, and then smash it. In perfectly healthy minds this need to hate plays a small part. But nearly all minds are damnably unhealthy and so they must have something to hate. Mostly they hate their neighbours or their wives or husbands or parents or children. But they get a much more exalted sort of excitement by hating foreigners………