Once or twice a month a vitriolic reader assails me with a blowtorch of epithets. I’m a stupid lying woke piece of shit and on and on the stranger rails. The assault, while harmless, is unpleasant, like the sting of grease from the bacon pan. If I knew in advance what that email contained, I mightn’t open it but I don’t, and since almost all reader comments are complimentary, my eager ego clicks. Praise encourages me as the sun does plants. While a “like” is easy confetti, as easy as a brava for the prima donna, it’s welcome evidence my words weren’t wasted.

                  But what about that hater? What moved him or her to take time to plaster me with these platitudinous brickbats? Their hate, albeit banal, is vigorous and vociferous: why at me, whom they’ve met only in print? What set them off? And why after a minute or two of furious typing did their internal editor decree “Enough. Send”? 

                  I have hated heartily in my hour – I hate most of the mobsters currently trashing America and the earth, for example – but I am not a hater. My preference is to please. I love to love. My words seek to bend our moment in the direction of love. I’m convinced if we all were kinder to one another, being would be pleasanter, so why not at least try ameliorating our moment? 

                  We live in a hateful hour. Protesters everywhere have had it up to here and can’t take it anymore. The public conversation of prominent officials blisters the ears. Gleefully we maim, disable, deport, decry, destroy. Politicians seem to care more about paining their opponents than benefitting their constituents. The Golden Rule and Sermon on the Mount are for wimps. Manly men (and women) shoot to kill! Increasingly voters vote against, not for.

                  Why?

                  Hatred, most thinkers agree, is a kind of insanity arising from an impression of impotence. “The man who hates another hates himself”(Epictetus). “Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated” (George Bernard Shaw).“Hatred is the anger of the weak” (Alphonse Daudet, a friend of Flaubert’s). It’s less the injury we resent than being injured.

                  In this hour of comparative material well-being, where’s the injury? I’ve seen well-fed, sun-tanned retirees redden with rage toward malefactors they’ve never met. What’s eating them? The sycophants of the Nameless One are furious – about what?

                  I blame our dumps on modernity. We are victims of our own success. By upholstering our lives, we impoverished our souls.

                  To joyfully exist we need a persuasive purpose. No one is happy bored. Modernity doesn’t need us. We are superfluous, interchangeable. Walk through the Brobdingnag of midtown Manhattan. Who could feel important in the shadow of such giants? We are scurrying beetles, almost laughable in our littleness. Do our institutions care two beans about us? (Two beans or not two beans – that is the question!) About megabucks and superstars, sure, but about us little guys (and aren’t we all, deep down, little guys?). Corporations and politicians treat us like pawns to manipulate and pocket-pick, not like potent persons with important concerns. 

                  Dissed, pissed, what do we do? What tots do – throw a fit. Combine with others to revile in chorus. Opposition becomes occupation. Aim a spitball at this a**hole Tucker. It feels good to feel again. “He who despises himself still respects himself as one who despises” (Nietzsche).

                  Plenty is wrong with our world. Hatred never helps. How to free ourselves from its grip? Relearn why it’s good to live.

                  “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,” preached Dr. King.