Don't Hate the Haters

This week's readings have my head swimming, making connections between the bright and dark side of what are typically considered negative emotions and our earlier discussions of communication competence, patterned interpersonal communication and the forever maddening absence of blame in communication. I really enjoyed all these readings, and while my focus will be specifically on Guerrero and Anderssen's (1998) discussion on jealousy and envy (envy in particular), I do have to make a comment about Goldberg's (1999) The Hate That Heals. This piece I am just not entirely sold on. While I do agree with the basic premise that the author eventually stated that our ability to give voice to an emotion that has been effectively discursively eliminated from our "emotional repertoire" (p. 232) is vital to our personal and relational (and I would add, social well being), I do so with some hesitation. I do not agree that separation from one stage to the next is driven by hate. It seems to me that this author is defining hate in terms of the experience of fear, uncertainty and anger. None of this, to my mind, equals hate...and hate does not, to my mind drive me to separate from past life stages and embrace new ones. For me, this article's simplistic representation of hate as a construct was in many ways offensive and damaging. Now, I say that realizing that, as a Catholic who has rejected the value of hate in favor of love, I am wholly embracing  the ideology of intimacy (Parks, 1995) and perhaps reacting rather than responding to this piece, as Stewart might say, but, honestly, I don't think so. I could feel myself getting uncomfortable with the discussion, I stopped reading for a bit, checked my automatic rejection of the idea that one should embrace hate, and then continued reading. I do recognize the legitimacy of hate as an emotion, and I see its value. I just don't see it as the "first" emotion nor do I accept that it is how we are propelled through life. I also reject hate as a part of a healthy psychological immune system--I think skepticism, anger, suspicion, self confidence and assertiveness/aggressiveness are all a part of a healthy psychological immune system, but I don't see these things as being born of hate.  I'd love to hear what others think on this.

I guess related here is my primary focus--that is Guerrero & Anderssen's (1998) discussion on envy. They assert, using Ciabatari's untested hypothesis, that envy differs from jealousy in that envy originates from hate, while jealousy originates in love. Again, I don't buy it. I don't think all of this boils down to hate versus love. I think it boils down to the interaction of one's level of self confidence (or the absence of it) and these other, seemingly dark, emotions-hurt, jealousy, envy, competition, aggression, competence, complaining, guilt and shame--and how this interaction that occurs intrapersonally influences the worlds of meaning (that we discussed in class) that we bring to our interpersonal interactions. We've read throughout the semester how low self confidence can lead to increased feelings of shame (Gilbert, McEwan, Milles & Gale, 2009), whether or not we perceive ourselves as socially competent (Spitzberg, 1994), how we perceive and interpret teasing (Kowalski, 2007) and aggressive behaviors (Willer & Cupach, 2007), how intensely we hurt (Vangelisti, 2007) and I'm sure there's more I'm missing. The point is, as we bring our low or high self confidence to our interactions, we experience and are shaped intrapersonally by the interactions, which shapes our interpersonal relationships, setting us up for positive or negative patterned interpersonal behavior, and this then creates a communicative system in which we all operate and are all positioned---some of us more favorably than others.

Now, I agree that hate is an important emotion to give voice to and that, when it is stifled, it often squelches one's ability to respond to aversive behaviors in a way that protects oneself. Hate is legitimate--it's just not the origin.

According to Guerrero & Andersen (1998), jealousy is passionate and, as I mentioned, originates in love. It reflects a person's desire to retain a socially desired relationship or commodity and who perceives a threat to that desired relationship or commodity. It is also often regarded socially as a reprehensible, yet sometimes understandable reason for violence and temporary insanity. None of us are okay with losing something that is rightfully ours, and, we can somehow create space for violence in the name of jealousy to be legitimated. Envy, however is cognitive and not terribly passionate (at least as compared to jealousy), and it originates in hate. It involves two relations-- an envious person who desires something and another person who possesses what is desired. Envious anger results in resentment and bitterness. This involves a "have not"--someone who is not in possession of the thing or relationship s/he desires. Envy is not often cast as a justifiable defense in our legal system for violence. We aren't interested in helping people change their positioning--only sympathetic to those who are threatened with losing it.

"In individualistic, capitalist countries like the United States or Great Britain, envy is particularly likely to flourish. Individualism naturally leads people to compare themselves to others" (p. 43). They go onto discuss how competition (remember the dark side of it from last week?) along with envy become mechanisms by which we can better ourselves in these types of societies. The whole time I was reading all of this, I couldn't stop thinking about Mitt Romney and his infamous (in my mind) claim that income inequity in the United States is simply envy. This claim that he made absolutely set me on fire and really set my tone for the political season. As someone very much concerned with social inequities, reading his comments felt like swallowing glass. You can read one of the articles written about that here. Now, I don't want to engage in a political discussion-I've had my fill for a while--but I do think this rhetorical distinction between envy and jealousy can inform the ways in which we perpetuate social inequities in this country. Mitt attempted to silence the voices of those who see themselves as oppressed and who are attempting to position themselves as oppressed by discrediting them as simply envious. He attempted to take a movement to challenge his privileged position and completely discredit it using the dark side of envy.  Envy is largely considered a socially inappropriate emotion (p. 44), it would seem, at least in part, due to our unbalanced sympathies for those threatened with the loss of privilege as compared to those already positioned as subordinates. Mitt's attempt to label those making a movement toward economic equity was rhetorically strategic and serves now to illuminate for me how the bright and dark side of emotions can be harnessed to perpetuate and/or to challenge the dominant social order.

It rather reminds me of the Goldberg's (1999) story about the community of Mormon women who were raped by the local physician during regular exams and who, because they could not give voice to hate, continued to be victimized for years. I want to make it clear here that I am not likening the rape of these women to capitalism--that was a horrible, difficult story to read, let alone live through and I wouldn't dream of belittling it. These women did not have a language of hate--according to Goldberg (1999), "their need to love, not hate, prevented many of them from even acknowledging what had happened" (p. 232).  Their lack of access to hate as a response silenced them and enabled this doctor to continue victimizing them for years. It seems that those who are positioned less powerfully are very often subordinated through rhetorical constructs like "hate", "love", and "envy".

We need to examine which emotions are constructed as legitimate and in what contexts and for whom.  Perhaps the dark side of these emotions are the voices that are silenced as a result of emotional legitimation or de-legimation. I'm beginning to suspect that one place to find the dark side of anything is to look toward the voices that aren't heard. We need to consider how the patterned nature of interpersonal communication shapes and is shaped by the interaction between each communicator's self esteem and the emotion(s) involved as it shapes the worlds of meaning that communicators bring to their interpersonal relationships....and then examine how this works within the specific relational context. What patterns have emerged in the relationship? Is the communication legitimated as competent or de-legitimated as incompetent? For whom? Always more questions than answers, it seems.