This seems simple enough, but maybe revolutionary in a way.
People who love themselves, feel more comfortable around people who look and act the same.
People who hate themselves, feel more comfortable around people who look and act differently.
People who love themselves, actively seek out to find other people similar to themselves.
People who hate themselves, actively seek out to find other people different to themselves.
This applies to gender, race, society, and culture. For example, males who love themselves, enjoy to be around other males, on the grounds of maleness. And females who love themselves, enjoy to be around other females, on the grounds of femaleness. Males who hate themselves and their gender, want to be around women. What are your counter arguments, if any?
I don’t think there’s a one formula fits all answer, as many diverse factors can affect a person’s outlook on how they feel about themselves and about themselves within the context of the society they are in.
Would you give one example of an exception to the rule?
For example, let’s say a woman is a “cat lady” and has a dozen cats. She doesn’t have any friends, any children, and isolates herself from the rest of the world. According to these premises, she is a self hater. She loves cats, and finds something about cats “worthy of her love”. She could have spent all her time, money, and love in life, on something like–orphans. She could have adopted children. But, no, she chose cats. This is demonstrative of her underlying condition and psychology. There’s something she hates about herself, or about humans, and replaces with cats.
I’ve even seen a lot of young girls and women, around the world, online, pretending to be cats, putting on cat ears. This phenomenon is actually very extensive.
To me, it rings as self hatred. Maybe being a human is “not enough” for these females.
We as humans, do not have a total love or hate toward ourselves as members of a species. It’s a love/hate relationship. What we miss along the way, is the fact, that we cannot love ourself absolutely, without first having been loved by others.
We get to hate ourselves because we have not realized the love of others.
Woman who keep cats, do not necessarily hate human beings, but have lost the ability to accept their love.
Let me count the ways. There is no single definition of love. There is love realized, unrequited, love through caring, through giving, by sacrifice, by demonstration, by involvement, by generosity of spirit, by admonishment, the list is long.
And animals do exhibit traits which may be interpreted as love by their owners, whether or not this also may be considered love, belongs to the discretion of the animals owner. For some people, it’s enough to offer unilateral love for the animal, and need not test whether there is reciprocation.
People love or hate attributes, not actually people nor themselves. They love or hate something about people or themselves.
If there is something about themselves that they love, they seek more of it, other people who have a similar attribute.
If there is something about themselves that they hate, they seek less of it, other people without that attribute.
But if someone love the total of what they are, before loving anything else, they will never love anything else, because nothing will be the total of what they are.
“Love thyself first and you will love thyself only.”
“Love another first, and you will also love yourself for being a lover of them.”
People who hate themselves will often surround themselves with other people who hate themselves in the same way. For example restrictive judgmental religions that teach one to distrust one’s urges, desires, feelings, etc. This is a form of institutionalized self-hate (and one that very ‘rational’ people can also have and demand others to have also).
There is no reason to assume that someone who hates himself is more comfortable with people who seem strange to him. People who are different will raise all sorts of reactions, since people tend to fear what is different, even if they hate themselves. Then they are having strong reactions, which are likely to cause more self-hatred.
People may hate themselves for things they have done. This may mean, for example, that a very conservative, ultra religious person may hate themselves for having had an affair, but this does not mean they are attracted to liberals.
People may not realize that other people are like them. Someone hates herself for being a slob and thinks most other people are neat. When in fact she is rather neat, compared to the average, and many people who seem neat are actually slobs, but her self hate and inablity to read people makes her unaware of this.
Also people can find company in misery.
I could come up with other ways the deduction in the OP isn’t really grounded. It is as if we were very simple creatures with 2 or three qualities. Say we have one of three colors and one of two shapes. But people are so complicated, even idiots.
There is a disconnect in the implicit logic in the OP. You need to specify the ways people hate themselves.
An adventurous self-loving soul might immerse themselves in an alien environment in order to gain new experiences, which they may thrive on much more than associating with carbon copies of themselves, and vice versa for the self-loathers - I’m sure that each country/ethnicity harbours many a cat lady within it who has grown weary of all others, and so prefers the company of cats.
I guess your query is dependent on the numbers making up those two sets… are we a nation/world consisting (mainly) of self-lovers or loathers.
No I do not imply that. What I am saying is, that it is sometimes impossible to actually test whether an animal's exhibited behavior coincides of how we define love. We can interpret the cat's rubbing against the owner's leg as love,even knowing that it is nothing of the kind, rather it is an act of leaving a scent for other cats.
At the same time most pet owners have positive feelings for their pets, and they wish to love them, sometimes in your case of the cat lady, not just because of hating people, but also maybe because they are lonely, and talk themselves into the idea, that the cat(s) actually are returning their love for them.
I’m unconvinced about this. I feel that some people “know” other people better and more intimately than others. For example, a biological father and mother ought to “know” their child better than strangers, in many different ways.
If there is a wolf pack, and there is one white wolf among five black wolves, then they can still function as a wolf pack. Likewise, if there is one black wolf among five white wolves, then they can still function as a wolf pack. Color of fur may not even affect social standing and hierarchy. But the metaphysical assertions can still function, and rationalize behavior. For example, a simple difference of color of fur, is not enough to demonstrate whether white or black fur is “better” or worse than the alternative, within the context and situation. Before the logic can work, you need to make value judgments and presumptions. One type of fur is “better” than another. This could be true or false.
For example, you can apply this to brown bears and black bears. Do animals suffer from “self-hate” or “self-love”, due to a difference in superficial appearance? This begins to make more sense when you have a case of a mother duck raising a group of ducklings. Doesn’t the “ugly duckling” get cast out of the group, over a difference? What is this difference, superficial or behavioral? There is always a runt in the group. And this is where the self-hate begins. One of the group, the weakest, will get attacked by the others, for some difference, whether real or contrived makes no difference to the overall results.
I would guess that an adventurous person would find the company of other adventurous people most pleasing. But then we need to investigate what this “adventurous” nature is, where it comes from, and why some people have it and others don’t. Furthermore, you will need to extrapolate more about an adventurous group of people.
To me, this signifies some type of risk taking behavior.
Granted, but then you need to define love, and apply this definition to the underlying metaphysical assertions.
If a cat-lady is “bad” or even “defective”, socially ridiculed, then this may tie in with self-hatred. But to prove this, we need to go through the process of justifying claims.
If so, we running into the definition of what love is, and that process is by way of elimination. Starting with no, that's not what is lovable about such and such, and presumably ending with one, or a few traits. But whatever it is, we end up with some kind of predicate rather than substantive. (If we are honest with ourselves.). So in the argument above, it is an embedded process, a relational factor, encompassed in an idea, rather than a definitional quality.
Illustration: if one says "I love such and such because of a quality as honesty, its because such a quality is deeply ingrained, so we may be justified a deep regard for this quality. But if we say , I love. Such a t person because of the nice clothes worn, the usage seems odd. Love is presumed to exclude self hate because in a sense, its above mere dislike of one's self. I think self hate is very rare, and it can't even touch the levels that love is embedded.
The person who hates other people, may confuse hate for things like jealousy, and cannot therefore define what love is. This is why people wrapped up in superficial judgment of attributes, cannot really love.(Themselves, or others).
By look and act the same, you mean people who appear to love their selves? Describe to me a person who loves him/her -self. Don’t you think perhaps that a person who truly loves (which is also self-acceptance) himself in the right way would be comfortable enough around any kind of person in that he/she might understand human nature in understanding him/her self? For example, someone like a Mother Teresa.
Hmmm Well, there are two sayings which come to me here. One is “Birds of a feather flock together” which means then that people who hate themselves would necessarily recognize others who do and gravitate toward them - they would feel much more comfortable, imo, with those kinds of people…as misery needs company. The other saying is " Likes repel". At the same, I do find that also to be true. Perhaps it comes down to the level of comfort and familiarity one is able to hold with another. I think that your statement also depends on the individual. The more I write, the more I realize it is not so simple.
So then, it just occurred to me that the problem here might be one of individuals not having the capacity to stretch one’s self and own boundaries, not being able to step out of one’s comfort zone, albeit the one who truly loves himself in the right way, would not probably have a problem with dissolving his boundaries, except if the one hating himself was cruel. Loving others does not mean being a masochist.
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Again, there is that not stepping out of one’s own comfort zone.
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I think that would have more to do with having things in common, common grounds. Would it have to be about gender? But you may be right.
There are several factors going on here. First is understanding what aspects of the self a person identifies with. Second is defining love and hate. By the stipulations of this thread, a male who loves himself, specifically as a male and for being a male, may want to associate with other males. Because he accepts, enjoys, and loves this masculine aspect of himself. Now, other traits can be expressed in the same way. Maybe a tall person loves being tall, and wants to associate with other tall people, but not short people. Or maybe a tall person only wants to associate with short people.
Or maybe a woman does not like humans, so she surrounds herself with lots of cats, dogs, and animals.
By the hypotheses of the thread, the dissatisfaction, or worse, hatred, will produce a behavior. The metaphysical aspects of an organism which love and hate the self, will appear accordingly with these laws. People feel comfortable around what they are, and what behaves and acts the same. Similarly, people also may enjoy being around other people with the same beliefs and thoughts.
This is a lure for religion, too. A church assembles people with the same thoughts, beliefs, and values together. And people find this comforting and pleasing. All men’s clubs draw in men for the same reason. A sewing circle of old maids draws in women for the same reason. People congregate around a likeness. This demonstrates self-love, but not self-hate. Self hatred will produce discord and high variables.
Why would a heavily tattooed bike gangster go to a classical symphony opera? He wouldn’t. Similarly, you don’t see the suit and tie businessman riding around on a harley with a biker gang.
Well, there are two sayings which come to me here. One is “Birds of a feather flock together” which means then that people who hate themselves would necessarily recognize others who do and gravitate toward them - they would feel much more comfortable, imo, with those kinds of people…as misery needs company. The other saying is " Likes repel". At the same, I do find that also to be true. Perhaps it comes down to the level of comfort and familiarity one is able to hold with another. I think that your statement also depends on the individual. The more I write, the more I realize it is not so simple.