Merriam defines
- hate as “intense hostility …” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hate
- hostility as " deep-seated … ill will" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hostility
- ill will as “unfriendly feeling” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ill will
So hate is just the extreme end of an “unfriendly feeling” which is synonymous to a negative feeling. We can go “golden middle” on this and say that moderate negative feelings are ideal, but even the moderate form seems synonymous to bias or prejudice.
- bias as “an inclination of temperament or outlook” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias
- bias as “to give a settled and often prejudiced outlook to”
After I lost my belief in free will, I also seem to have lost my ability to feel hate. I haven’t felt that in years - almost a decade. To me, hate is just a story you’re telling yourself to stay angry. I don’t tell myself such stories.
I can still feel annoyed, irritated, or dislike someone, but hate is incompatible with my worldview. And I don’t mean “hate” in the casual way people use it in everyday speech - I mean true hatred. I can’t hate an object, because it just is and couldn’t be otherwise. But in the same way, I can’t hate people either, because while I think they have the ability to act differently in the future, I don’t believe they could have acted differently in the past once something has already been done.
Hating someone for what they are seems to imply they should’ve been different, which makes no sense. If someone is being an asshole, it’s not their fault - they can’t help themselves. I might not want to be around that person, but I don’t hate them. It’s like hating the rain or the darkness.