ASK DR. WRATH

"Is It OK to Hate Valentine's Day?"

Dear Dr. Wrath,

This might have something to do with the fact that I am masturbating to a Netscape pop-up ad with 2 Live Crew’s Dirty as They Want To Be blasting from my WinAmp while all of my friends are out shopping for foil-wrapped chocolates and gay little bears, but why do I fucking HATE Valentine’s Day? Is there something wrong with me?

B. Affleck
Hollywood, CA




Dear B. Affleck [snicker],

I’d say you’re accurately reflecting the true spirit of this revolting holiday. Popular notions of romantic love, while they have their place, depress the hell out of me up here in the Pure Land, and it’s not because Green Tara won’t return my text messages.

No, what sickens me about Valentine’s Day is the anemic, egocentric notion of “love” it portends to celebrate, which for all intents and purposes is just a muted form of hatred. Think about it: what brings a couple together? A hatred of being alone. And what is the usual result of two weepy saps turning to each other out of some sickening need for foot massages and every-other-night Blockbuster rentals? You got it: more hatred, a jealous clinging to each other which shuts the rest of the world out with gross I-Thou absolutism.

The indie rock band Rainer Maria expressed it best last year with the title track of their fourth album Long Knives Drawn:

i liked it best how
we took the whole world on
back to back
long knives drawn

Think of your womanizing alcoholic buddy who suddenly gets a girlfriend and stops showing up to Tuesday Golden Tee night—“I really like her” my ass. Think of the freak-dancing party girl who stops going out with her sorority sisters every Friday, “because his parents make us a dinner.”

And that raises another annoying point: old people. Is it love that keeps couples together for decades on end? Or is that they hate each other so much that they are willing to sit there and watch as their sworn enemy decays over the years?

This is not to say there is anything wrong with hatred, for unlike the tepid bleatings of 60s and 70s pop stars on the both sides of the Atlantic, it is HATE—not love—that makes the world go ‘round. And I’m not even just talking about war: hate—anger-fueled dissatisfaction with the ways thing are—is the only way your stupid little manifest universe pushes its pathetic way forward.

Think about every political movement since the dawn of time, every wave of avant garde art shocking the sensibilities of the mainstream, every lonely scientist holed up in a lab inventing the means of our transcendence and our doom—every one of them fueled by hate. The problem is that no one goes far enough into a pure hatred, for everyone—Hitler included—has had some form of a attachment to this world, some paltry “love” for some finite object that cannot let go of.

Pure hatred lets go of all objects, hating every imaginable thing throughout the Kosmos into pure non-existence. Pure hatred even lets go of the FEELING of hatred, of the need to destroy, maim, kill, and pollute. Pure hatred lets it all go and rests in pure oblivion, where there is no taste, touch, sight, smell, or sound (and fortunately for you, Mr. Affleck, this is something you can practice every single day. Just trade that engagement ring in for a sheepskin zafu and you’re halfway there).

But even pure, formless Hatred is not true Hatred, for even THAT can be an attachment. The true Hater is attached to nothing, and as such is free to return to the hated world, to hang out with despicable hateful people and eat their disgusting, hate-ridden food. Attached to nothing, he is free to embrace anything, especially that most hated of all things: actual Love.

Then, and only then, may he go shopping for foil-wrapped chocolates and gay little bears.






Burning alive with a question of cosmic curiosity? Ask DrWrath@the-manifest.org. All topics welcome, but don’t expect a “nice” answer. He is a deity of wrath, after all.