use it all
One of the first moral lessons I remember learning from a source that was not a direct relative came from The Return of the Jedi. This is also the first non-animated movie I can recall watching, so I’m sure it inhabits a larger portion of my brain than it strictly needs to. (Yes, my parents did show me the Star Wars movies out of order; yes, going back to watch A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back really helped clear some things up.)
In the final showdown, Darth Sidius essentially tries to goad Luke into breaking bad. “I can feel your anger,” he says. “I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey toward the Dark Side will be complete!”
Luke does take a swing here. He crosses blades with Vader and they fight pretty brutally until Vader is bested.
“Good,” Sidius croons. “Your hate has made you powerful.”
But in the end, Luke doesn’t deliver the killing blow. He chooses to let Vader live, rejecting anger and hatred — and, by extension, rejecting the Dark Side.
To a young child, the lesson here was obvious: Anger was a tool used only by bad people; hate was the weapon of evil.
This wasn’t a lesson I just learned from Star Wars. I remember constantly being scolded never to say “hate” as a kid, or being reminded that we could hate things, but not people. As you grow up, you learn that hate is ugly. It’s harmful. It is not acceptable to let hatred take residence in your heart. Your parents wouldn’t like that, God wouldn’t like that, Luke Skywalker wouldn’t like that, and so on.
But I am here to suggest … maybe a little hate is okay.
To be clear, I do think our nebulous concept of “love,” and all the related positive emotions, are better than the opposite. I think a love of nature is the best motivator to protect it, just like love of a certain kind of exercise is realistically the best motivator to keep doing it. But sometimes love just isn’t enough!
Let me give you some examples of times when love has not been a sufficient motivator for me to Do Good Things, and hate has helpfully filled in the gaps:
1. I love riding my bike. On a nice day, when I take my bike to the grocery store, I swear “What a Wonderful World” plays from unseen speakers over my head. But sometimes the weather is bad, or I am tired, and neither the love of biking nor the knowledge that it’s a better environmental choice than driving is enough to get me going. Enter: How Much I Fucking Hate Driving. I hate it so much. It’s stressful. It’s stinky. When I’m driving, everyone else on the road is my enemy; it’s Lauren vs. her fellow man, and nobody wins. When I remember this, when I let the hate flow through me like so much force lightning, I tend to get my ass on my bike.
2. Ordering things online is often a morally and environmentally bad choice, but it is also so very easy, so very convenient. I don’t particularly love going to Target or King Soopers or Ace Hardware or Walgreens, or sometimes all four of those in one day when I need things from each location. But I do particularly hate Jeff Bezos — well, all billionaires, really — and while of course I know that he will not miss the $35 I might wish to spend through his little website, pure spite will get me to withhold that $35 all the same. I’ll be damned if Jeffrey gets a cent more of my capital than he absolutely needs to. (This hatred has an added bonus of keeping my recycling bin from overflowing every week, a luxury none of my neighbors seems to share.)
3. I love the people in my life. I love my friends, my family, my toddler niece and my infant cousin. A bit more abstractly but in the same vein, I love the plants that help me breathe, the bees that pollinate the flowers pictured in this newsletter, and various wild animals I will never encounter in person but which the nature documentaries of my childhood conditioned me to root for. I think all of these are worth fighting for, but it’s not necessarily the love of living things, or concern for their future, that gets me writing letters to my reps or chanting with my fellow protesters in the streets. It’s anger, frustration, yes, even hatred for the people who threaten those things. That’s what lights a fire in the blood. That’s what gets us moving.
So this is me giving you permission. From time to time, it’s okay to let the hate swell in you. Take your weapon. Use your anger. Strike down your enemy. You don’t have to forsake love, nobody’s gonna kick you out of the Jedi order, your lightsaber won’t turn red. Just use whatever you have, because the world needs whatever you can give.
Bonus flowers
I found a lot of flowers in France, here are some more:
