People cling to hatred to postpone confronting underlying pain

Evidence

I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 152

Categorization

• APHORISMS: Baldwin’s insight reads as durable life-wisdom: hatred as anesthesia against pain, not simply malice.
• XREF: connects to: Nazi-era German society reacted to atrocity with numbed, anaesthetized emotion. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 260; People seek refuge in the very power that injures them — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2486; Escaping precariousness compels one to loathe reminders of shared mortal fragility. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 225