Plague of Strength

“Hate is as good as any to keep a man going. Better than most.”

— Sandor Clegane, Game of Thrones

The last day of his eighth grade year, Herschel Walker finally decided to step outside and join his classmates for recess.  This kid was so timid mice would brazenly walk up to him and piss on his shoes, and so fucking frightened of other people that his stammer had his teachers thinking he was retarded (although he went on to become class valedictorian in high school).  Herschel had never joined his classmates outside, but since it was the last day of eighth grade, fat, smelly, little Herschel decided that although he was the weird, possibly retarded fat kid, a game of kickball might be all he needed to right the ship and set the tone for a badass high school career.  He was right, but for all the wrong reasons- his lovable little middle school classmates proceeded to kick the everloving shit out of him, apparently with as little preamble as Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and less explication than Mel Gibson’s anti-semitic rants.  No matter what their reasoning, the result was epic- from that point onward in life, Herschel Walker was driven by one thing, and one thing only:
Hatred for his fellow man.

Driven by hate harder than a kid from Colorado in a trench coat filled with guns, Herschel spent the next summer doing thousands of pushups and situps a day, dragging sleds, sprinting and jogging, and racing a fucking freight train.  So great was his hatred that in one summer he went from being one of the worst athletes in his school to being one of the fastest kids in GA.  From there, he became  perhaps the single greatest high school running back of all time, racking up an unbelievable 3,162 yards in his senior year and probably injuring more players than any linebacker in the country.  In college, though he was one of the greatest running backs in NCAA history, Walker nearly terminated his career and joined the Marines because he hated people so much he wanted to make killing them his job.  Let that sink in- Herschel Walker was being hailed not just as the greatest collegiate running back, but the greatest college football player of all time, and he nearly quit that to slaughter random brown people with firearms because hurting people on a football field would not quench the fire of rage burning within his chest.

Had Herschel Walker joined the Marines, this would be the profile pic of every human being online in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Luckily for the denizens of whatever nation would have seen Walker’s wrath unleashed, he remained in football because the day he was to quit, he broke his trigger finger.  Thus, he went on to set the USFL on fire, then jobbed his way through the NFL a shell of his former self after averaging almost 400 carries a season for three seasons, capped off by an insane 2,411 yards on 438 carries in his third season.  After retiring from the NFL bitter as hell because he was never given his due in that league, Walker directed his hatred towards Russian Roulette and MMA, luckily winning at both (he is 2-0 in MMA with 2 wins by TKO, both at 48 years of age).  Still unsatisfied with breaking every human being he’s ever met in half, Walker is contemplating a return to the NFL, claiming that he’s still running a 4.3 40 yard dash, at 6’1″ and 220 lbs, which would make him incredibly competitive even at age 55.

RUN THROUGH EVERYTHING STANDING IN MY WAY; RUN THROUGH EVERYONE STANDING IN MY WAY – Lionheart

Herschel Walker isn’t the only man who has benefited from the power of hate- the concept of hate as a primary motivator driving one’s success is even a trope in television, print, and film.  As the author of the website TV Tropes explains, 

“Hate gives you power and fuel to move you. What you do with hate depends on who you are. Sometimes hate makes us change things because we are angry and see they don’t work like this. Sometimes it makes you murder someone and makes you the villain. Sometimes, when the villain gloats at your poor dead dog, he makes a mortal enemy. Then there are the times when you are just furious at how horrible the world is and thus, with The Power Of Hate, a hero is born (or a villain)” (TV Tropes).  

Interestingly, that trope describes Walker perfectly (had he not broken his trigger finger his hate might have driven him to commit unspeakable (or unspeakably awesome, depending on your perspective)) atrocities, thereby turning him into a villain.  No matter what the outcome, however, hatred is for heroes and villains a motivator that drives them harder than a godawful John Cusack movie, and keeps them going in spite of any and all setbacks, pitfalls, or calamities.

“Love is a fine cushion to rest upon, but only hate can make you a better person.” – Joe Abercrombie

With the current spate of internet, do-gooder social justice warriors relentlessly screeching about positivity and avoiding negative emotions, negative remarks, and hate, it’s perhaps shocking to have anyone espouse an emotion like hate.  Hate, after all, has been more or less criminalized in the Western World.  To hate is to commit crime, because if you hate, you must be a cis-gender, racist, misogynist, Trump-supporting emotional terrorist who’s fit for a straightjacket and a menace to society, and it’s a good reason for a judge to tack an extra five years onto a person’s sentence for getting into an ordinary barfight.  Well, hear this:  FUCK THAT SHIT.  Science shows that negative emotions are just as important as positive emotions, and in pessimistic people more important than positive emotions, and that there is nothing inherently wrong with hate- it can mean the difference between failure and success, between mediocrity and greatness, and it should never be ignored.

“We know things are bad — worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’
Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD!“

Yes, there are sanctimonious castratos who will loudly decry this as “alpha-male posturing”, or somesuch nonsense.  It is not.  Sure, it’s unkind to hate people, but in a world where the sanctimonious fucktards outnumber the likable humans about 1000 to 1, hate is entirely justified.  We’re wedged in between a populace of fat, sweaty, uneducated, diabetic, Christian retards on one hand and somewhat-educated neoliberal fascists on the other- there is literally nothing useful people can do other than hate everything and everyone around them, to scream “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” out their windows, to go to metal shows and beat the fucking brakes off people, to throw weights around and get jacked and read books and be even more awesome than we already are.  They’re going to hate us anyway- we stand for everything they stand against.  Luckily, we can turn their hate around and use it as fuel for our collective fire, allowing it to drive us further in our workouts, to push us deeper into the zone every set, and to rage against the dying of our society’s collective light.

“Tyrannical toward himself, he must be tyrannical toward others. All the gentle and enervating sentiments of kinship, love, friendship, gratitude, and even honor, must be suppressed in him and give place to the cold and single-minded passion for revolution…. Striving cold-bloodedly and indefatigably toward this end, he must be prepared to destroy himself and to destroy with his own hands everything that stands in the path of the revolution.” 
– Catechisms of the Revolutionary –Sergei Nechayev

According to social scientists, psychologists, and neurologists, negative emotions are key to well being, and that we should embrace and accept feelings of anger and hatred, because they help with problem solving, realistic predictions of the future, and provide a competitive advantage for those who can figure out how to harness their hate and rage to facefuck of all of life’s difficulties until they puke and pass out (Lilienfield, Rodriguez, Daskal).  Just think about your own life- when you were at your happiest, you were at your most complacent, weren’t you?  For myself, I know that when life is going easily and smoothly, my lifts are generally pretty lackluster and my life will come to ruin if I don’t find something or someone to rage against.  In addition, I’ll train less, pay less attention to my diet, and will eventually slow my training to a crawl… at least until I look in the mirror and hate myself enough to do something about it.  If you “Stay Negative” as a bunch of beatdown hardcore bands espouse, you actually set yourself up for success, because you’re predicting problems and formulating solutions before anything bad has actually occurred- you’re undermining your own complacency by expecting the worst and planning for it, rather than resting on your laurels with a smirk on your face and changing your profile pic on Facebook to a rainbow flag and some missive about how you champion the rights of the differently-abled, non-white, gender-neutral indigenous peoples of wherever, and it’s good that terrorist attacks on the white patriarchy occur to highlight the anger of the downtrodden and misused.  On top of that, when the shit does hit the fan you, unlike the social justice warriors who can only wring their hands and whine online, have the skill of turning failures into lessons, which is absolutely essential for crushing the opposition on the platform, the sports field, or in the boardroom.

“I can’t stand living, I can’t stand you, and I just can’t hate enough.” – Sheer Terror

If Instagram is any indication, none of the #Fitspo people will agree with any of this, but that’s because they’re fucking halfwits who would fuck up getting drunk at an open bar and then manage to go home unfucked after the orgy afterparty.  Anyone who needs to masturbate their inner child with daily admonitions against negative people and constant paeans to surrounding themselves with positivity, they’re damn near guaranteed to be saddies who surround themselves with the same.  Happy people need daily reminders to be happy just like dogs need daily reminders to wag their fucking tails- it’s petty, transparent posturing by weak people.  Moreover, if you’re in any way pessimistic, that shit does not help.  At all.  In fact, defensive pessimists are at their best under stress and in anticipation of a negative outcome, and 

“‘positive mood impairs the performance of defensive pessimists.’ When they’re in a good mood, they become complacent; they no longer have the anxiety that typically mobilizes their effort. If you want to sabotage defensive pessimists, just make them happy” (Grant).

As we all know, complacency is the enemy of greatness, and there is no kryptonite like happiness to a pessimist.

Just like happiness brings about the downfall of any devout pessimist, encouragement does the same.  In fact, pessimists do 29% worse when tested after receiving touchy-feely words of encouragement.  Instead of Tony Robbins, pessimists need is the best of all the Muppets, Statler and Waldorf, sitting up in the balcony talking shit and stoking our inner furnace of hate. We thrive on criticism and shit-talking, because it allows us to rail against and destroy our opposition- they are the enemy we require to thrive.  The same goes for anxiety- when optimists are anxious, they distract themselves, lowering themselves to using lame new-age self-help techniques to escape their reality.  Pessimists, like Tyler Durden in the chemical burn scene of Fight Club, live in and for reality- anxiety motivates us to succeed, so we ruminate on extreme outcomes to drive us to victory (Grant).  

I’m sure you have plenty of experiences in your life that reflect this, since my entire fucking life has been one giant effort to prove everyone wrong, whether their shit-talking was real or imagined.  And don’t pretend like you’ve never sort of fantasized that people were talking shit, or been paranoid that they were, when you weren’t even in the minds of the people you believed were talking shit.  In any event, a bit of shit talked is a gold mine for pessimists, and it drives us to glory.  Consider this tidbit from Olympic gold medalist in Olympic weightlifting, Yuri Vlasov, whose entire career was driven by pitting himself against the evil Americans and anyone who talked shit about him:

“I had a story that happened when I was competing in Nationals in Gorko. I was just starting competing and was complacent whether I would become first or second. Then I heard from my competitor’s coach talking about me: “this trash will never become a champion.” It tipped me over. I called for a huge weight on the next attempt. Without any hesitation I nailed it like an empty bar” (Winters).

I may have said a lot of things here that offended some of you, but nothing comes more from my heart than this: 
SHUT THE FUCK UP BITCH– Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza

As if reality hadn’t shit on the Fitspo pussies’ collective weaksauce parade enough, consider this:

“Studies show that positive fantasies discourage achievement—when people imagine losing weight or pursing a relationship with a crush, they’re less likely to follow through. Also, people perform worse when they say “I will” than when they ask themselves, “Will I?”

At the same time, we need pessimists to anticipate the worst and prepare us all for it. On average, research indicates that people who never worry have lower job performance than those who worry from time to time. Studies also show that when entrepreneurs are highly optimistic, their new ventures bring in less revenue and grow more slowly, and when CEOs are highly optimistic, they take on more risky debt and swing for the fences more often, putting their companies in jeopardy. (This may be why there are fewer optimistic CFOs than CEOs)” (Grant).

To top it all off, defensive pessimists aren’t failures at the outset- they’re highly successful.  They tend to have better health and higher incomes than the #Fitspo fucktards.  Scientists think this is because they better anticipate the shitstorms life throws your way, so they prepare for them and their health benefits as a result.  They are also in far better position to deal with the hard times they might face because they’ve anticipated, so they have far less acute stress in exchange for higher levels of chronic stress, off of which they thrive (Abrams).  We win because we hate and fear failure, and as a result we only lose, if at all, after we’ve won- it’s our cross to bear and happiness is tragically the bane of our competitive existence, but what the fuck… it gives us one more thing to fight.  

If all of that weren’t enough, history has shown us that some of the most brutal, epic, and insane badasses deliberately cultivated a mentality to harness that hatred in order to be victorious in battle.  This condition, known as somafera, or berserkergang among the Norse, was one wherein warriors would enter what could be considered an ecstatic religious state that made them superhuman.  In the Ynglinga Saga, these people were described as such:

“… his men went without mailcoats, and were as frantic as dogs or wolves; they bit their shields and were as strong as bears or boars; they slew men but neither fire nor iron could hurt them.  This is known as ‘running berserk’” (Skallagrimsson, Putting on the Wolf Skin).

These warrior cults deliberately cultivated this state by a variety of methods ranging from inflicting pain on themselves to ruminating on things that enraged them to pacing like wolves, and in some cases wore wolf skins and bear skins to try to adopt the mentality of the fiercest animals, and these things worked.  Whether it was the Dacian Wolf Warriors, the Viking Berserkers, the Chinese Boxers, or any of a ton of other warrior cults of this type, they were devoted to harnessing all of their rage and hate and utilizing that energy to destroy anything and everything in their path.  It was this energy that carved for them a name in history, and it for this reason they are remembered today.

So there you have it- hate makes you strong.  It fills you with adrenaline, which you then turn into victory (Seltzer).  All of the touchy-feely neo-liberal non-offensive drivel in the world can’t get your inner child’s dick hard like some good old fashioned hate.  It is the most primitive of all emotions, and it is the most powerful.  It confers invincibility, drives humanity to greater heights, and turns men into superhumans (or demons, depending on your perspective).  So stoke that inner fire, put on your wolf skin, hit the gym with an epic murder boner, and crush the opposition.  

I ain’t like you!
And I don’t want your love
And I don’t need your respect
I just can’t hate enough
But I got no tears or regrets.
-Blood for Blood

Sources:

Abrams, Lindsay.  A case for pessimism.  The Atlantic.  13 Mar 2013.  Web.  12 Jun 2017.  https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/a-case-for-pessimism/273950/

Daskal, Lolly.  The surprising power of negative thinking.  Inc.com.  1 Oct 2015.  Web.  14 Jun 2017.  https://www.inc.com/lolly-daskal/the-surprising-power-of-negative-thinking.html

Grant, Adam.  The positive power of negative thinking.  Huffington Post.  16 Oct 2013.  Web.  14 Jun 2017.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-grant/the-positive-power-of-neg_b_4107096.html

Lilienfield, Scott O.  Can Positive Thinking Be Negative?  Scientific American.  1 May 2011.  Web.  12 Jun 2017.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-positive-thinking-be-negative/

Oyler, Lauren.  The surprising benefits of hating everything.  Vice.  8 Sep 2016.  Web.  14 Jun 2017.  https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-surprising-benefits-of-hating-everything

Rodriguez, Tori.  Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being.  Scientific American.  1 May 2013.  Web.  12 Jun 2017.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/negative-emotions-key-well-being/

Sasaki J, Sakamoto S, Moriwaki A, Inoue K, Ugajin K.  The recognized benefits of negative thinking/affect in depression and anxiety: Developing a scale.  Japanese Psychological Research
2013, Volume 55, No. 3, 203–215.

Seltzer, Leon F.  The paradox of anger: strength or weakness?  Psychology Today.  29 Jun 2011.  Web.  12 Jun 2017.  https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201106/the-paradox-anger-strength-or-weakness

The power of hate.  TV Tropes.  Web.  12 Jun 2017.  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePowerOfHate

Winter, Gergor.  Yury Vlasov documentary “A 20000 Ton Barbell” and excerpts from his book “Justice of Strength.”  All Things Gym.  20 July 2014.  Web.  14 Jun 2017.  http://www.allthingsgym.com/yury-vlasov-documentary-20000-ton-barbell-excerpts-book-fairness-strength/

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