The Hate Man

There once was a man in my town who called himself the Hate Man. Like many other street people, he'd hang around the neighbourhood where university students lived, played, shopped and walked to classes. Standing on the corner in front of a bookstore, he shouted to no one in particular, and to all who could hear him "I HATE YOU!". He dressed in women's clothes from a Salvation Army store, long dresses, shawls, worn out sweaters, long gray beard, tennis shoes on his feet, mismatched striped socks, cheap jewelry jangling on his forearms. A character. People said he was a former university professor who had gone mad after taking one too many LSD trips. Another madman on city streets. I've no idea what happened to him, I haven't seen him in ages.

Just the other day I ran into a mention of him on some Internet forum. According to the poster, this was the philosophy of the Hate Man:

Never say anything good to anyone, never say I love you ever. When you hold something in, it builds more tension, and makes you more inclined to DO something good for someone--since actions speak louder than words.

However, if you hate someone, or have ill feelings toward them, then say it. When you express something, verbally it dilutes the feelings you had: catharsis.

I pass it along without a comment (not sure what it means.) Whenever I saw the Hate Man, observing his antics for a minute or two, I had the impression that he was really a comedian, a joker, a mocker of the Peace, Love and Understanding naive philosophies of the Aquarius Age, and that somewhere out of our sight he lived a perfectly boring middle class life. A part time Hate Man in a world gone full time mad.


P.S. The above was written before I found this reference.