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Kierkegaard also considers being part of the masses one of the most hateful ways of being, which is also represented by his lines about crowds and people of the crowds: The people who do not bore themselves are generally those who are busy in the world in one way or another, but that is just why they are the most boring, the most insufferable, of all. This species of animal life, surely, is not the fruit of man’s desire and woman’s pleasure. Like all lower forms of life, it is distinguished by a high degree of fertility and multiplies beyond belief. Inconceivable, too, that nature should need nine months to produce creatures like these which one would rather suppose could be produced by the score. (Kierkegaard 2004. pp.589-590.) People of the crowds do not like to encounter those who differ from themselves. For them, the escape from this is a given: to hate someone or something. For example, if instead of facing my own identity I despise myself. I repeat, it is foolish to limit this to intercultural relations only. For men this other can be women (let us think of Otto Weininger) (Weininger 1997. p.5), for the rich the poor—and the other way around, for the small the great, for darkhaired people blonds, etc. All that matters is that they be different. Whatever we do, it is as though antipathy is in our genes. Maybe this started with the Cro Magnons. For them it was in the service of survival, at least from the perspective of a sympathetic observer. Because antipathy was not all that served survival. Communication and cooperation were at least as important for it, or else—I say again—the mammoth would have been the survivor. We may not shut our eyes to the knowledge that this antipathy is also within us. Cooperation often only works within a group. They who are different are the others, who embody a different culture in addition to a different skin color. It is childish to believe that we can settle the matter by simply declaring “Let’s love everyone!” “Das Man’ is not necessarily external.
