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No one can remain critical or indifferent. Orwell continues, the horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. (Orwell 2014. 1.1.) According to Kierkegaard, hate is the panic of the lowbrow, panic and anxiety to be themselves. (Kierkegaard 1983 pp.71., SKS 11.) This is incredibly apt. They are desperate to be themselves. This forms the basis of their feeling of inferiority. They are capable of anything to disguise their despair and inferiority. Such people are incredibly limited in their perspectives but hold their heads high proudly when they see only like-minded people around themselves. Otherwise, they would have to face the fact that there is nothing “original” in them. They are failures. They lose their selves as easily as people lose umbrellas, since their selves mean nothing to them. They take no risks. And yet, precisely by not venturing it is so terribly easy to lose what would be hard to lose, however much one lost by risking, and in any case never this way, so easily, so completely, as if it were nothing at all—namely, oneself. (Ibid.p.73.) Or later: They use their capacities, amass money, carry on secular enterprises, calculate shrewdly, etc., perhaps make a name in history, but themselves they are not; spiritually speaking, they have no self, no
