The End of Empathy
What hate teaches us about fear, power, and belonging
Quick note: I’m co-producing a large-scale immersive experience that will go live in April. From now until then, Metaformative will be published biweekly.
I’ll be speaking on a panel next week alongside stellar folks at an event hosted by Reset focused on co-creating anti-hate spaces. This feels timely as division, polarization, intolerance, and all kinds of violence are increasingly felt and expressed both online and off.
As part of my research and reflection to prepare for the panel, I was curious about the origins of hate—how it’s learned, what catalyzes and fuels it, and how it might be transformed. The more I pulled on the thread, the more I realized that hate is more connected to care than we might think.
I wrote about care in a recent essay—how, if we want to build anything meaningful or impactful, we must tap into what people already care about or inspire them to care about things they can’t afford to ignore. It may feel counterintuitive to talk about hate and care in the same breath, but I want to make a case for why hate is rooted in what we care about and how we can address and transmute it individually and collectively.
What is hate?
Hate is an internal war struggling to find a home—somewhere to go, something or someone to blame. It’s not the absence of love but the potential of love that’s been suppressed, neglected, violated, or abandoned. Hate is where we may end up when we feel overly powerful or extremely powerless. A lonely place that’s fed by compounding resentment and rage. A place we all have the capacity to go to but one that’s rarely named because it’s buried in shame.
To hate is to be severed from a part of oneself. To be hated is to endure emotional violence. Suffering is the byproduct of both. Yet, paradoxically, hate can also connect us, bind us, and create a sense of belonging. To hate the other while belonging to a group is to share a collective identity. To be hated by outsiders when you belong to a group could become a badge of honour.
Hate doesn’t materialize overnight. It’s not a switch that flips the moment we feel threatened, humiliated, or powerless. It’s the byproduct of emotional erosion over time—deeply embedded fear that festers and grows, often beneath the surface, until it finds somewhere to go. Fear is an emotional response to a real or imagined threat. Hate is the culmination of fear directed toward an individual, group, entity, or system.
Hate is rooted in fear, but hate is also a cover-up for fear.
Fear is an emotional response to tangible and intangible threats, which means not all fear is equal. A real threat is one that puts our well-being and survival in danger, evoking an immediate visceral response. An imagined threat attacks our sense of self, identity, agency, and autonomy. How we respond to real and imagined threats determines how much hurt and harm we cause. Which is a conditional response based on who we are, where we come from, and who and what we have access to.
The more we can get away with harm, the more likely we are to cause it, especially when we feel threatened. The people and systems who enable, empower, protect and endorse us will come to our rescue when we get into trouble, and if we don’t exist within groups and systems that keep us accountable, our capacity to perpetuate harm increases exponentially as we gain more power and control. This is just as true in relationships and communities as it is in business and politics. The ultra-rich aren’t dangerous because they have money; they’re dangerous because they have access to resources that can, and often do, put them above the law. Replace ‘rich’ with ‘those who have a lot of followers/believers’, and you often get a similar result.
The problem is simple, but its implications are profound: equity cannot exist if some people have the power to bypass the consequences that others are bound by. As long as that imbalance remains, so will division. And where there is division—especially the kind shaped by systemic oppression and injustice—hate will always find room to grow.
What causes and fuels hate?
Division can lead to hate because it is often caused by one group having more systemic power than another, which, over time, causes the other side to push back. When you intimidate, ostracize, oppress, control, dehumanize, exploit, and disenfranchise people long enough, you will eventually get resistance, opposition, and retaliation. Hate is the result of patience and tolerance drying out. We may have an inherent need to belong, but we are more driven by survival—physical and beyond. Any individual or group whose safety, security, or sense of self is continuously threatened will eventually break.
Hate fuels division, and from that division emerges a common enemy. And very few things are as unifying and mobilizing as a common enemy.
Hate also feeds disproportionate responses to perceived threats. Those in power often leverage perceived threats to encourage their followers to act. Concentrated hate is as potent as collective joy.
Hate spreads the same way love spreads—through interactions, stories, ideologies, and shared experiences. With technology being the connector and amplifier of our time. we have countless platforms to express ourselves on, which means whatever is currently simmering in the cultural undercurrent and trending in dominant narratives—whether uplifting or destructive—can be magnified. This is why the topic of ‘free speech’ has been contentious over the past few years, especially with Elon’s takeover of Twitter and Trump’s second presidency. While censorship continues to be a problem, many people leverage their social platforms to voice their opinions. With algorithms tailored to reflect our preferences, beliefs, and desires, these expressed thoughts begin to shape our perceived reality.
When our perceived reality is dominated by a specific perspective or narrative, we start to experience a version of reality that may seem authentic but is actually only a sliver of truth. This is especially concerning because narratives are often distorted by misinformation. I’ve seen several AI-generated videos of Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy, and while they’re exaggerated and, in most cases, obviously fake, it’s still terrifying to know that we have access to mainstream tools to create life-like visuals that manipulate people’s perceptions.
Whether the agenda is to spread love or hate, our increasing difficulty in discerning what’s real from what’s generated compromises our ability to make informed decisions. Misinformation doesn’t just distort reality—it shapes it in ways that fracture collective trust and morality.
The more we see evidence and advocacy for what we want to believe, the more convinced we become. The more convinced we become, the more likely we are to strengthen our position and take action to protect and defend it. Hate thrives on our commitment to being right. Righteousness is fertile soil for hate. Hate is not a garden, but it grows in the same garden as flowers do. Tending to a garden requires care—planting, watering, pulling out the weeds. Hate does not exist in a silo separate from love, connection, and possibility. It’s intertwined in all that we are, all that we do, and all that we hope for—which is part of why it’s so evocative and insidious. Sometimes, it makes itself known, but often, it manifests as the slow and silent killer of empathy.
How do we transform hate?
As a species that thrives on belonging, we have to examine and interrogate the groups we belong to. I wrote about this in The Dynamic of Power and Belonging, which explored the complexities of collective ideologies and missions. Every group stands for something and, depending on its values and ethics, has the potential to exclude, harm, and fuel division—no matter how inclusive, equitable, or progressive it believes itself to be.
Nothing can be changed until it’s acknowledged. Hate, in particular, needs to be named in its seed stage and disrupted at its root. We know that individuals and groups rarely go from zero to hate. Hate is bred, it festers, and it’s reinforced. Therefore, when we notice and experience subtle instances of it—or its potential—we must name it, challenge it, and refuse to let it gain momentum.
The road to hate is marked by many thresholds. In relationships, it can start with comparison, envy, and resentment. In groups, it can take the form of oppression, neglect, and exclusion. Systemically, it manifests through violations of basic human rights, a persistent lack of safety and security, exploitation, and cultural erasure. These wounds deepen when they’re left untended, turning frustration into rage, division into dehumanization, and fear into radicalization, violence, war, and genocide.
If love is a carefully woven braid—bound with intention, patience, and trust—then hate is a knotted mess, chaotic and overwhelming but not impossible to unravel. The same qualities that weave something strong and enduring are the ones needed to undo what's been twisted and tangled. It may seem counterintuitive, but the presence of one reveals the potential for the other. What holds things together can also be what frees them—if we are willing to do the work.
The work is the willingness to listen and learn.
The work is staying open to the possibility that we don’t have the whole truth.
The work is building bridges—finding the ‘us’ in ‘them.’
The path to cultivating love and dismantling hate is the same: stay curious.
To confront hate is to confront our own fears and our own capacity for hate. It’s easy to engage with those who share our values and worldviews. But making space for people who don’t can feel like walking into an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. Hate, like mould in a dark room, thrives in neglect. So, we must be brave and willing to enter and expose what’s quietly forming in the shadows. To change the conditions in which it grows. To tend to it the same way we would tend to a child or a broken heart.
We often think of hate as the opposite of care—the opposite of love—but hate is inextricably connected to care. It emerges from distorted care—wounded care, forgotten care, care that’s been rejected, dismissed, or turned inward until it calcifies into something sharp. Judgement, charged words, a weapon—its manifestation lives on a spectrum of pain and power. Whether it’s internalized or acted upon, it changes us and alters how we perceive ourselves, others, and the world around us.
The end of empathy is the beginning of hate. Empathy is what keeps us tethered—to ourselves and to each other. It asks us to share our stories—our hopes, fears, beliefs, and our wildest theories. It asks us to stay open while drawing sacred circles around who and what needs protection. Empathy requires flexibility. It challenges us to acknowledge that all of us are capable of compassion and cruelty. But just because we have the capacity for hate doesn’t mean it’s inevitable. What is inevitable is evolution. How we evolve—what we become aware of, how deeply we understand ourselves and one another—shapes how we make sense of the past, meet the present, and design futures.
If we want to transmute hate, we have to begin where it begins: with what we care about, with who we care about, and with how willing we are to care even when it’s uncomfortable, inconvenient, or confronting. We need care that is not performative, conditional, or reserved for those who agree with us. We need care that calls us in, keeps us accountable, and invites us to consider the bigger picture. I’m not advocating for exposing ourselves to hate, violence, or sharing space with those who have no compassion or consideration for us. I’m advocating for an approach that centres the root cause of division and works actively and proactively to transform it at its core.
If hate is born from care that’s been left to take root in the emotional pain we avoid, then healing begins with remembering how to care—not just for ourselves or those who are easy to love, but for those who challenge our narratives and attachments.
That is the real work.