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Saturday, April 17, 2010

Love & Hate. Drugs & Rebellion.


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Love & Hate.

I'm about one-third deep into Andre Agassi's book Open and I'm not only enjoying it, but it's making me think. Usually a good sign that a book has captivated me, but often an ominous sign for my life's philosophies.

You see, early on Andre confesses that he hates tennis.

Hates tennis.

People who follow tennis, or Andre, more closely than I may already know this. I didn't find it surprising exactly as much as, puzzling. I understand that love and hate are usually closer than ambivalence and either love or hate, but I have a hard time really understanding how Andre could hate tennis and play it professionally for 20 years.

But I am only one-third of the way through the book, so maybe more light will be shed.

Also, as the story and Andre's life is very compelling, props should be given to his ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer, as ghostwriters truly are the unsung heroes of the literary world, especially when it comes to famous people "writing" their autobiographies. Such is the way of the world nowadays, it seems. Anyway, Moehringer is doing an amazing job with Agassi of writing this story.

I must confess, the only thing I have experienced in my life even remotely close to Andre's tennis is music, since I've been singing and playing music at approximately the same age when Andre first started playing tennis. But unlike Andre, I didn't spend my childhood drilling and training music. Practice, yes. Lessons, yes. But I had no foreboding parental figure yelling at or threatening me. In that regard, I was lucky. As an aside, though, maybe I'd be more successful as a musician if I were more forcibly trained, a la Helfgott and Agassi. Though I'd probably also be more messed up. No offense to either man mentioned above. The closest thing I can think of to Andre's story in the music world is David Helfgott, the child-prodigy pianist depicted in 1996's Shine. Helfgott is talented and performing still as an adult, but visibly damaged from the abuse he suffered as a child. It's a testament to Agassi's strength, smarts, and resilience as a person that he's as kind and well-balanced as he is, considering the pseudo-torture he endured as an adolescent. Though it's also testament to the people he had in his life (possibly earth-bound angels as they're depicted in Open), in the form of his older brother, best friend and mother, who balanced out his father's aggression, rage and his tennis-training-camp's overall abuse.

But this is not meant to be a book review, though the last paragraph may skirt into such territory.

How do we, as humans, simultaneously love and hate so easily, so well? And why, when we feel both hate and love, are we prone to poor judgment and decision making?

The easy and most accessible answer is that they are both feelings of passion. Ambivalence is never described as white-hot, but hate and love can both be very hot indeed.

In recent years, scientists in London claim to have explained why love and hate are so similarly experienced in the human brain. Article from Independent.co.uk: Scientists prove it really is a thin line between love and hate

The same brain circuitry is involved in both extreme emotions – but hate retains a semblance of rationality

Love and hate are intimately linked within the human brain, according to a study that has discovered the biological basis for the two most intense emotions.

Scientists studying the physical nature of hate have found that some of the nervous circuits in the brain responsible for it are the same as those that are used during the feeling of romantic love – although love and hate appear to be polar opposites.

A study using a brain scanner to investigate the neural circuits that become active when people look at a photograph of someone they say they hate has found that the "hate circuit" shares something in common with the love circuit.

The findings could explain why both hate and romantic love can result in similar acts of extreme behaviour – both heroic and evil...
The study advertised for volunteers to take part in the study and 17 people were chosen who professed a deep hatred for one individual. Most chose an ex-lover or a competitor at work, although one woman expressed an intense hatred for a famous political figure.

Professor Zeki and John Romaya of the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology analysed the activity of the neural circuits in the brain that lit up when the volunteers were viewing photos of the hated person.

They found that the hate circuit includes parts of the brain called the putamen and the insula, found in the sub-cortex of the organ. The putamen is already known to be involved in the perception of contempt and disgust and may also be part of the motor system involved in movement and action.

"Significantly, the putamen and the insula are also both activated by romantic love. This is not surprising. The putamen could also be involved in the preparation of aggressive acts in a romantic context, as in situations when a rival presents a danger," Professor Zeki said.

"Previous studies have suggested that the insula may be involved in responses to distressing stimuli, and the viewing of both a loved and a hated face may constitute such a distressing signal."

One major difference between love and hate appears to be in the fact that large parts of the cerebral cortex – associated with judgement and reasoning – become de-activated during love, whereas only a small area is deactivated in hate.

"This may seem surprising since hate can also be an all-consuming passion like love. But whereas in romantic love, the lover is often less critical and judgemental regarding the loved person, it is more likely that in the context of hate the hater may want to exercise judgement in calculating moves to harm, injure or otherwise exact revenge," Professor Zeki said.

"Interestingly, the activity of some of these structures in response to a hated face is proportional in strength to the declared intensity of hate, thus allowing the subjective state of hate to be objectively quantified. This finding may have implications in criminal cases."


So every time I read about how Andre hates tennis, there is something in him that likely loves tennis as well. I wonder if maybe he hated how controlled his life was for the first 15 years of tennis playing, or even for the whole time he played tennis, because it seemed he really had no choice but to play tennis.

But what about people?

Have I hated the people I've loved? Have I loved the people I've hated? Years ago I gave a talk at a teenage spiritual retreat (it was of a Christian bent - Catholic to be precise. I never was officially Catholic but I participated in some of their teenage retreats. I think it was because the Catholic boys were cuter than the Protestant boys, but maybe they were just more devout and therefore prone to rebellion.) Anyway, I don't remember everything I said, but I do recall the shock on people's faces when I said I'd rather have someone hate me than be indifferent to me, because at least they were feeling something. I don't even remember the title of the talk, but I remember that. At 15, I already had a sense that feeling something, anything, intensely was better than feeling nothing at all.

Drugs & Rebellion.

I wonder about these child athletes. Child stars too. Are they doomed to hate life in whatever way rebels them the most to authority? Are they doomed (as we've seen time and again) to drug abuse and poor choices? Can we really blame them? Certainly fame or extreme pressure aren't necessary for children to turn into drug abusers or rebels, as many kids who have neither fame nor obvious pressure still turn to drugs and rebellion. But those kids seem to have neglect or desperation if they don't have pressure or fame.

Are we f*cking up our children? Did aboriginal children rebel? How about Native American children (pre-settlement by the pale-faces)? I suppose their options were limited. Rebellion was going off with another tribe or on a sojourn by your lonesome.

This opens a bigger can of worms. Is modernization spoiling the "future" which our children are often said to be? Apparently, we're in a financial recession. So what gets cut? What's been getting cut in education for years? Arts and physical fitness. The two things that kids need most are being cut. Don't get me wrong. Reading, writing, arithmetic and history are important, but they're not more important than arts and fitness.

What is this blog about?

I don't truly know for certain. Love & Hate? Drugs & Rebellion?

But I will leave you with this.

Love & Hate. Drugs & Rebellion. All may be inseparable parts of becoming who we are. But the first two are life long, so you better figure out how to love yourself and your passion with as much fire as you hate it at times. Not only are they closer than you think, but if you don't find the love, you could be swallowed by the fire.



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