“After all, my dear, if you watch people carefully, you'll be surprised to find how like hate is to love.” Every once in awhile, more frequently if lucky, one gets to say things on stage that resonate beyond the story or the characters. Your friend here has the privilege to say those words, more or less directly to large groups of people everyday for the next few weeks.* The feeling of nudging folks’ minds with this essential wisdom is absolutely sublime; so let us see if the explication of the concept bears any fruit.
Hate and love are two sides of the same coin. The coin, by this blogger’s estimation, is passion. The things that people get the most heated over are the things that they feel passionate about, in both positive and negative lights. There is not much controversy in the concept, unless one believes in compartmentalized emotions that are not at all intertwined or drawing from the same spiritual font.
Hate and love are the forces which enable, and encourage, the human being to go beyond reason and pursue a course, for good or for ill, regardless of the perceived obstacles. This is why those who argue for more dispassionate political discourse might be on to something. These passions, as we all to well know, in both strains, lead us to actions and words which are not always advisable.
Shaw probably intends the meaning, in context, to be a lot less grand than it looks on its own. It serves as an extended "The lady doth protest too much" joke that runs through the romantic arc of the play. But we know the play was also trying to poke fun at American Presbyterianism.
What more embodies the idea that hate and love are in synchronization, than the Christian, particular the Protestant, God? There is no small irony in knowing infinite love from the Father whose own history has demonstrated that he is full of powerful wrath. The intention here is not to single out the followers of the Shepard, but to use the creed as an example of the multitude of ways that us brothers and sisters exist in a state of ambivalence.
The most powerful forces, objects, and people in our lives give license for our passion to rise in powerful manifestations of hate and love. Beliefs and desires seem to be the most common foundation for the extreme ends, but frivolity and trivia certainly have their fanatics. When the feelings of passion strike us, it is amusing to think, "Ah, but for a flip, I could be feeling the exact opposite." Or maybe this has all just been insufferable.
*It comes from the character Anthony Anderson in George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. Anderson, along with General Burgoyne, serve as mouthpieces for some of Shaw’s social observations and snippets of philosophy.
