I have encountered a claim that people love others for traits that they have   
   themselves, and I have also encountered a claim that people hate others for   
   traits in themselves that they reject. That is not always true.   
      
   People love others for traits that they value, and they hate others for traits   
   that they dislike, whether or not they themselves have these traits.   
      
   There are many people who love Jesus Christ. That does not mean that they are   
   all Jesus Christ. There are many people who love Gandhi and Mother Theresa.   
   That does not mean that they are all Gandhi and Mother Theresa. There are many   
   poor or powerless    
   people who love any number of wealthy or influential people. There are many   
   people who love kind and generous people whether or not they are themselves   
   kind or generous.   
      
   We see the exact same thing with hatred. Just about everyone hates Hitler and   
   Jeffrey Dahmer, but that does not mean that they are themselves Hitler or   
   Jeffrey Dahmer. There are many people who are hard-working who hate people who   
   are not hard-working.    
   There are many people who are compassionate who hate people who are not   
   compassionate. In none of these situations is hatred for the traits that one   
   has oneself.   
   The women I've loved had some things in common with me and some things   
   different from me. They were all, like me, interested in creative pursuits and   
   philosophically minded. However they were also different from me in many ways.   
   Michelle was kind, warm    
   and compassionate when at that time in my life I was quite mean-spirited.   
   Julia was joyful and optimistic when I am quite morose. Melanie was brave,   
   strong-minded and good with people, which I am not. And of course all of them   
   were beautiful, when I get    
   both positive and negative comments on my appearance. I loved the traits that   
   they had that I did not have as well as the traits that they had that I did.   
      
   With people whom I have hated, I had a few similarities to some but very few   
   to others. I hated them for traits that I disliked, whether or not I had these   
   traits. In most cases I didn't. I hated men who beat their wives and rape   
   their children, because    
   I do not like to see women beaten and children raped. I hated the Spanish   
   colonialists for what they did to the Incas, the Moores and the Aztecs. I   
   hated the people who burn the Amazonian rainforest because I do not like to   
   see precious treasures    
   destroyed. I hated the 1990s feminists because of their malice. And I hated   
   the gangsters and the Russian mafia because of their cruelty and   
   destructiveness. Of all these, probably the only ones with whom I have   
   anything in common at all are the    
   feminists – who, like me, were brainy people who had been unattractive in   
   high school and did not like their place in society.   
      
   There is however a way in which the proponents of this concept appear to have   
   a point. And that is: The more you focus on someone else - in love, hatred or   
   anything else - the more you leave yourself open to influence by that person.   
   As Nietzsche said, "   
   As you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you." Focus - not love   
   or hatred - appears to create a bridge between you and the next person. The   
   more you focus on Christ the more you become like Christ. The more you focus   
   on Hitler the more you    
   become like Hitler.   
      
   We see the latter with Ayn Rand. She fixated so much on Hitler and Stalin that   
   she started to act like them. She was calling people "lice." She decided that   
   anyone who had any disagreement with her philosophy, no matter how minor, was   
   evil. Whereas to    
   the extent that she focused on better people like Aristotle and Thomas   
   Jefferson, she produced genuinely valuable thought.   
      
   I have seen this work out in my own life as well. For a long time I was   
   focusing mainly on bad people, and I acquired all sorts of negative traits.   
   Whereas now that I focus more on good people, more people are telling me that   
   I am a good person.   
      
   So no, love and hatred are not about the traits that you have. They are about   
   the traits that you value or not value. However the more you focus on what you   
   love, the more you become like it, and the more you focus on what you hate,   
   the more you become    
   like it as well. The latter is a strong argument in favor of acquiring a   
   better focus. The mechanism for this however is not love or hatred. The   
   mechanism for this is focus.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)