For the moment we'll side aside the question of whether it's preferable to be hated or to be forgotten, whether the maligned devil whose cries are heard suffers more than the ghost who endures its misery in silence. Consider that a different discussion for another time.
That having been said, we are most certainly hated. Consider the media's response to Minassian's attack and, far more significantly, the response of those who consume that media. We had an obviously mentally ill man who committed an act of mass murder who, though obviously unstable, left a single message as his legacy before he went out to kill. It was obviously disjointed, incoherent, laden with memes that he himself likely didn't fully understand. Yet, despite that, his rambling little farewell included the word "incel". And that word became the focus of every soul-searching article, every histrionic blog-post, every shrieking. The fact that Minassian was obviously a lunatic was quickly forgotten in favor of the fact he was supposedly an incel.
There is a visceral hatred of the unlovable, the unwanted and the ugly. Sickness is bad, health is good. Life is precious and ugliness, as the face of Death itself, is its eternal enemy. Civilized things that we pretend to be, human beings usually have to hide this primordial sentiment. Our race used to flock to public executions, eager to take pleasure in the things both Nature and God had turned their faces from. We rejoice in watching Man serve as Nature's avatar and, wielding the torch she's pressed into his hand, set fire to the thorns and weeds that pollute the Garden. Yet we're gentler now, better. We've transcended all of those nasty animal impulses, haven't we? We've restrained ourselves to the point where we once would've murdered the weak, we now take pride in feeding them. We've spun stories about inner beauty being infinitely more significant than the loveliness of the flesh, of a kind soul being more valuable than a pretty face.
The problem being is that we resent these fetters of fairy-dust and foxfire we've bound ourselves with, strain and struggle against them, praying for the opportunity to snap them and hate ugliness with all of the passion the living reserve for Death and all of his rotting, disgusting children.
Suddenly we have a fellow like Minassian kill, spill some blood, and the treaty between the angels and devils that war within the skull of every modern person is mercifully broken. An unlovable man has done something wicked because he is unlovable and thus the happy and healthy are granted license to express the hate societal convention has forced them to restrain for so very long. Discussions regarding Minassian himself have remained conspicuously absent, haven't they? No one has examined the murderer in any great depth, there's been no significant speculation about the individual himself because, let's all of us be honest with ourselves, the individual in this case is irrelevant. Minassian's victims became necessary casualties in the war between Darkness and Light because it allowed the children of the latter to express their hatred of the sons of the former in good conscience. The angels could once again feel themselves good while crushing the deformed heads of the damned beneath their heels. The screams of those suffering down in Dis could be magically redeemed, their howls of agony harmonized with the music sung in Paradise and, in the process, rendering them justified and, by virtue of that, beautiful.
Never believe for the briefest moment that the shrieks of abominations in torment aren't symphonies for the ears of the lovely.
