Posted 1/11/2008

WHAT DO WE HATE THE MOST?

The word "hate" is used a lot.

I hate my teacher.

I hate homework.

I hate terrorists.

I hate taxes.

I hate broccoli.

Hate, hate, hate. There's a lot of it in the world.

But what is it that most of us hate? And what do we hate the most?

Whether we realize it or not, the answer is "change."

Especially when change upsets our security, our comfort zones. Especially when something represents a violent deviation from the norms of our expectations.

But curiously enough, what we hate the most tends to become the thing our children will love the most.

• When Elvis burst on the scene in 1955, famed TV critic and show host Ed Sullivan declared: "Elvis Presley will never appear on my show." But the younger generation fell in love with Elvis and his style of rock and roll. Soon Elvis had become such an economic powerhouse that a much-humbled Sullivan was forced to invite him onto the show. (But stone-faced Sullivan wouldn't let the cameras show Elvis below the waist – which only made Elvis's pelvis-swinging more popular than ever.)

• Jazz was reviled in its day, only to emerge among the world's young as a loved and honored new music form. Later came swing, pop, rock and roll, heavy metal, hiphop and rap.
  
  All were hated by adults and loved by the kids.

• Vincent van Gogh was the artist who pulled the art world out of the past and into a new movement called "impressionism." But every art critic and connoisseur in Paris considered his work "crude" and "unrefined." Because of such criticism, van Gogh never sold a single painting during his lifetime. Today, it's nearly impossible to buy a van Gogh work for under $10 million; the average person on the street lists "the impressionists" as their favorite artists.

• New York's Jackson Pollack single-handedly wrenched the capital of modern art away from Paris and transferred it to New York. But his style of dripping paint on canvas was reviled by critics, who called him "Jack the Dripper." But Jack was wont to attack the sensibilities of his critics in other ways as well. He created a 40-foot-long work on wood and auctioned it off, piece by piece, charging by the foot. He would saw off the part won by each bidder and hand it to him. The critics howled in pain. But the younger generation fell in love with his work, which has grown in stature (read: value) every year since his death.

• Thomas Edison, as a boy, was considered "addle-brained" because of his incredible ability to solve problems creatively (meaning far outside the standard procedures of the day). When he found a way to magnify candlelight by reflecting it from mirrors (long before he invented the light bulb), his idea allowed surgery to be performed at night ... and inspired countless other life-changing advances. Unlike van Gogh, Edison's inventions scored big during his lifetime and he became very rich and much admired.

• There was a time when all the pretty girls wanted to date (and marry) athletes, especially college football heroes. Skinny, four-eyed guys were called "grinds," "bookworms" and "nerds," and they were the ones who got girls from the bottom of the deck. Then along came a nerdy college dropout named Gates and the world changed. By the turn of the millennium, the pretty girls were all looking for dot-com cowboys instead of Saturday afternoon gridiron gods. (Except in the Southeast, where the dumb bunnies still hop toward football heroes.)



• When Gustave Eiffel created and built the Eiffel Tower for the International Exhibition of Paris in 1889, Parisians were outraged at his "monstrous tower of unfinished iron work." But the young Left-Bankers loved it and soon the tower became the single most powerful visual symbol of Paris, beating the Arc de Triomphe and The Louvre.

• When Daniel Burnham designed "The White City" for Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893, he sought an exceptional main exhibit which could rival the pulling power of Paris's Eiffel Tower. He and his board at first rejected a design submitted by a young Pittsburgh engineer. Finally, in 1892, and still looking for a stellar attraction, they reluctantly commissioned the young engineer to build his idea in Chicago.
  
  His name was George Ferris and he built a giant revolving wheel with 36 cars. Each car could carry 60 riders at one time. But when it was built, it looked so fragile that no one would ride it. Worried about the potential failure of their fair, Chicago's leading citizens came to the exhibit and rode the Ferris Wheel amid massive publicity. Overnight, the Ferris Wheel became the Exposition's star attraction. Today, there is a smaller Ferris Wheel in every amusement park in the world.

• The Vietnam War Memorial was a violent and wrenching deviation from the norm of memorial design. There was nothing traditionally glorious to admire. No general sitting on a horse or tank. No patriotic offering to the greedy gods of war. Instead, architect Maya Lin created "a black gash of shame" in the ground, according to one prominent war veteran. But the memorial's stark honesty has made it one of the most loved and respected locations in all of Washington DC.

There you have it.

When the older generation dumps on something new, just wait.

If you come up with a new and better way of doing things, just keep pushing. Those dragging their heels will become obsolete.

Countries and companies that fight progress always die. Look what happened to the Ming Dynasty. And the 20-plus other Chinese dynasties during the past 4,000 years.

The only certainties in life are death, taxes and change.

(click here for a printable version of this article)