Keith Kahn-Harris is recommending hatred. Don't jump to conclusions. It's not what you might think from that bald opening statement of mine. The kind of hatred he recommends is not hatred of others but self-hatred, and that only in moderation. Still, it's hatred all the same. How Kahn-Harris gets there, to concluding that there's a 'kind of self-hatred that is worth reclaiming', is via the argument that the self-hatred is a corrective to self-love, that it keeps you on your toes to the fact that there are aspects of humanity properly to be hated - 'Humans lie, cheat, kill, steal and destroy' - and that a degree of self-hatred registers one's own 'implication in the hateful aspects of humanity':
When we - as we all do - act in a way that shows our complicity in cruel, selfish and destructive behaviour, we become worthy of self-hatred. This is an intense kind of self-criticism, in which we recognise the ways in which our private hatefulness is the bedrock of the greater hatefulness of humanity.
I think this is wrong-headed. In the first place, curbing any temptation towards excessive self-love no more requires self-hatred than not loving someone else requires you to hate them. What is needed in the former case is a degree of critical self-awareness, being attentive to one's own faults and weaknesses, curbing envy, extreme selfishness and other bad qualities. This isn't, or at any rate needn't be, the same thing as hating oneself. There are some good reasons against doing so. For, second, directed against a person, hatred generally involves wishing them ill, and there's reason, even being self-critical, not to wish yourself ill; you do better to wish yourself well not only in general but in the particular respect that would enable you to be better than your past or your potential faults. Third, in the same way, it may not be a good idea to treat these as so integrally a part of your self as to make that self worthy of hatred. By not hating yourself, even while regretting things you've done or been tempted to do, you express an intention, a resolution, a confidence, that you're potentially better than you have been, that your mistakes and misdemeanours are not ineradicably a part of your self, not who you unchangeably are.
Imagine teaching children self-hatred. I don't think so. (Thanks: E.)