The fastest things in the universe

[Dave]

My arm and hand heading for the radio off button or channel change at the first note of the signature tune of the world's longest running radio soap (called "The Archers - an everyday story of country folk").

[Tom62]

My cats when they hear me opening a tin of cat food,

[Pasta Chick]

My Malinois when given the cue to "tug" from a distance

[Asmodean]

Tachyons. Also, The Asmo's Evil Deeds™.

[Tank]

My wife when the phone rings. She goes from Higgs Boson to photon instantly!

[Asmodean]

The Asmo can match that acceleration with a match.

[No one]

Ignorance
Hate
Prejudice
Fear

[Asmodean]

Well, thoughts do move at or "just" below the speed of light, I assume. However,

Ignorance

What is the speed of ignorance..? I wouldn't say "fast" as it usually takes years to hone and a fulfilling lifetime in religion and/or politics to spread.

Hate

...Suffers from many of the same issues. Besides, it does often come in the metaphorically "cold" or slowly "simmering" package.

Prejudice

Yep. That one does move fast in the sense that one moment your date is a fine piece of ass and the next you discover that he/she is a mormon. Beyond that, I'd go so far as to call it near-stationary. For a vast number of people, their prejudice changes little throughout their lives.

Fear

...Gives men wings. (...Max Payne, yes? No? Not Max Payne..? Yes, yes I think it is)

No complaints about that particular one. Well, wildfire may be as fast, as the spreading of the first is sometimes compared to that of the second.

[Davin]

I see these terms always spoken of as being negative, I'd like to cast a different perspective on them.

Well, thoughts do move at or "just" below the speed of light, I assume. However,

Ignorance

What is the speed of ignorance..? I wouldn't say "fast" as it usually takes years to hone and a fulfilling lifetime in religion and/or politics to spread.

I think that ignorance is the default state. We all start knowing very little, and no matter how hard we work, will remain ignorant of almost everything. So I would say the ignorance has no speed at all, it just sits there. I think that everyone would feel better and learn better if they were comfortable with their own ignorance.

For hate, I think that depends on the person. For me, hate takes a lot to get up to, while I have seen many people go from 0 to hateful in less than a minute. In the light of casting this in a more useful and less negative light, hate can drive a person to action where they might otherwise just move along. I'm not saying that people should be going around hurting and killing each other, because hate does not have to lead to violence.

Prejudice is something that I think is learned, it's a thing that people use so that they don't have to spend time thinking about things. If they can put large groups of people into one ignore pile, then they save time by never trying to considering things from their perspective. I'm sure we all have our prejudices, and I don't think that them in themselves are fine, my prejudices would only become a problem if I refused to re-examine them when challenged.

Fear is a normal emotion but it shouldn't be felt in earnest too often. Having lived in a shitty part of town having almost no money and working all the time, it's not a good experience to always being worried that someone might rob you of what you can't live without or kill you because several people had recently been mugged in your area. And I didn't even have it as bad as many other people do. I've had a shaky junkie point a gun in my face, and I don;t think that feeling fear in that moment was a bad thing. So I don't think that fear in itself is a bad thing.

Hate, and fear, like all other emotions, are good as a warning light, but terrible for giving directions.

It's not these things in themselves that I think are bad, it gets bad when people let these things drive them to hurt others.