Maybe you'd like them more if you called them "macros" instead of "unhygienic macros" ;)
No, really, macros, being essentially compilers, give you enough power to build everything you'd ever want into Lisp, including "hygienic" macros, and even to build facilities to write hof-like things in less painful ways.
Maybe they're a pain in the ass if you don't "go meta", in the same way computers are a pain in the ass if you don't build OSes and compilers first.
