Fear and hatred
Throughout history human beings have found endless excuses for hating and killing each other.
Especially vile are those despicable acts that are thoughtfully planned and undertaken, such as the Inquisition and the Holocaust.
But there are many forms of hatred that, while not extending to killing, can physically maim or ruin a life – such as false accusations, false planting of evidence, and malicious lying.
It can be born of jealousy, or a misplaced sense of honour. It can be caused by the misapprehension that loyalty should be unquestioned rather than earned.
Hateful words from a nation’s leader can encourage those citizens who are similarly inclined to echo hateful words and engage in hateful actions.
And such people now take full advantage of the Internet, throwing the right to freedom of speech into question with their despicable posts, misusing what should be a social tool, used respectfully, for the exchange of ideas and the promotion of human unity.
In his, The Frank Muir book, published in 1976, the writer Muir wrote … “It is difficult to arouse our present society to anger about anything”.
He adds … “disapproval is more usually expressed these days with wit than with malicious invective”.
He died in 1998, and it would be nice to think that he remained ignorant of the hatred to be found on social media these days.
Certainly there is nothing witty about the malicious invective posted daily.
Hatred can be all too easily fomented by the simple act of not minding one’s own business.
The bottom line is that hatred can be avoided by keeping one’s nose out of other people’s private lives – their beliefs, skin colour, language, preferences and opinions.
Hatred would not exist if human beings simply ignored each other’s differences. It should always be possible to find common ground – and respect for each other. Why, for some people, is that so difficult?
Regrettably there are too many people who, seeing people different from themselves, immediately feel hatred.
According to Malcolm Gladwell, the author of ‘Blink’ this response is automatic – it comes from our unconscious mind, not our subconscious.
It is purely reactionary, and involves what he calls “thin-slicing”.
Thin-slicing can be beneficial, but it can also be destructive.
Our unconscious learns from what we read, see on TV, and hear from others etcetera, which can easily be false – think fake news and conspiracy theories.
The fact is that the more widely we read and learn, the less likely we are to react using our unconscious mind – we will use our brains when we have learned to think for ourselves: when we have learned to weigh the pros and cons, the right from the wrong, the good from the bad.
By consciously thinking about things and not blindly accepting what we see, and hear, and read, we can train our unconscious to react rationally and logically.
A white supremacist in the US questioned the validity of the Black Lives Matter movement by asking, “what is so special about black lives”.
The man totally missed the point, because he had neither thought about the subject, nor had he bothered to try to understand it.
Because of his unthinking and unquestioning acceptance of whatever led his unconscious to settle on what it had been fed, his unconscious automatically translated Black Lives Matter into, “Black lives are more relevant than other lives”.
An excellent example of how people can react instinctively, and wrongly, with dislike and hatred.
To read The Hymn of Hate is to feel a deep revulsion. It is inconceivable that anybody could have sung this so-called hymn with pride.
Hate, as war, is tragic. What is equally tragic is that anyone could write these words…
“You we will hate with a lasting hate, we will never forego our hate”.
How much more humane was Martin Luther King Jr, who said … “hatred paralyses life; love releases it”.
Despite these days of xenophobia and popularism, is it too late for us all to consider what we hate, and why; to think it through and discard it. The loss of hatred would be no loss.
Sue Cauty