I've been wondering lately about what it is that makes us hate. Humans are capable of extraordinary kindness, but we seem to take to hatred with such relish. Some of us thrive on it, venting our hatred upon our fellow humans with such vigor. I'm not sure what prompted this train of thought; perhaps we've grown accustomed to it so much that it hardly seems to merit discussion. What is it about us that makes us hate? Why do we so easily give into it; how can we hate people we don't know and have never met? What makes people, as I saw not too long ago and is all too common, write comments on photographs of people they've not met and never will calling them vile names? How can someone write on a blog post that the writer deserves a beating, or worse, merely for expressing an opinion--what brings this vileness out of us?
Part of it must surely be our innate fear of the strange and the unknown. We do, many of us, fear what we do not know, the things we do not understand. So we vent that hatred onto gays and transgender individuals, people of different political leanings than us, people with other religious beliefs or none at all. As a species, we came of age in tightly-knit hunter-gatherer groups. Our very survival depended on being close to those in our social group, on fearing those outside of it who might not be trusted. The echo of this lingers with us today when we may automatically mistrust those unlike ourselves, until time or experience prove otherwise. But surely this long memory, this ancient human frailty, does not fully explain how and why we hate?
Fear explains much, but does not explain it all. I wonder if our hatred isn't in some way borne out of the dislike with which we regard ourselves. Those people who take giddy joy in the problems of celebrities, writers and politicians they do not know--surely they must hate themselves to express such hatred to someone they've never met? As a society, we take great pleasure in the downfall of powerful and influential people, delight far out of proportion to the effect that they have on our lives. Surely this must say something terrible about us all, or at least most of us?
I don't hate those I disagree with; they're simply not worth hating. The creationists, those politicians who think it good to deny people the opportunity to vote and who want to control the reproductive choices of women--these are people whose actions I find absolutely vile. But I don't hate them. In fact, I pity them. It must be a terrible life to live, in many ways, a life in which they feel so helpless in their own circumstances that they want to control the lives of others. They live lives of intellectual poverty, consumed by hatred and some level of rage, twisted by their own bigotry. Of course their actions can and should make sensible people angry, and we should do everything we can to stop them. But I bear them no personal ill will. To do anything more than pity them doesn't seem worth the effort.
Surely, in order to make society better, to ensure the happiness of all people, we should work to make the lives of others better, to express our kindness in ways that will ensure that our society improves. Even on our bad days, we should make the conscious choice to be kind, even if we don't feel it ourselves, for to vent our unhappiness onto others is to only ensure that a personal unhappiness becomes a public one, that the sadness we may feel ripples through to affect many others. We should work towards a society where we are actively concerned with the happiness and well-being of our fellows, not merely for our own survival. We are a rich society, but not necessarily a kind one. Our society works towards keeping people down, crushing and keeping the poor miserable and hopeless, keeping gay and lesbian (and transgender) members of society from realizing their potential happiness as full and equal citizens, demonizing atheists, Muslims and others whose religious beliefs we do not understand. Many of our rich hoard wealth beyond reason, denying others the right of basic survival; many of our politicians act solely in their own self-interest, slowly poisoning our republic in the process. But surely there must be a better way? Surely we can act upon the better angels of our nature, to act upon the kindness that I believe is just as much an innate part of being human as is our tendency to hate?
At this point, my thoughts drift back to what must surely be ranked as one of the most powerful moments in film, Charlie Chaplin's speech at the end of The Great Dictator. Mistaken for the dictator, the Jewish barber gives an impassioned speech about being kind, taking care of others, and not giving into hatred. It is worth linking below.
The Great Dictator (1940)
I believe that we can rise above our baser natures, that we can create a society based on human kindness. It starts with each of us. If we cannot rise above our own hatreds and fears as individuals, then we cannot do it as a society. We have to shake off our mistrust of those who are different from us, to give up our urge to control others, to recognize that there are many ways of living life rather than just the one we know and have chosen. Instead, our differences should be celebrated, the right of individuals to decide their own destiny universally acknowledged. I believe that this is possible, and that this is not merely yet another of humanity's many utopian fantasies. With education, with understanding, and with rational thinking, we can do this. Yes, there will always be those in our society who hate, who lie and want to control others for their own benefit. We can work to make them a rarity, if we want to. We can chose to love, to learn about each other, rather than fear and hate. This is the central fight that we must win if humanity is to survive into the distant future, the battle that lies at the heart of all struggles and conflicts.
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