Hatred, loathing, maliciousness, spite,
resentment, cruelty, envy
Of all
the most ridiculous of human thoughts, “I hate you!” takes the cake.
Only mankind is capable of stooping this low. A cheetah speeding after her prey
does not hate; she is hungry. A wasp stinging an unwary human who has stepped
on its nest does not hate; it is protecting its life. A dog wringing an unalert
woodchuck by the neck does not hate; it is acting on its hunting instinct. Hate
is a distinctly human emotion, the epitome of frustration, of not getting
what one wants from someone else or from life itself. When I was young I heard
the following phrase, in reference to another young man, thankfully not to me: “I
don’t like the way you walk; I don’t like the way you talk; I don’t like
nothin’ about you. I hate you; I hate you!”
It was
total frustration that brought this on. The young man in question wasn’t acting
very pleasantly, to say the least, but the hater was simply freaked out and
couldn’t control himself, and gave way to a spluttering rage. Not a nice thing
to keep inside, but it’s an even worse thing to express to another human being,
or to witness.
I bet
you a 50 bucks that if a young child were never exposed to adult or peer
hatred, malice and cruelty, the emotion of hatred simply wouldn’t occur to the
kid. If a baby’s every desire is immediately satisfied up to the age of say 4
or 5, as the native American Indians used to do (crying babies would
have alerted “enemies” to their position, or scare away buffalo and other
game), there is no thwarting of desire and therefore no strong emotional
reactions, bottoming out into rage. When the young child comes of age, control
of the emotions would be taught, along with other teachings, and a much more
efficient fighter, a brave, would be produced with mind and emotions under
control, not raging furiously out of control and losing important survival
faculties like awareness, alertness, skill and technique. If you’re going to
kill, kill efficiently and skilfully; you can’t kill well when hating or in a full-blown
rage! Your survival is lessened if you lack alertness.
Well,
whether I win or lose the bet (impossible to test in any case), reason tells us
the following. No negative emotion is worth anything. Test it out and see. Oh
yes, if you want to justify and make excuses about being “human” and “normal”
just look on the web – there are thousands of justifications. Don’t get lost
there. None of them take into account that we are only half human to begin with,
we are fouled by society, and what we are interested in as reasonable adults striving
for #SelfAwareness is the search to become wholly human.
For that
we have to pose the following hate-oriented questions: Who is this “you” that
supposedly hates? Don’t you “hate” one moment, get over it somehow and then “love”
or at least “like” something soon afterwards? Don’t strong emotions come and go?
Is it you who produces them? Or are they generated from outside and
from others? Who is in control in “you”? Isn’t it that you experience
a thought, saying to yourself, “I hate this”, but often times it’s just an
exaggeration? Maybe it’s a strong dislike? OK, but if it is produced by circumstances,
it’s not really “you” hating, is it? By “you”, I mean deep down
inside, not just off the cuff. It is an idea you receive from outside. Then it
rings a hate bell inside your head and the hateful thought is
produced in you, then it is reinforced by emotions welling up, and it
increases into a “hateful reaction”, perhaps. You have subscribed to a experience
of hate, and since you can’t do anything about it, it promotes itself in you
and produces an emotional outburst.
Well, what
if you saw “hate” arising and didn’t subscribe to it? Can you do that?
Think of something “hateful”, if you like: a terrorist or killer of some kind,
of which unfortunately there are too many. Does hating a killer fix anything? Does
it bring his victims back to life? Are you going to make the world a better
place by hating a misguided, sub-human, spiteful person? An indoctrinated
person out of touch with reality? Sure, you will want “justice”, but today most
jurisprudence recognises “temporary insanity”. The trouble is they don’t go far
enough, because I say that anyone who kills intentionally is nuts, crazy,
insane, misguided, sick and is in dire need of a cure. Is killing the cure?
Angela Merkel, after the attempted coup in Turkey, says it isn’t. The EU prides
itself on having no death penalty. Unfortunately, we are all blind to
our bad sides, and the EU at the same time is the third largest arms
manufacturer in the world (increasing sales (um, to whom?) from US$18bn
in 2002 to US$25bn in 2010). The EU has its member states engage in wars and, to
put it bluntly but truthfully, the EU kills people* (but of course not through
the judicial system). But this eye-opener should be used on ourselves: we are
also often blind to our faults, our contradictions, our say-one-thing-and-do-another.
Let’s learn from it.
So hate
does not cure anything. It does the object of hatred no good. It does the hater
no good either. Hate enough and fly into a rage and you can get a heart attack
and die. So why do we insist on using a negative emotion to achieve anything
positive? I think it’s because we’re out of control. And thinking wrong. That’s
the only reason for hate. So the solution is get into control and think right.
That’s the cure. Oh, and by the way, don’t listen to Shirley Bassey’s “I Hate You Then I LoveYou” or other more modern versions too often!
Hatred
is a foul thought about someone else being wrong, nasty, belligerent, cruel. In
this world, the things we call “bad” aren’t going to go away by themselves. The
things we call “bad” are in us and in others. Remove them from “us”, ie, from
your mind, and you’re helping others and contributing to a better world. That’s
the only way it’s going to happen. Most hatred is because of a “wrong thought”.
I have a conviction about a religion, a policy, a group of people, a nation, a flag,
or any other symbol used by humans to classify things, and others have a
different conviction and kick up a fuss. So I hate them because they’re wrong,
bad, far away, or too near. And they hate me for the same or dissimilar
reasons. It’s all about labelling. The untrained, conditioned mind labels all
too quickly, and higher human nature flies out the window.
Don’t
let it happen to you. Recognise truth, keep your mind pure, realise that others
who hate can’t help it. They need better examples amongst us to be able to cure
themselves. Only you can be that example.
No comments:
Post a Comment