Photo by Tom Jenz
Young Man and I Am The Storm
Young man wearing a shirt that reads "I Am The Storm"
The Middle East war has opened more chasms in America, Palestinians against Israelites, Jew haters marching across America’s college campuses, protests and counter-protests turned into yelling matches with neither side listening to the other.
This enmity lands on the heels of other divisive issues: Protesting Blacks, MAGA whites, Trump haters, the LGBTQ discrimination uprising, the abortion controversy, the anger at corporations and capitalism, the deep fracture between Democrats and Republicans and even the controversy between males and females, however the genders are defined these days.
There seems to be a civil war in the USA. The entrenched east coast media keeps telling us our country has never been more divided, red states vs blue states, Republicans vs Democrats, conservatives vs liberals, Woke vs Non-Woke, Guns vs Anti-Guns, pro-life vs pro-choice, corporations vs government, LGBTQ vs bigots, urban vs suburban, Israel vs Palestine, whites vs people of color, and President Trump vs the mainstream media.
The narratives are usually framed around violence, social engineering, racism, lawsuits and those laws that citizens on one side or the other choose not to obey. You might say if you kill enough people who don’t agree with you, then the rest of the flock will fall into formation.
Then, there is this kind of local hate, which took place in Milwaukee last year. From the news: Criminal charges have been filed against two people in connection to the death of a 5-year-old boy found dead inside a dumpster in Milwaukee. The two murderers, a man and a teenage boy, bound and gagged the child, put the child's body in a garbage bag and continued to beat him repeatedly, at times using a barbell and taking turns striking him with a golf club.
What is Hate?
Once upon a time, the white descendants of Europeans created a civilization that prided itself on human rights, their intellectual leader writing the immortal words, “All men are created equal.” But “equal” did not include women or Black slaves or tribal peoples with no written language and no means of becoming formally educated. Throughout our country’s history, the experiment called America has struggled with discord and equity.
Take Milwaukee as an example. The current systemic problem is that in some inner-city Milwaukee neighborhoods, the Black-dominated culture has evolved into danger zones of crime. Two percent of the residents, the criminals, do not want to change their illegal Third world economy and expect others to tolerate their criminal behavior. This attitude affects the other 98 percent of responsible Black citizens, and it alienates outsiders including Anglos, Latinos, Indians, Jews, and Asians. Most of them will not go near the inner city out of fear. But the media will go near inner city if there is a homicide or a notable crime. “If it bleeds, it leads” can usually attract an audience.
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Hate becomes the dividing line. Said Martin Luther King, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
So then, why then do so many humans love to hate?
Hatred is based on the perception of how one person sees the other. From The Psychology of Hatred: “Hate has a strong relationship with ourselves, with our personal history, and its effects on our personality, feelings, ideas, beliefs, and especially our identity. Certain adversity in our lives can trigger and intensify hatred: jealousy, failure, guilt and so on. Psychologists tell us that many murders happen because the perpetrators hate themselves.”
I also suspect we are drawn to hate because it can feel good to reinforce the tribal connections that, historically, were essential for our survival. Being cast out from a tribe could mean death. Therefore, our ancestors were motivated to maintain their tribal allegiances.
How Does Hate Happen?
No one is born with hate. It is a learned process, and it is easily taught, but we know hate has a deep connection with fear. We hate someone because we are afraid they will harm us, our loved ones, our religion, gender, country, even our political parties. We hate certain people, religions, political and social organizations because they perform deeds and cultural practices that offend our beliefs.
A 5th century Buddhist monk once said, or might have said, “Hatred is the poison we drink hoping the other person will die.”
The Ph.D. psychologist Mike Brooks, wrote, “The corporate media and social media feed us a constant stream of threats from those ‘others’ because they know we can't help ourselves but be drawn to it. As described in books like Hate, Inc., many media outlets on both the right and left profit from fomenting hate and so they continue to do so. The internet and social media also make it all too easy to access information that keeps us seething.’
Paradoxically, although hate might have some negativity associated with it, these negative feelings are offset by the positive feelings associated with increasing our tribal connections. This is why misery loves company. Hatred shared with members of our group is transformed from misery to righteous anger, which may make us feel right but doesn’t make us feel happy.
Why can’t ordinary Americans have civil discourse about our differences? Why can’t we get along despite our differences?
Is Life Fair?
But what about reality? What about the undisputed concept that life isn’t fair or even equal? Never has been. We the people are tribal by nature. Since homo sapiens first appeared, human beings have grouped themselves off by tribes. Similar to the wild pack animals. It’s about survival. If I protect members of my own tribe, then I too will survive. Is it hard to believe that after a few hundred thousand years of religious, tribal, and economic class wars, racism still remains? If you boil it down to each American, each family, each small group—is this what they really want? Deep down in our American hearts, don’t 99 percent of us really want to get along?
Will we ever get over these divisions? We could try forgiveness. The challenge is that forgiveness requires humility, a virtue in short supply.
