The Battle Against Hate (BAH!)
Post #15 in a series examining Understanding, its components & importance
“To fight the unbeatable foe… This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless…”
- Joe Darion, lyricist who penned ”The Impossible Dream”
Are there valid reasons to wage war? According to Just War theory, self-defense may be the only one. If there are people or regimes whose aim is to control both you and those you love, and whose practice is to destroy anybody who dares to stop them, then warfare to stop them is justified. But war often begets more war. It is our contention that to prevent unending war, a Just War must include a Battle Against Hate. The outcome of that battle will determine who gets to own the warrior’s (and humanity’s) soul.
In pursuing this battle, the warrior will probably follow the Just War concept called “proportional response.” In it those who hate by destroying others in direct assaults and via terrorist tactics, can be destroyed in similar fashion. But fighting hate does not always have to involve lethal means. For hate-filled warriors who are not yet poised to kill, the most appropriate and proportional weapon against them may be the weapon called understanding. And that is one of the reasons for this series of posts… to offer a systematic description of what understanding is so it can be used as a stealth, non-lethal, life-changing weapon.
Those who trash the quest for understanding, like the arch-conservative followers of Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, know that hate is the easiest way to make people hot. Hot is intense. When you feel it, you feel alive, so alive that hate can become addicting. And that is also why those who dish out hate regularly, people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Osama bin Laden are no better than drug dealers. Those who need to listen to such hate-mongers, may want to question what exactly they are feeling when they do. If their feeling includes fantasies of destroying all who are the subject of their high-priests’ ridicule, then they should recognize their addiction and look for a way out.
By the way all are susceptible to hate, not just the right. There are hate-mongers on the left, hate-filled independents, male haters, female haters, religious haters… probably people who hate this blog (which is okay). Hate can strike anyone without prejudice. What feeds hate is anger and fear. Anger comes from being in a situation that you are not prepared for (either an environment that your guiding models do not do well in, or somebody trying to undermine the models you hold dear)… and it is fear of what might happen next that keeps you there. That is why those who promote hate never ask you to evaluate your own role and are always warning you about a future that will be worse for you… unless, that is, you maintain your anger, follow them and grow in hate.
Why is understanding an antidote to hate? Because human-borne hate derives from broken understanding. It results from a view, a model that you may be stuck on and that just doesn’t seem to be providing the results you need anymore. By seeking understanding, the person who is stuck in hate has a way to get unstuck from his previous view, look at it objectively, and then decide what to do about it. Understanding increases control… and happiness. It melts away hate.
So you see, the Battle Against Hate does not involve “feeling sorry for those poor terrorists” or even any ex, though that is what the purveyors of hate want people to believe. Understanding is not the sappy feeling from bleeding hearts. It is the risky attempt to open up the minds of your enemies (and at times yourself), to join them in an exploration of how they derived the world view they have, and then providing a way to develop a new mindset that is respectful of that history, more appropriate for the new environment they find themselves in, maybe acknowledges and satisfies their current needs in better ways, and provides a mechanism to achieve personal, social and spiritual growth without having to fear the future or their leaders’ ire anymore. It is not an easy battle. But it is a necessary one if we ever want to stop all this fear and fighting.
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Tags: battle against hate, Understanding, war against hate
Understanding | Stan Kaczmarek | 24 February 2010 |
