I Hate That I Cannot Hate in a World of Hate
There's a reason I’ve addressed this concept in such a convoluted way: I’ve personally been struggling with trying to fully grasp the heft of such thoughts roaming in my head. The topic, however, is horrific enough for me to know it’s important to think about it and dangerous to ignore it. In short: the world is full of hatred and sooner or later we’re all exposed to it. How easy it is to be oblivious to hate if one is not its target or if one even profits off of it. Some people just want to see the world burn and - more often than not - such people possess great power and influence. I combat such things the only way I know how: participating in elections, contributing thoughts in debates, warning people about their own emerging patterns that could spiral later on, etc. And yet I am incapable of fighting them with their own weapons – because I don’t know how to hate.
It is easier to hate than it is to forgive. Allegedly. I’m not well-versed in either, to be honest. Hatred is something so visceral it relinquishes one’s self-control and common sense, so I steer clear of it when possible. Within casual dialogue I often state I “hate something” - it is just a more efficient way of showing people you’re passionate over something - and in most scenarios I don’t mean it literally. As a neurodivergent person, I may’ve grown accustomed to such expressions in order to kickstart/continue discussions, perhaps even to such an extent of internalized social masking that I deem it irreversible now. In truth, I’m not a hateful person by nature (easily irritated, often angry, but not hateful). Ever since childhood, when peers would bully me and I’d resent getting picked on, I preferred to keep my distance rather than actively counter-bully them. Growing up you learn that adults are merely giant children and their nature doesn’t change. Despite that, I believed that with age our energy simply depletes too fast to waste it on something as pointless as hate. Or so I thought.
There’s no escaping reality. Hatred is in the palm of your hand, nowadays; We are inevitably exposed to social media networks, which have, in recent years, been transformed into fields of polarization, intolerance and hatred, all under the pretext of free speech; those that make use of such speech frequently exploit their own religion as a tool that serves their contradictory agenda; and those in charge of such networks make profit from people’s reactions and engagement, be it passionate praise or hate. For such people, all engagement is good engagement, so they feel no restraint towards exploiting algorithms (e.g. big-nudging methods) and fueling polarization and extremism. Hateful rhetoric, however, is so ubiquitous now - be it a form of escapism or a red herring - that it’s become a subject of normalization for populists and other influencers alike, in particular towards people who find it easier to accept hatred than to confront their depressive existence. Such people become so disconnected from reality they start to perceive others and those with opposing beliefs as not human; it’s like they’re living in a power-fantasy, where they can allow themselves to treat different people’s lives as though they’re NPC-s (non-playable characters). Such train of thought I simply can’t follow, because I’ve never learned to do so. No one is born into hatred, it is taught.
Suppose someone says: “Fight fire with fire”. I’ll admit it sounds most tempting to live with a complete disregard for others and blindly spread hate instead of facing our own anxieties and faults, but I simply do care for other people. And I don’t just “hate” the fact I don’t know how to hate for my own sake, I’m concerned for my own future family, my friends and theirs. It occasionally feels terrible to have moral principles and standards (e.g. »Do to others as you would have them do to you«), since it would be so much easier and freeing to behave like an animal. If one stops treating people like people, they are no longer human to me. And despite all that I still wouldn’t grab and throw such people into camps and unleash all my frustrations upon them. Why? These are their methods, their deception, and I do not condone them. I find no credence among ideas of hatred and ignorance, because I do not want them to flourish even further.
I leave you with this: I often wonder what future awaits my descendants and is it even acceptable to have a child grow up in such a world, filled with hatred. But then I remember that many people throughout history survived and lived their lives precisely because they did not succumb to such a mental breakdown; because they chose to live in spite of such circumstances and to pass on that ethos of life; because the right path is not always the easiest one.
- Filip
