Fighting Hate Isn’t the Answer, it Just Perpetuates More Hate
Unity is the answer; The attitude of fighting only turns you into what you believe you are against
Mother Teresa has been a historical example of compassion, empathy and charity and one of my favorite stories of her is when someone invited her to an anti-war demonstration. As the story goes, she politely declined and basically said for them to let her know when they were going to have a demonstration that was pro-peace.
Everywhere we turn these days we see messages about fighting this and fighting that and especially ideas around fighting hate. Except that there’s one major problem with this… fighting is a hateful act and is an open statement that promotes the idea of violence. The idea of fighting hate and encouraging people to do it is essentially telling them to be exactly what they claim to be opposing. When we are told that we need to fight that automatically puts out the idea that there is an enemy, an adversary and we can easily fall into the same war-like mindset that has plagued humanity for centuries.
The statement, “fight hatred” is quite possibly the most contradictory and hypocritical statement I’ve ever heard. Fighting is an act of hatred. When we “fight hatred” we are choosing to become precisely what we claim to be against. The hypocrisy is astounding and lost on most.
Fighting hate is a hateful act
Think of it this way. When a building is burning the fire department doesn’t show up with a flame thrower but this is essentially what people are doing when they are “fighting hate.” You don’t end war by carpet bombing a city, you end war by signing peace treaties and shaking hands. Fighting hate is an act of hatred and you can’t end hatred by hating it. You end hatred by exercising compassion, empathy, understanding and respect. You fight hate by doing the right thing even when it’s hard. You don’t get rid of hate by adding more anger, aggression, violence and fighting. You only add to it.
The counter-balance
Consider the case of Daryl Davis, a true badass and a major trailblazer in every definition of the word. This black man has convinced over 200 Ku Klux Klansman including high-ranking ones to denounce their affiliation and hand over their Klansman robes. This dude has walked into the lion’s den and walked out the victor. He has done more to build bridges and create unity between groups with major division, single-handedly, than any other human being that I have ever heard of and I have to believe he’s done more, single-handedly, than any given group of “hate fighters” combined.
Daryl has treated these people like people even though they don’t treat him like a person. He is a man of respect, compassion and empathy and that is exactly why he’s made such a difference. He’s always taken the higher road and done the right thing to make the bigger difference.
What most people don’t realize is that the more that they talk about the existence of hatred the more they are reinforcing hatred and things like love are starving out. Empathy, compassion and understanding and unity are all on this list as well. These things are starving out because we’re only putting our energy into anger and so that’s precisely what grows and gains more strength.
All people talk about is hatred and so that’s, of course, what they see and that’s of course what gets the attention and the validation and is therefore perpetuated. When you’re constantly on the lookout for anger and hatred, that’s precisely what you’ll find. As the saying goes, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail and when people look at the world through the lenses of how much hatred there is, that’s exactly the only thing that they will see. Hateful and sociopathic people want the attention, they want to pull the strings of society and the more we try to fight them, the more we give them what they want.
This pseudo activism that we see online is only perpetuating hate. So-called online activism is useless and stupid. That’s like showing up at a structure fire and yelling and screaming at it. Most people say things online that they would never say to someone’s face. Hiding behind the safety of a screen is cowardice and sociopathic. Make a rule for yourself that you won’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. Practice some empathy and understanding even if you don’t feel it and your respect for yourself will naturally grow.
Support the people doing the right thing
Because I don’t watch the news and because I avoid social media, I was super late to the “stop Asian hate” party and my honest thought was… “what Asian hate?!” Never, in my life, once have ever known a person tell me that they hate Asian people. But sure enough, with fists in the air, more people are fighting more hatred with more hate without even stopping to ask the question, “Does this even work?” The anger and the hatred gains more strength and becomes out of hand, more fists go into the air and the problem only gets worse. People who fight hate aren’t even thinking rationally, they yell and scream mindlessly even when it’s clear that this doesn’t work.
When I heard about this Asia hate thing, what I immediately thought of was the Japanese man breaking down in tears at my father’s funeral. I didn’t cry at the funeral but I did when I saw this stoic man sobbing. I could tell that he needed a hug and when I put my arms around him he collapsed into giant tears and a warm embrace. My dad treated this man and his family like they were blood-related. I come from one of millions and millions of families that treats every other human like any other human. My parents deserve credit for that but they won’t get any because that’s not how we do things. We never focus on the positives. We never give a pat on the back to the people that are doing the right thing even though they vastly outnumber those that are doing bad things. If we did the opposite and put our energy into the positives and the loving people, the world would be an extremely different place.
Do you really want to stop Asian hate? Do you really? Then abandon your obsession with hate and give kudos and love to those that have never engaged in this behavior and never will. Stop finding the one person out of what, ten thousand(?) that doesn’t like Asian people and making it sound like it’s the rule. Do you really want to stop Asian hate? Then simply smile and start saying, “I love Asians.” That will do more for you and others than you can possibly know.
As a culture and as a society, we are far too focused on the negatives. We only talk about the bad things, the mistakes, the flaws and screw-ups. We’ve deteriorated into an angry bunch that always looks for the bad in others and ourselves instead of the good. We are too quick to exercise zero-tolerance policies towards each other and use that one mistake that we think that someone made to judge them as a whole. As a result, we are surrounded by anger, loathing, hostility and impunity. Not only towards other but also towards ourselves.
You can’t punish people into good, pro-social behavior. Punishments don’t improve morale and positive understanding between people. As a therapist, I tell this to parents all the time when their teen is struggling with their mental health. You can’t punish them into a positive, loving attitude and behavior. You don’t kick a dog until it behaves the way you want it to but this is essentially how we are now treating ourselves and each other.
My friends, this is not the answer. We can’t find the bad people and punish them if we want a world of unity and empathy. That’s not the answer. Many wise people have known this for ages, we need to listen to them.
Society has an interesting parallel to the biology of your body. Your body is comprised of trillions of cells that are working together to make an individual known as you. The body can fight itself and reject itself. As a mental health professional I see this week in and week out. The rejection of the self and how it results in all kinds of disease and illness. The individual that hates themselves, deeply and profoundly, will have disease and illness. Both mental and physical. As individual humans in society we are like individual cells in a body and by fighting each other, rejecting each other and harming each other, the body is in a state of disease.
You are one with those that you dislike whether you like it or not. While I understand that those that claim to be fighting hate often believe that they are doing something good, I believe that there’s a lot more going on. I believe that people hate and fight because they hate and fight themselves. Finding an enemy in another person is just a way of avoiding confronting the true enemy in the ego and personal trauma.
Unity
I’m not convinced that people want to fight hate. I am convinced that people are addicted to fear, anger and outrage. I am convinced that fear and anger sell. Like hotcakes. I am convinced that social media programs our emotions for one simple reason. It makes a shit ton of money. If you tell me that you want to end hatred I won’t believe you until you exercise love. I won’t believe you until you start giving kudos to the millions of people that don’t see skin color and instead only see fellow brothers and sisters.
What I really want to say though friends is that it starts with our individual responsibility. Take some personal ownership for your addiction to outrage, fear and control. Learn how to a have greater connection to yourself and the divinity within you. Become mentally and emotionally disciplined and find peace within first and your need to scream at people will dissolve. When we have more individual unity instead of internal division, we will seek the same thing with others.
I strongly reject the notion that unity has to do with standing together to fight enemies. Fighting is always a state of division and when you engage in the fight, you are being divisive. Unity is when everyone stands together as one and see each person as equally important and we find a way to get along with everyone. Yes. Everyone. We thrive when we see life as survival of the cooperative, not the fittest.
If you really want to do the right thing and be a rebel at the same time then choose to see the good in people even if you disagree with them. Find what you have in common with people. Develop your ability to experience empathy and let go of your need to fight. Do you really do the right thing? Favor peace, love and understanding. Do you really want to do the right thing? Then realize that you cannot harm anyone else without harming yourself. Giving up the fight against hatred is a true act of rebellion.
And if you really want to fuck some shit up, like seriously… then choose to love people. Be a loving person instead of a fighting one. Love them because they lost their way, love them because they are more like you than they are different and love them because that’s just what the world needs. Love them because someone once hit them when they needed to be nurtured and they chose a darker path. Full stop. There are no ‘buts’ or ‘ifs.’ You want to be loved for who you are so give that first.
We all need love and we all deserve it regardless of what we have done or haven’t done. So-called bad people won’t change if he hate them, it only pushes them further into the darkness of the soul. We all need love. And we deserve it. Simply because we are.
