Stewing in the Cauldron of Hate:
Jump Out Before You Cook Yourself!
Joe Moncarz, July 2022
Hatred is an intense emotion which almost always leads to worse outcomes. It makes us miserable, it gives us ulcers, it makes our armpit hair fall out, it causes birds to collide with each other in mid-air, and it makes puppies explode. Exploding puppies, for Pete's sake! So let's take it seriously.
Have you ever hated entire countries or groups of peoples? You probably have, because you're human. It's a common heuristic – a mental shortcut. We all do this at some point. We generalize about entire populations, because it's easier than thinking. If you go on vacation to Cancun and you happened to get mugged (thanks to Bill Clinton and NAFTA), then you'll probably end up hating Mexico, Mexicans, tacos, tequila, Spring Break, cheap prostitutes, and “Montezuma's Revenge.” If you have a favorite sports team, then you are guaranteed to hate millions of the enemy fans. Fans of the Miami Dolphins will not only hate fans of the New England Patriots, but they'll also hate the entire city of Boston (and surrounding suburbs), and anything associated with it, like Boston Cream Pies and Sam Adams beer (a great combo, actually.) Even parents at their eight-year old's meaningless baseball game will yell the most obscene things at the opposing team, the opposing kids' parents, the opposing coaches, at the refs, and at the refs' bellybuttons.
Religious leaders are pros at fostering hatred. After all, they've been teaching for more than a thousand years that all “non-believers” are going to hell (which is near Boston, by the way). Crusades, anyone? And the “War on Terrorism” is just a Christian code for “War on Muslims”. When I was growing up, I was taught by Jewish teachers, rabbis, and the rabbis' accountants to look down on non-Jews. I was raised to hate Arabs, Muslims, and especially Palestinians (no matter what their religion.) Of course, I cured myself of that negativity. But most of my school friends and relatives and their families are still stuck in that asinine cycle of historical ignorance, hatred and blame.
The media often manipulates us to hate. In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when France was unwilling to support the invasion, the entire U.S. media manipulated hatred of France and all-things French. Many restaurants, including the congressional cafeteria on Capitol Hill, renamed French Fries to “Freedom Fries.” People boycotted French wine and cheese. “Bon appetit” became synonymous with “very itchy fungal infection.” Even doctors said it. As in, “I'm afraid you've got a case of bon appetit.” This is how ridiculously petty people can be.
At the more extreme end, the Rwandan Hutu government manipulated Hutu citizens to murder all their Tutsi neighbors, resulting in 900,000 dead in just one hundred days.
Currently, because of the U.S.'s current proxy war against Russia (using Ukraine as proxy) most Americans, Europeans, and New Zealanders have been manipulated to hate Russia and everything Russian, while Ukrainians are portrayed as the innocent victims, including the many thousands of U.S.-funded and trained Ukrainian neo-nazi soldiers who had already killed more than 14,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the last eight years. Oh, those poor, innocent neo-nazis!
The result of hatred is always violence. Religious leaders, governments, political leaders, and the spineless, servile media all use hatred to manipulate people to commit violence – or support violence - against others. They've been doing it for six thousand years.
Our hatred is almost always directed at the wrong target. Governments and religious leaders foment hatred in order to distract people from the real enemies – them! When leaders and the elite horde wealth and put millions into poverty and suffering and wage wars, they make sure to blame it on someone else: immigrants, Jews, Muslims, drug gangs, Russians, communists, stray cats, and so on. There's always someone to blame. Scapegoating is the oldest trick in the book. It's part of their divide-and-conquer strategy. Antisemitism has been perpetuated by leaders for nearly two thousand years. The most important thing for leaders to do is: make sure the people don't see who the real enemy is! The real enemy always is, and always has been, governments, corrupt religious leaders, and the elite. They're the ones who keep you in poverty, who send your children off to war, who destroy the environment, and are wiping life off the planet. Not “immigrants”. And not un-neutered cats making frightening noises at night.
But even on an inter-personal level, hate leads to violence. Ex-wives may hate their ex-husbands. Ex-boyfriends may hate their ex-girlfriends. Former friends may hate each other. Former business partners often hate each other. But this hate is first and foremost a form of self-harm. Hatred for others is essentially violence against the self – usually stemming from some deep unresolved issues that have nothing to do with the person being hated. This is how it works: a person who hates is full of negative energy. This negative energy results in a downward spiral of poor thinking, lack of emotional control, poor relationships, weakened friendships, weakened immunity, and poor health. Even your dog will avoid you. No one wants to be around a person so full of negativity. This is violence against the self. It will weaken and wreck every aspect of your life.
The result of this self-harm is that the violence is then directed outwards as well, because of frustration that all that hatred isn't improving anything. The person thinks, “Why isn't all this hatred making my life better? It's clearly that asshole's fault! Let's bash his head!” Now, “bash his head” doesn't necessarily mean physical violence. It can also include verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, bullying, gaslighting, character assassination, hiding all your underwear (which I found in the basement), and passive-aggressive behavior like “accidentally” burying your wallet in the backyard.
But no matter what form the violence takes, it will never make things better. The hatred will remain, because hatred is a reflection of the hater. I'd like to say that hatred is a choice. That it's a choice by each one of us. But like our tendency for heuristics, we're not so rational. There are so many social, environmental, and genetic factors which mold us into haters, and we're often blind to those influences (such as religious and political leaders, the media, and especially parents). If it's a choice, hatred is an easy one in today's world. It requires no thinking, no critical thought, no context, no empathy, and certainly no self-reflection. Hatred is an escape from self-reflection. It's projecting onto others what we are afraid to see in ourselves. And it's easy. But it's also futile and self-destructive.
Now, some of you might say that hatred has some positive uses. You're right. If a hyper-aggressive country (like the U.S.) invades your country (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, Cuba, Panama, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, Indonesia, Syria, the Philippines, and so on – it's a long list) then hatred for the invader is very understandable and a good motivation. But really, you're fighting out of love for your family and friends and to protect your home. Love is primary, hatred is secondary. Similarly, if you're being attacked by someone, or mugged, then you may possibly need to “hate” them to fight back effectively. But you don't know the attacker, so how can you really hate them? What drives fighting back is the desire not to get hurt, the desire to live, including living for your family and friends, and even protecting your family and friends. That's the primary reason why you fight back. If you're innocently walking through a swamp and an alligator attacks you, you fight back not because you hate the alligator, but because you want to live. If you're joyfully skipping through a forest and you accidentally fall on a sleeping bear and the bear attacks you, you fight back not because you hate the bear, but because you want to live.
Or consider hatred against institutions. Some people hate capitalism, or slavery, or patriarchy, or banks, or the prison-industrial complex, or corporations, or Fox News. Now in these cases, their hatred is all entirely justified. These institutions have caused massive and unending misery, suffering, destruction, and death. If you don't hate these institutions, then, as my old baseball coach used to say, “Your head must be stuck inside your ass, kid.” Heck, I hate the entire social arrangement called civilization. But these forms of hatred are actually a healthy sign. These hatreds are really just expressions of love – the love for life, empathy and compassion for others, love for biodiversity, love for sustainability, and a desire for a healthier, more harmonious world. Again, love is the primary emotion.
On an interpersonal level, hatred is often the result of perceived slights and wounded self-esteem. If someone insults you and you respond with hatred, that's more a sign of your own insecurity and low self-esteem. Similarly, the actual insult is a reflection of the insecurity of the insulter. The worst-case scenario is when you've got two highly insecure individuals, because that's a sure recipe for violence. That's a definition of pretty much all bar-room brawls. A bunch of fearful, insecure men. They'll find any idiotic reason to prove their manhood. “You're breathing my air!” “Your deodorant smells like coconut!” “I might be attracted to you!”
But come on, life is full of injury and insults. When kids play with their friends, at some point they will definitely get hurt. Always happens. They might cry a bit, but once they calm down, they continue playing (until they get hurt again, and then it repeats). Athletes get hurt routinely. They rest, recover, and get back to their sport. We get a job, we get fired, and then we look for another job. We have a girlfriend, we break up, and then we look for another girlfriend. We get married, we get divorced, and then we look for another person to marry. We root for the Dolphins, they lose, but the next week we still root for them. You see? Life is about resilience to life's pain. We recover and move on and live.
But some people don't recover and move on. Some people are stuck in their hatred. They re-live their perceived injuries over and over again. They tell themselves they're an innocent victim (like Ukraine), they refuse to self-reflect on their own behavior (killing 14,000 people in the Donbas) and they re-live their victimization over and over, feeding their hatred (“We need more weapons!”) They feed their negative energy with more negative energy, creating a negativity spiral. They sit there, stewing in the cauldron of hate. And just like some sci-fi horror movie monster, all that hatred grows by feeding off the rest of their body and soul. The end result is to lose their humanity – and turn into a big hairy ball of negativity. The result is often depression, loss of friends, possible loss of work, the lawnmower man stops cutting your grass, and your indoor plants all die. Or, in cases of countries and governments, it results in widespread war, death, and destruction.
What I'm fascinated by are those that resist hatred. When a couple breaks up but remain friends, that's what I like to see. When soldiers from opposing sides refuse to fight, and instead have a barbecue, make prank phone calls, and play soccer together, that's beautiful. When Dolphins fans and Patriots fans refuse to accept the final score and insist that “both teams won”, that's inspiring (and completely ignored by the NFL).
When Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis reconciled after the genocide, and people found ways to forgive, that should be celebrated. That was acting out of love for life, and knowing that there were two possible directions: towards more hatred, more darkness, and more violence – or towards life, peace, and a better future.
Why could some survivors of the Holocaust forgive the Nazis, while others could not? Why did some end up hating all things German, while others did not? Why did some embrace life afterwards, while others dwelled on their painful memories?
What are the personal qualities that allow someone to act out of love and not hate? This is really what it comes down to. Because we must make sure to avoid that Black Hole of Hate that sucks all life into it. We have to remind ourselves and remain vigilant against the forces of hatred.
So what are those personal qualities? They are what you'd expect: empathy, compassion, resilience, patience, humility, the ability for self-reflection, and inner strength. And, of course, a desire to live well and create a more positive life and future, for you, your kids, and for future generations.
However, the degree to which we develop these qualities is largely affected by both our parents and the society around us. Children learn by observing and imitating those around them, especially their parents. Parents can nurture our empathy and inner strength, or they can prevent it. Parents can role model humility, or they can role model arrogance. Parents can role model self-reflection, or they can role model blame and projection. Parents can role model love, or they can role model hate.
While parents are role modeling, the larger society is also molding children. The media is reinforcing competition, hyper-individualism, accumulating wealth, chasing high status, misogyny, and endless violence. The government (and all its institutions such as police, prisons, schools, the military) is also role modeling and teaching certain values. Governments in general are teaching greed, war, bullying, theft, dishonesty, violence, might makes right, backstabbing, never sticking to your word, subservience to the elite, destruction of the environment, and what can best be summed up as “fuck the world”. The corporate world is also role modeling similar pathological values, such as the total exploitation, domination, and control of other people, and the total exploitation of the natural world, and a “fuck the future” attitude. All our modern technology is an expression of total hatred for nature (yeah, solar panels and electric cars, too.) After all, every piece of modern tech is only possible through mining, drilling, fossil fuels, toxic chemicals, factory labor, and the wars needed to control resources. On top of that, all modern tech primarily exists, not to “make our lives better”, but to further strengthen the psychopathic trio of government, corporations, and the elite. In essence, the actions of the media, governments, corporations, and our beloved high-tech gadgets – in other words, all of civilization - reflect complete hatred for people, for nature, and for the planet. That's a lot of hatred. The always increasing use of fossil fuels, increasing temperatures, and catastrophic effects of Climate Change are a direct reflection of this pervasive and spreading hatred.
What I'm saying is that it takes monumental effort to avoid being turned into a hater of some sort. You have to be conscious and mindful, every minute of every day. You have to be lucky enough to have been born to parents who can role model love rather than hate. You can never let down your guard. Even so, you're still forced to drive a car and use a computer and get a job and participate in this culture of hatred. It's a never-ending challenge for us, and each day we must be vigilant.
If we feel hatred, we have to ask, from what does it stem? If it's from jealousy, envy, or some perceived personal insult, then we likely have to look in the mirror a bit closer. The heuristic we often follow is to blame and hate the other person and resist looking at our own actions. It's just easier to hate and blame others for all our problems. Like antisemitism, it solves nothing. If you hate LeBron James, is it because he has directly hurt you, or because you're just envious that he can dunk but you can't? (Okay, I admit it, that's my reason.) That kind of hatred is silly, pointless, and self-destructive. (Just jump higher! Jeez.)
On the other hand, if your hate stems from love for all the creatures of the Earth, and the love for people, and the desire to have a healthier and more just world, then that's okay. Hating capitalism and civilization means you're still human! We still need to be smart about what we do with that hate, and to channel it into positive and effective action.
There's an often-repeated story about the boiling frog experiments. Frog-hating scientists suffering from irregular bowel movements in the late nineteenth century conducted experiments in which they put frogs in a pot of water, then slowly brought the pot to a boil, and waited to see if the frogs would jump out. It's frequently said that frogs won't notice the gradual change and that they'll sit there and boil to death. This is a lie, of course. Frogs notice and they jump out. (Except for the frogs that had their brains removed by the genius German scientist Friedrich Goltz.)
Besides what it says about the deranged mentality of these scientists, the telling and re-telling of this untrue, moronic phenomenon is very insightful, because it reflects the behavior of humans, not frogs. It is humans projecting their own asinine behavior onto cute, little, slimy frogs. Humans are the ones sitting in the giant cauldron of hatred, as it continues to heat up with negativity. Humans are the ones stewing in their own self-destructive behavior. Endless war, slavery, poverty, and the destruction of life on the planet, are all proof. Humans are the ones cooking themselves on a global scale. Frogs don't do these things.
The job of each one of us, therefore, is to refuse to be cooked alive in society's hatred, and to jump out. It is our job to teach our kids to jump out. And maybe, just maybe, others will see us jumping out and follow us.
And then, for those of us who've made it out, we have to join together to knock the giant cauldron over, and end the cycle of hatred, once and for all.
Be like a frog. Jump!
Have you ever hated entire countries or groups of peoples? You probably have, because you're human. It's a common heuristic – a mental shortcut. We all do this at some point. We generalize about entire populations, because it's easier than thinking. If you go on vacation to Cancun and you happened to get mugged (thanks to Bill Clinton and NAFTA), then you'll probably end up hating Mexico, Mexicans, tacos, tequila, Spring Break, cheap prostitutes, and “Montezuma's Revenge.” If you have a favorite sports team, then you are guaranteed to hate millions of the enemy fans. Fans of the Miami Dolphins will not only hate fans of the New England Patriots, but they'll also hate the entire city of Boston (and surrounding suburbs), and anything associated with it, like Boston Cream Pies and Sam Adams beer (a great combo, actually.) Even parents at their eight-year old's meaningless baseball game will yell the most obscene things at the opposing team, the opposing kids' parents, the opposing coaches, at the refs, and at the refs' bellybuttons.
Religious leaders are pros at fostering hatred. After all, they've been teaching for more than a thousand years that all “non-believers” are going to hell (which is near Boston, by the way). Crusades, anyone? And the “War on Terrorism” is just a Christian code for “War on Muslims”. When I was growing up, I was taught by Jewish teachers, rabbis, and the rabbis' accountants to look down on non-Jews. I was raised to hate Arabs, Muslims, and especially Palestinians (no matter what their religion.) Of course, I cured myself of that negativity. But most of my school friends and relatives and their families are still stuck in that asinine cycle of historical ignorance, hatred and blame.
The media often manipulates us to hate. In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when France was unwilling to support the invasion, the entire U.S. media manipulated hatred of France and all-things French. Many restaurants, including the congressional cafeteria on Capitol Hill, renamed French Fries to “Freedom Fries.” People boycotted French wine and cheese. “Bon appetit” became synonymous with “very itchy fungal infection.” Even doctors said it. As in, “I'm afraid you've got a case of bon appetit.” This is how ridiculously petty people can be.
At the more extreme end, the Rwandan Hutu government manipulated Hutu citizens to murder all their Tutsi neighbors, resulting in 900,000 dead in just one hundred days.
Currently, because of the U.S.'s current proxy war against Russia (using Ukraine as proxy) most Americans, Europeans, and New Zealanders have been manipulated to hate Russia and everything Russian, while Ukrainians are portrayed as the innocent victims, including the many thousands of U.S.-funded and trained Ukrainian neo-nazi soldiers who had already killed more than 14,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the last eight years. Oh, those poor, innocent neo-nazis!
The result of hatred is always violence. Religious leaders, governments, political leaders, and the spineless, servile media all use hatred to manipulate people to commit violence – or support violence - against others. They've been doing it for six thousand years.
Our hatred is almost always directed at the wrong target. Governments and religious leaders foment hatred in order to distract people from the real enemies – them! When leaders and the elite horde wealth and put millions into poverty and suffering and wage wars, they make sure to blame it on someone else: immigrants, Jews, Muslims, drug gangs, Russians, communists, stray cats, and so on. There's always someone to blame. Scapegoating is the oldest trick in the book. It's part of their divide-and-conquer strategy. Antisemitism has been perpetuated by leaders for nearly two thousand years. The most important thing for leaders to do is: make sure the people don't see who the real enemy is! The real enemy always is, and always has been, governments, corrupt religious leaders, and the elite. They're the ones who keep you in poverty, who send your children off to war, who destroy the environment, and are wiping life off the planet. Not “immigrants”. And not un-neutered cats making frightening noises at night.
But even on an inter-personal level, hate leads to violence. Ex-wives may hate their ex-husbands. Ex-boyfriends may hate their ex-girlfriends. Former friends may hate each other. Former business partners often hate each other. But this hate is first and foremost a form of self-harm. Hatred for others is essentially violence against the self – usually stemming from some deep unresolved issues that have nothing to do with the person being hated. This is how it works: a person who hates is full of negative energy. This negative energy results in a downward spiral of poor thinking, lack of emotional control, poor relationships, weakened friendships, weakened immunity, and poor health. Even your dog will avoid you. No one wants to be around a person so full of negativity. This is violence against the self. It will weaken and wreck every aspect of your life.
The result of this self-harm is that the violence is then directed outwards as well, because of frustration that all that hatred isn't improving anything. The person thinks, “Why isn't all this hatred making my life better? It's clearly that asshole's fault! Let's bash his head!” Now, “bash his head” doesn't necessarily mean physical violence. It can also include verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, bullying, gaslighting, character assassination, hiding all your underwear (which I found in the basement), and passive-aggressive behavior like “accidentally” burying your wallet in the backyard.
But no matter what form the violence takes, it will never make things better. The hatred will remain, because hatred is a reflection of the hater. I'd like to say that hatred is a choice. That it's a choice by each one of us. But like our tendency for heuristics, we're not so rational. There are so many social, environmental, and genetic factors which mold us into haters, and we're often blind to those influences (such as religious and political leaders, the media, and especially parents). If it's a choice, hatred is an easy one in today's world. It requires no thinking, no critical thought, no context, no empathy, and certainly no self-reflection. Hatred is an escape from self-reflection. It's projecting onto others what we are afraid to see in ourselves. And it's easy. But it's also futile and self-destructive.
Now, some of you might say that hatred has some positive uses. You're right. If a hyper-aggressive country (like the U.S.) invades your country (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, Cuba, Panama, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, Indonesia, Syria, the Philippines, and so on – it's a long list) then hatred for the invader is very understandable and a good motivation. But really, you're fighting out of love for your family and friends and to protect your home. Love is primary, hatred is secondary. Similarly, if you're being attacked by someone, or mugged, then you may possibly need to “hate” them to fight back effectively. But you don't know the attacker, so how can you really hate them? What drives fighting back is the desire not to get hurt, the desire to live, including living for your family and friends, and even protecting your family and friends. That's the primary reason why you fight back. If you're innocently walking through a swamp and an alligator attacks you, you fight back not because you hate the alligator, but because you want to live. If you're joyfully skipping through a forest and you accidentally fall on a sleeping bear and the bear attacks you, you fight back not because you hate the bear, but because you want to live.
Or consider hatred against institutions. Some people hate capitalism, or slavery, or patriarchy, or banks, or the prison-industrial complex, or corporations, or Fox News. Now in these cases, their hatred is all entirely justified. These institutions have caused massive and unending misery, suffering, destruction, and death. If you don't hate these institutions, then, as my old baseball coach used to say, “Your head must be stuck inside your ass, kid.” Heck, I hate the entire social arrangement called civilization. But these forms of hatred are actually a healthy sign. These hatreds are really just expressions of love – the love for life, empathy and compassion for others, love for biodiversity, love for sustainability, and a desire for a healthier, more harmonious world. Again, love is the primary emotion.
On an interpersonal level, hatred is often the result of perceived slights and wounded self-esteem. If someone insults you and you respond with hatred, that's more a sign of your own insecurity and low self-esteem. Similarly, the actual insult is a reflection of the insecurity of the insulter. The worst-case scenario is when you've got two highly insecure individuals, because that's a sure recipe for violence. That's a definition of pretty much all bar-room brawls. A bunch of fearful, insecure men. They'll find any idiotic reason to prove their manhood. “You're breathing my air!” “Your deodorant smells like coconut!” “I might be attracted to you!”
But come on, life is full of injury and insults. When kids play with their friends, at some point they will definitely get hurt. Always happens. They might cry a bit, but once they calm down, they continue playing (until they get hurt again, and then it repeats). Athletes get hurt routinely. They rest, recover, and get back to their sport. We get a job, we get fired, and then we look for another job. We have a girlfriend, we break up, and then we look for another girlfriend. We get married, we get divorced, and then we look for another person to marry. We root for the Dolphins, they lose, but the next week we still root for them. You see? Life is about resilience to life's pain. We recover and move on and live.
But some people don't recover and move on. Some people are stuck in their hatred. They re-live their perceived injuries over and over again. They tell themselves they're an innocent victim (like Ukraine), they refuse to self-reflect on their own behavior (killing 14,000 people in the Donbas) and they re-live their victimization over and over, feeding their hatred (“We need more weapons!”) They feed their negative energy with more negative energy, creating a negativity spiral. They sit there, stewing in the cauldron of hate. And just like some sci-fi horror movie monster, all that hatred grows by feeding off the rest of their body and soul. The end result is to lose their humanity – and turn into a big hairy ball of negativity. The result is often depression, loss of friends, possible loss of work, the lawnmower man stops cutting your grass, and your indoor plants all die. Or, in cases of countries and governments, it results in widespread war, death, and destruction.
What I'm fascinated by are those that resist hatred. When a couple breaks up but remain friends, that's what I like to see. When soldiers from opposing sides refuse to fight, and instead have a barbecue, make prank phone calls, and play soccer together, that's beautiful. When Dolphins fans and Patriots fans refuse to accept the final score and insist that “both teams won”, that's inspiring (and completely ignored by the NFL).
When Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis reconciled after the genocide, and people found ways to forgive, that should be celebrated. That was acting out of love for life, and knowing that there were two possible directions: towards more hatred, more darkness, and more violence – or towards life, peace, and a better future.
Why could some survivors of the Holocaust forgive the Nazis, while others could not? Why did some end up hating all things German, while others did not? Why did some embrace life afterwards, while others dwelled on their painful memories?
What are the personal qualities that allow someone to act out of love and not hate? This is really what it comes down to. Because we must make sure to avoid that Black Hole of Hate that sucks all life into it. We have to remind ourselves and remain vigilant against the forces of hatred.
So what are those personal qualities? They are what you'd expect: empathy, compassion, resilience, patience, humility, the ability for self-reflection, and inner strength. And, of course, a desire to live well and create a more positive life and future, for you, your kids, and for future generations.
However, the degree to which we develop these qualities is largely affected by both our parents and the society around us. Children learn by observing and imitating those around them, especially their parents. Parents can nurture our empathy and inner strength, or they can prevent it. Parents can role model humility, or they can role model arrogance. Parents can role model self-reflection, or they can role model blame and projection. Parents can role model love, or they can role model hate.
While parents are role modeling, the larger society is also molding children. The media is reinforcing competition, hyper-individualism, accumulating wealth, chasing high status, misogyny, and endless violence. The government (and all its institutions such as police, prisons, schools, the military) is also role modeling and teaching certain values. Governments in general are teaching greed, war, bullying, theft, dishonesty, violence, might makes right, backstabbing, never sticking to your word, subservience to the elite, destruction of the environment, and what can best be summed up as “fuck the world”. The corporate world is also role modeling similar pathological values, such as the total exploitation, domination, and control of other people, and the total exploitation of the natural world, and a “fuck the future” attitude. All our modern technology is an expression of total hatred for nature (yeah, solar panels and electric cars, too.) After all, every piece of modern tech is only possible through mining, drilling, fossil fuels, toxic chemicals, factory labor, and the wars needed to control resources. On top of that, all modern tech primarily exists, not to “make our lives better”, but to further strengthen the psychopathic trio of government, corporations, and the elite. In essence, the actions of the media, governments, corporations, and our beloved high-tech gadgets – in other words, all of civilization - reflect complete hatred for people, for nature, and for the planet. That's a lot of hatred. The always increasing use of fossil fuels, increasing temperatures, and catastrophic effects of Climate Change are a direct reflection of this pervasive and spreading hatred.
What I'm saying is that it takes monumental effort to avoid being turned into a hater of some sort. You have to be conscious and mindful, every minute of every day. You have to be lucky enough to have been born to parents who can role model love rather than hate. You can never let down your guard. Even so, you're still forced to drive a car and use a computer and get a job and participate in this culture of hatred. It's a never-ending challenge for us, and each day we must be vigilant.
If we feel hatred, we have to ask, from what does it stem? If it's from jealousy, envy, or some perceived personal insult, then we likely have to look in the mirror a bit closer. The heuristic we often follow is to blame and hate the other person and resist looking at our own actions. It's just easier to hate and blame others for all our problems. Like antisemitism, it solves nothing. If you hate LeBron James, is it because he has directly hurt you, or because you're just envious that he can dunk but you can't? (Okay, I admit it, that's my reason.) That kind of hatred is silly, pointless, and self-destructive. (Just jump higher! Jeez.)
On the other hand, if your hate stems from love for all the creatures of the Earth, and the love for people, and the desire to have a healthier and more just world, then that's okay. Hating capitalism and civilization means you're still human! We still need to be smart about what we do with that hate, and to channel it into positive and effective action.
There's an often-repeated story about the boiling frog experiments. Frog-hating scientists suffering from irregular bowel movements in the late nineteenth century conducted experiments in which they put frogs in a pot of water, then slowly brought the pot to a boil, and waited to see if the frogs would jump out. It's frequently said that frogs won't notice the gradual change and that they'll sit there and boil to death. This is a lie, of course. Frogs notice and they jump out. (Except for the frogs that had their brains removed by the genius German scientist Friedrich Goltz.)
Besides what it says about the deranged mentality of these scientists, the telling and re-telling of this untrue, moronic phenomenon is very insightful, because it reflects the behavior of humans, not frogs. It is humans projecting their own asinine behavior onto cute, little, slimy frogs. Humans are the ones sitting in the giant cauldron of hatred, as it continues to heat up with negativity. Humans are the ones stewing in their own self-destructive behavior. Endless war, slavery, poverty, and the destruction of life on the planet, are all proof. Humans are the ones cooking themselves on a global scale. Frogs don't do these things.
The job of each one of us, therefore, is to refuse to be cooked alive in society's hatred, and to jump out. It is our job to teach our kids to jump out. And maybe, just maybe, others will see us jumping out and follow us.
And then, for those of us who've made it out, we have to join together to knock the giant cauldron over, and end the cycle of hatred, once and for all.
Be like a frog. Jump!