Explaining your hate for the other side

I recently read in a journal that hate is the product of love and aggression. You love your “in-group” and you have aggression toward your “out-group”.  This can be seen in sports between fans of rival teams. They are so committed to “their” team and want it to win that they develop a feeling of aggression or hate against anyone who would deprive “their” team of winning. I have seen people wish injuries on the other teams’ players, fight other fans, make death threats, and hurl all kinds of insults and vile profanity at another player simply because he played for another team (and heaven forbid, did well for that team). The part that really blows my mind is the person hurling all this hate ISN’T EVEN PLAYING THE GAME OR ON THE ACTUAL TEAM!

 Hatred can also come from misunderstanding, negative experiences, societal influence, loss of power, vulnerability, fear of the unfamiliar, and personal insecurities or biases. If you were wronged by someone, your natural tendency is to be cautious around this person. If they continue to torment you, that cautiousness moves toward hate, and understandably so. Speaking of which, if that person who torments us is unfortunately us, you can have self-hate. Or if a particular group becomes a threat, you can get systemic hate.

 Hate, hate, and more hate. Seems like a lot of hate out there. Yet if you were to ask someone if they are hateful, they almost assuredly will say no. Nobody wants to be seen as hateful and yet the media is riddled with examples of people hating each other. They seem to thrive on presenting us with every example of people exhibiting hate. What gives? Why does no one want to be hateful but the media show everyone to be hateful? Am I wrong on this?

Hate leads to anger, violent outbursts, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These all seem like very negative things. What purpose does hate serve in our lives then? Not sure? It helps to simplify things. Hate is simply your body protecting itself from something it fears more than the negative things we started this paragraph with. Nature makes a good example. Take a pride of lions, with many lionesses and one dominant male. The pride is constantly being attacked by hyenas, seeking to steal their food or their offspring. Time after time, the hyenas are there, making things miserable for the lions. If the lions just chase away the hyenas, the hyenas always come back. If the lions do nothing, the hyenas become bolder and bolder. Over time, every member of the pride will become more violent toward the hyenas, hoping to scare them, drive them away, or kill them. Now lions do not experience feelings exactly like we do but you could say they are becoming more and more angry, and their hatred of hyenas is growing by the day. And who could blame them? They need that hatred to drive them into a state where they are capable of killing the hyenas (no small task even for the larger lions). But their heightened hatred has made them bitter amongst other pride members, with more anxiety, infighting, and even sulking if an encounter goes poorly. Sound familiar?

Human beings constantly forget we are part of the animal kingdom and while we have developed a sense of reason the rest of the animal kingdom has not, we are still, at our core, animals. Hate is a byproduct of our desire to protect our “group” from another “group” that seeks to steal our resources. We feel love and pride for our group and fear the other group will come and take it away from us. That fear is compounded if the fear is perpetuated every day. We become conditioned to fear that other group as a matter of survival for ourselves and those we love. In this sense, hatred is actually a good and necessary thing.

What this means is that all of us are capable of hatred and no one should be surprised if they do in fact hate someone or some “group”. This is just your evolutionary nature kicking in. The key I need all of you to see is that you don’t start out with hatred. You must be conditioned to hate. It takes time and experience to push us from annoyance to dislike to hate. You didn’t arrive there overnight. What you need to do is sit back and ask yourself "When did this whole process start?" And what is driving it? You need to become aware of your path to hatred.

Returning to our lion pride, it would be fair to say that this pride hates hyenas. What is interesting is only a particular population or “group” of hyenas behave in this way. All hyenas do not. The lions don’t know that. And even if that information was made available, they could not do anything with it because they are incapable of reasoning. Human beings can. This is where we stand out from the other animals. This is where you are capable of more than your base feelings on hatred like this lion pride. Where more is expected. Your hatred would be restricted to these hyenas, not all hyenas because you are aware and understand not all hyenas act in this way.

There are some legitimate reasons for hatred. Conditioned because certain people or groups have continuously acted in a way that awakens those feelings in another. Take the Jews during WWII. Certainly understandable to detest Nazis. But they also need to understand that not all Germans were Nazis. Therefore, blanket hate for all Germans would be wrong and unreasonable. And yet we do it all the time. Why?

We lack awareness. I know this is such a simple message, but it is true. We need to wake ourselves up from our base feelings and tap into the very thing that makes us human, our ability to reason. Time to wake up to the fact that sports are just entertainment, players are just entertainers (and humans), and winning or losing a game is no reason to act like an animal. We need to hold certain individuals accountable for their actions and not lump them into some bigger group just because they are not “our group”. Don’t let your love for one make the other evil or your enemy. Release your hate and respect the rights of every group to exist on its own merits.

We also need to realize the media gains by dividing us up into groups and pitting us against each other. That the conditioning you think you are experiencing is just the media bombarding you with this message. Imagine the lions being told every night that the hyenas are attacking the pride yet no one in the pride remembers being attacked. Over enough time, they might learn to hate hyenas just like if they actually had been attacked. The feeling of hate is a powerful one (as it should be since it is the opposite of another powerful feeling: love). Don’t underestimate it. The media doesn’t.

The takeaway is this: the vast majority of us have some hate going on inside us. Rather than deny its existence, look back on when it started and how it developed over time. Maybe that hate is justifiable. Maybe it is a one-time thing and has been amplified by what you listen to/watch in the media. Maybe it is all in your head. No matter what conclusion you come to, what you do with that hate is everything. How you choose to act or let it own you (and bring negativity to your life) is up to you. You are not an animal. You do not need to give in to the feelings that come with it. You can transcend, realizing humans at this point in our development don’t have the same need for hate. Set aside what the media is showing you and look at your life and its experiences and ask yourself: “Do I still need this hate?” Please. For all our sakes.