Turning Hate into Love

A acquaintance of mine is in fear of all of the hate being spread in the world. It has come to the point that she fears telling anyone which religion she follows. She wants to know how to help everyone turn hate into love and acceptance. I thought about tweeting back, but I don’t think that amount of characters can do my response justice. 

Here we go. All of this hate and fear monger if is based on ignorance. Our education systems have trained children based on where they live, beliefs systems (even in public schools), and failed family systems. A failed system where some schools are not allowed to teach true science of climate change, evolution, and anthropology. A system that would avoid teaching sex education and healthy relationships. A system that lacks in teaching how to live and thrive in diverse society. Religions that want to inject those beliefs into schools to provide a skewed view of life where treating people different than you as “evil” instead of displaying love to everyone. Family units that don’t attempt to expose theirselves or children to cultures other than their own. These are huge contributors to the hate mongering. 

Second, the information delivery systems are no longer unbiased. These people are listening to a single source of information because it validates how they feel, not what is actually happening. Yellow journalism has never been as rampant as it is now. And with social media, “journalism” is often someone making sensational claims all for the purpose of getting more clicks or convincing people to do what they want instead of providing both sides to a story as it used to be. All media has to be instantaneous or they will be left behind. 

Third is fear. Founded or unfounded, people fear what they don’t understand (back to education). Everybody has fear. Some people (like me) try to understand the fear and calculate the different outcomes of the fear to try to avoid it. But only in extreme the-world-is-doomed scenarios, would I consider violence a solution. Love doesn’t always overcome fear. So how do you combat fear and turn it into love... or at least acceptance? Talking. Communicating. Not yelling, texting, messaging, tweeting or posting to some disconnected online forum, but instead asking questions to better understand the reason for the hate directly... person to person. Steer the questions to help the other person try to understand your viewpoint. When these types of conversations try to happen in the streets or at the protests, there are too many people to actually be heard...or listen. It is all defensive. 

Lastly, there are people who are genuinely mental. These folks require more of a chemical solution. They are so disassociated from reality that they feel that anyone disagreeing with them are the problem, and not them. Society has stigmatized all mental illness and if you identify someone who is a dangerous, narcissistic asshole, there isn’t much that can be done to cure them without that person understanding it is OK to seek help. Of course many can not afford it if they did. This is another case where education could help. 

I am sure that There are other ways to help, but this is just a few.