Hatred

In light of a new ‘Hate Crimes’ law in Scotland, it seems timely to examine hatred itself. Hatred is, of course, a burning passion to eliminate a perceived threat to one’s desired way of life. It is an extreme form of anger. Where anger merely seeks to push a threat away, hatred seeks to eliminate even the possibility of return. But how does such a burning passion arise?

When it comes to high emotions, the usual way that they become ‘high’ is through constant re-triggering. When we notice a threat, it triggers a ‘fight or flight’ response within our bodies. The path we take then depends on a number of factors, foremost of which is a rational perception of how readily we can turn the threat aside, and ‘reflect’ whatever is heading our way. If we sense a strong probability of success, we fight. There is no anger or hate in that; it is merely an act of defence.

If we perceive that we would incur greater harm by attack than by flight, we flee – as any rational person would, before a large and menacing creature, armed with claws and teeth. Whatever threatens us might be emboldened by our flight, but better the chance of getting away than the ‘certainty’ of serious injury if we were to stay and fight. Again, the flight is merely defence.

If, however, we feel we have a ‘right’ not to be threatened – maybe a right to possess what we lose by fleeing – then we wish we could stand and fight; we wish we could repulse the attack. And then nuances in the rational process come into play. We might have the means to attack but feel constrained by social opinion. For instance, when a child is under threat of abuse, they will often feel that whilst they could fight back – or call for help – society won’t believe that their abuser had malign intent. The would-be abuser would certainly seek to reinforce that deduction. And the child might well have no practical means of ‘escape’.

Anger arises from many causes, but having one’s option to fight against a threat of ‘loss’ appear to be blocked is a pretty big one. The impulse to fight turns, and circles within us: rising at the thought of the loss but then meeting the barrier of incapacity to fight. And this circle of emotions can be triggered not just by the real event, but also by remembering that event, which opens the door to radicalisation.

One strong source of reminders about our perceived inability to fight can come just from the company we keep. If we are often amongst others who have had a similar experience, we will talk about our experience and find a similar frustration in others. We will – naturally – consider banding together as allies, against the common threat: like a group of farmers getting up courage to shoot whoever or whatever is killing or stealing their livestock. But if the source of threat seems to be protected by social opinion – perhaps in the form of law – sharing the group frustration can merely inflame it, through constant repetition of the feelings of frustrated capacity.

Imagine, for instance, conditions within the ‘refugee’ population of Gaza. Those who needed to travel into Israel for work – just to buy food and shelter – would be reminded constantly of their inability to hold the Israeli state to account for stealing their lands. And as they discussed those feelings with others, the idea of theft would grow, along with feelings of frustrated ability to act. Some would eventually think of ways to vent their frustration – leading to acts of revenge – but many would support those acts and even enable them.

Or imagine a community of people who are ‘solidly’ religious: not fanatics but certain that their religion offers them a way of life that avoids ‘sin’ and keeps their souls ‘clean’ – free from what they see as ‘pollution’. When anything that threatens to pollute the minds of their children or exploit the weak enters their community, they will want to act: to fight against the perceived threat. But if the intruder has a wider social opinion on its side, that community will share and reinforce its common view that “Somebody should act, even if it’s a crime.”

Hatred comes from long simmering and frequent reinforcement of the feelings of intrusion and loss – or merely threat of those things – coupled with perceived inability to act against the intruder. Those passions can then build up to the point where the first over-towers the second, resulting in the crystallisation of the idea that the only solution is to eliminate the intruder utterly, whatever the cost. It becomes better to die than to continue to suffer.

Perceiving this threat, the new law in Scotland (as with others elsewhere) seeks to outlaw the process of radicalisation by a community. It gives power to the police to arrest those who speak out within the community, from their own feelings of hatred, seeking to crystallise the same in others. But of course those who speak out may not yet hate. They may just be seeking allies. And to criminalise them without looking at whether they have a genuine grievance only creates more social pressure on others who feel aggrieved.

A nation can’t just outlaw feelings of oppression. It must examine the causes and seek a proper and just accommodation. And there are hard choices to be made. A country at large may tolerate, or even encourage something that a community within it does not wish to tolerate. The nation needs to find ways to increase tolerance, which inevitably means erosion of ‘rights’. Is it even sane to try to force tolerance? Will it not just reinforce the opposite?

Trans and gay people may – for instance – feel they have a ‘right’ to free expression of their nature. But others in a community may feel an equal ‘right’ to exclude what they see as perversion. How should a nation try to reconcile these conflicting ‘rights’? Should it side with the community, and force those who seek gender freedom to live elsewhere or hide their nature? Should it side with the LGBTQ individuals and try to force compassion upon the community? Neither is really sane. Neither is truly compassionate.

The only sane way to defuse feelings of oppression is to encourage the people concerned – on both ‘sides’ – to talk through their concerns in a non-reinforcing context. And to then address those concerns where there is an imbalance of social power. Failure to address concerns just increases feelings of futility.

It may seem odd to a set of farmers that they should give a few of their sheep to the wolves, in order to reduce the threat to the rest. Why should their ‘loss’ be institutionalised? But what is important is that they acknowledge the ‘rights’ of the wolves too. To acknowledge, they must understand; and to understand, they must both learn and experience. They must learn to feel the wolf – to see the world from the wolf’s point of view – and not just create a cardboard cutout model in their minds. They must feel the life and thus feel the balance.

And it’s the same with a community that rejects the ‘ungodly’, which often just means the unfamiliar. They must be helped to see the flow of ‘life’ in the things they have demonised in their minds, so that the demon departs and only life remains. It was, after all, what Jesus tried to teach.

The truth is that none of us has ‘rights’: we live and we accommodate other life. And it accommodates us. All life tries to change its environment to be safer and more comfortable, but in the end all that happens is that a balance is achieved. Higher life – such as humans – ‘can’ discard its preconceptions and ‘see’ the forces in play. And it ‘can’ then control its own impact, to be less selfish and more accommodating. Any ‘loss’ in that process isn’t a real loss, since there is nothing to ‘possess’ – only resources to share.

At a time when we in the Christian nations celebrate the re-birth of hope, shouldn’t we also consider the message behind that hope? The message that tolerance comes from opening ourselves to love and being willing to set aside our imaginary ‘rights’ while we listen to how those ‘rights’ – those boundaries on sharing – affect others? We don’t have to be Christian to understand that message, but we can’t really call ourselves Christian if we hear the message and then deny it.