Why do we hate people?

Man has been known to hate people, books, foods, castes, races, religions and even stations. Almost anything under the sky has the potential to create hatred in a human being. It is important to understand hatred because I believe that this emotion is a cause of much suffering inflicted upon mankind. This is primarily because leaders try to leverage this emotion to the maximum effect. And when I say leaders I mean political as well as “religious” leaders.

But what is hatred?

I think hatred is both a trigger and a fertile breeding ground for the coexistence of myriad negative emotions like anger, envy, gloom, fear, disrespect etc.

If we hate an entity, mere sight or even mention of that entity can instantly create all the above emotions. To what extent and how quickly these emotions are evoked may depend on the intensity of hatred.

Try to remember something which you hate…hate a lot. For some time, think about it single-mindedly. It’s highly probable that within a few minutes you would be filled with some of the above emotions.

(My own experience of hatred although is limited to hating some screen and fictional characters on TV which I think happens because these characters are comprehensively negative which is extremely rare in real life.)

What I am trying to propose is that if hate can create these emotions almost instantly, then a sustained presence of any of these emotions for someone or something over a long period of time can lead to hatred.

On the face of it, hatred is as natural emotion (or a combination of emotions) as love. So there should be nothing that should make us worried. But upon a closer look, I think hatred deserves more attention.

Hatred is a weapon that mankind has long used as a deterrent. Parents try to instil hatred in the kids towards some harmful things or ideas. The message is one must hate “bad” things. A very common statement is “I hate dishonest people”. This statement on one hand condemns dishonesty and on the other glorifies hatred.

Hatred is also a weapon which has been used to perpetrate the most shameful acts in the history of mankind.

Hatred is the most insidious weapon at the disposal of mankind. Although there has been lot of emphasis on preaching to love, I don’t know exactly why but there has been hardly any emphasis on preaching “not to hate”.

This may be because love has been considered to be an antidote to hatred. But I think it is not so. In fact love and hatred can coexist in a human heart: love for someone hatred for someone else.

So we need not only to preach but also teach how not to hate.

In fact to be able to not hate, we need to shield ourselves from an ever functioning hatred mongering machinery. We also need to decode the process of how hatred is spawned.

Hatred is spawned by the method of sustained association with negative emotions.

One negative emotion is anger. If I know taking a stick in front of dog makes it angry, and I repeatedly do this to make it angry, after a few days the dog will start hating the stick.

Another negative emotion is a sense of relative deprivation. If there are two dogs and for a few days one dog is partially fed while other one is well fed in front of the other dog, it is highly likely that the underfed dog starts hating the well fed one.

Although hatred might be considered as an exclusively human trait, I am using the examples of animals just to make a point and also because we don’t expect animals to use sound logic.

My main contention is that leaders in almost all parts of the world have been spawning hatred to further their various interests.

The hatred being spread might be for a neighbouring state in a country, for a neighbouring nation, for another community, another race and so on. Hatred is a great unifier and serves the interests of the leader better than any other mechanism.

My appeal to the world is that antidote to hatred is not love. Antidote to hatred is strong logic and sound reasoning. By sound reasoning, I mean challenging the logical validity of associations and exposing the infirmity of the emotional appeal of the hatred mongering arguments.

Let us use the information technology and telecommunication to spread sound reasoning which exposes the hatred mongering.

I acknowledge the fact that even after such an attempt, it will be the choice of the individuals to be either pervious or impervious to sound reason.

Still let us make a beginning.

Thanks for your time. Your feedback is extremely valuable.