Hi, all!
Right now, hate seems to be prevalent here in the USA, and I'm absolutely sick of it. Every day, there's a hate march, or hate speech, or targeted assaults, or worse. If hate is a learned behavior, then what do you think is the best way of correcting that behavior? And what do you think is the best way of preventing people from adopting hate in the first place?
I really look forward to your responses.
Thanks!
~RWARwriter (Red, White and Real)
In my idealism, or perhaps naiveté, I had written a blog post about that.
Forgive the typos and assaults on grammar.
https://friendrewind.com/blog/the-hall-of-presidents-and-why-love-is-so-important-6922
First off we need to stop dividing our races. We are all in the same race. It's the human race. People also need to come together and talk it out, not be argumentative. Everyone needs to be mindful of daily distractions and focus on what's really happening in our world. Together we stand. Divided we fall.
@Linda the Cat Lady I agree with the desire for unity. We are one human species. The racial categories we use today are relatively recent, built mainly during European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade in the 1600s and 1700s. In colonial Virginia, laws began separating white servants from Black people held in permanent slavery around 1640. A 1662 law made enslavement pass from mother to child, and the 1705 slave code further locked racial slavery into law.
Hi, Linda! Yes, I agree. Unity is needed! To me, one of the main issues is that of perception. There are certainly many views shared by all. However, there are far more that aren't. While I don't think we'll ever be an ethically monolithic culture of shared perspectives (such as envisioned by the great Gene Roddenberry), we should have more viewpoints in common and a similarly shared understanding of the history and meanings underpinning them. Right now, everyone is in one of two camps, listening to echo chambers, and refusing to consider any contradicting opinions.
~RWARwriter (Red, White and Real)
I think hate is learned through repetition. It shows up in jokes, headlines, campaign ads, sermons, school policies, hiring decisions, neighborhood boundaries, television, and the way people talk at the dinner table. Then those things reinforce one another. A stereotype gets repeated until it feels like common sense. That stereotype helps justify exclusion. The exclusion creates unequal outcomes, and people point to those outcomes as proof that the stereotype was true all along.
We have also lost many of the places where people used to build a shared public life. Local newspapers have closed. Libraries, unions, community centers, parks, public programs, and neighborhood organizations have been underfunded or stripped down. People have fewer places to spend time with people outside their immediate circles, work on something together, and develop a sense of responsibility for one another. Social media stepped into that gap, and its business model often rewards fear, outrage, humiliation, and constant repetition.
There are studies where people are repeatedly shown counter-stereotypical images and messages, and some of them later score better on implicit-bias tests. That tells us repeated exposure can change something. The problem is that they then return to workplaces, families, churches, schools, media, and online spaces that keep teaching the old lesson. A short intervention cannot compete with an environment that reinforces the bias every day.
That is why I think this needs to be treated as a public-health problem. We have to work upstream and at several levels at once. That means changing what children are taught, rebuilding local organizations and public spaces, supporting local journalism, holding political and religious leaders accountable, regulating platforms that profit from hate, responding early to harassment and threats, and creating real ways for people to belong without needing an enemy.
And *all* of that threatens the increasingly visible oligarchy that runs (and divides) this country for *their* benefit. Your commonsense beliefs threaten Big Brother's growing control over every major social mechanism that facilitates or encourages free thought and communication.
~RWARwriter (Red, White and Real)
@Red, White and Real Yupp. Nailed it! Powerful people benefit when everyone below them is angry at each other instead of looking up at who is taking the money, buying the media, gutting public services, and setting the rules. Overall, I think hate is different because it teaches us that some people are less human and therefore anything done to them is justified. That logic never stays safely pointed at the “right” target. It always gets picked up by whoever has the most power.
America knows what works because it worked for many years until we we removed God from everything and allowed communists in every branch of our government. Now we have communist school teachers brain washing our children, communist news channels in the media, even communist preachers in woke churches. We have a huge radical left communist problem that teaches people to hate America and hate Christianity.
Maybe some of the hate is justified.
Maybe MySpace was all the friends we made along the way.
@ExMachina Everyone believes their hatred is the reasonable exception.
Hate comes from caring too much and taking it personally. Hate was down low when no one cared about other people or what they were doing and it got higher as people decided this and that is wrong and needs to be corrected. Mind your own business, stop caring about others, and you'll have the energy to only focus on yourself and real issues.
"Thank God I am deemed worthy to be hated by the world"
@Gray
Based.
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