subject: Why do people hate? [print this page] Why do people hate? Why do people hate?
People seem to hate each other for all sorts of reasons. They hate people of other races, people of other religions, people from other countries, or even people from the wrong neighborhoods in their own towns. But what really causes this hate? Is it just inevitable to hate people that are different from you? Personally, I don't think so.
I think the key element in hate is fear. Like Yoda said: "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." How many conflicts in this world start because one side is afraid of the other? This can be fear of actually being hurt or killed, but just as often it can be fear of losing power currently held, or fear of inevitable change to society. As change accelerates, as it's rapidly doing these days, people become more and more hateful.
Many people do fear the different or unfamiliar. This can easily lead to hate simply because they often don't know exactly what they're afraid of, they're simply faced with unknown people who behave in unfamiliar ways and could potentially do anything. With travel being much easier in modern times, we are much more likely to encounter unfamiliar people in our day-to-day lives. When faced with this kind of uncertainty, it's easy to declare that the unfamiliar people are just plain evil, and simply not risk whatever they might do in the first place.
Now that you know that hate is a response to fear, well, hate starts to look a little cowardly when you get right down to it. Do we really have to run in fear every time we meet someone new or encounter a new idea? Of course not. Once you know that hate is a response to fear, you can use this knowledge to overcome it. You can stop and think: "Do I really have a reason to hate this person? Or is this just an instinctive fearful response?" You can pause, take a deep breath, and decide to give the person a chance.
If everyone did this, the world would be a much less hateful place.
