Writing > Daen's Musings

DM16 The Reasons We Hate

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Daen:
Daen's Musings #16- The Reasons We Hate

So my car was stolen last week.

I was at work (third shift as usual), and I looked out into the parking lot and it was just gone. I went out there and found shattered glass on the ground. The next few hours involved cops, work security, and then the insurance company. Ironically, I feel it's unjust to legally require people to have auto insurance, but it would have saved me a ton of money anyway. I guess that's the universe knocking me down a peg or two.

The cops pulled someone over in the car, last night. Apparently the guy who stole it then traded it for drugs to someone else, who used it as a sort of Uber. The window was busted of course, and a bunch of stuff from inside was missing, but it's otherwise intact. When I arrived to get it, I spoke to the officer there briefly, and she gave me the strangest look. Probably because I'd told her I didn't want to press charges.

It was like I'd just told her I was a giant hamster or something. She just didn't know what to make of it.

Now she was a total professional, and didn't make any personal comments, but that look really stuck with me. Just the incredulity on her face. I didn't want to press charges? What kind of weirdo was she dealing with here, anyway?

To me it's pretty simple. If the thief had been some rich person stealing my car and taking it for a joyride, I might have felt differently. But the guy who stole my car clearly isn't that. He might be mentally ill (not his fault), in which case I don't want him to get in trouble. He might just be drug-addicted. Which doesn't change my opinion either. There are millions of drug addicts in this country, whether it's cocaine, meth, heroin, or opioids. In that last case, they probably had the drugs prescribed to them by a doctor. For the rest, they most likely got started as an escape from their lives. Lord knows I've wanted an escape like that. Video games were that for me, for a while. Now writing is.

I think the main difference between that cop and me is pretty simple: I've been exposed to poverty. I grew up in a country where it's everywhere. I've seen malnourished kids, and the dulling of emotions it can cause in them. Developmental damage that might never go away, even if food is plentiful later on. I can't fault the thief for taking my property. Partially because I don't believe that property should even be a thing, but mostly because I've seen that kind of desperation before. It's a lot harder to ignore it if it's been right in your face.

Some of you might be thinking I'm just stupid. Go ahead and think that, if it brings you comfort. I certainly can't prove that you're wrong. But it got me thinking about why that cop felt that way. Why she gave me that look, like I was some kind of alien or mutant or something.

It's a sad truth that we (humans, I mean) believe most of what we're told. Kids especially, but adults to a large degree as well. We're told something again and again, and even if it doesn't make any logical sense, we tend to believe it anyway. Simply because it's told to us.

I was robbed. My property was taken away from me. By some punk who just wanted drugs! I should be angry. I should be furious! This... junkie is a worthless person, who behaved exactly like worthless people do, and showed no respect to me or my property. I should want to throw the book at him. I should want him locked up for this!

Putting aside for the moment that our criminal justice system is a malicious dumpster fire, that idea that criminals do crime because it's in their nature, is repeated all the time. In our media, and as a result by the people who consume that media. We're taught to hate these people. We're encouraged to look on them not just as the 'other', but as the enemy! Criminals, by definition, should be despised, right? After all, if you refuse to follow the law, you must hate the people who do follow it.

It's a constant drumbeat in the background of American life. Every day in the news you hear stories about criminals. Sometimes those stories are meant to be funny, such as the Only in Florida series, but mostly they're just to scare people.

But why does it work? I mean, all humans have an innate sense of empathy within us. That's why most of us don't enjoy inflicting pain on others. Why is it so easy to get us to hate people, for nothing other than the fact that they operate outside the law? A series of laws, by the way, which were written by people just like us!

Granted, there are some people who do like to take from others, and do so just because it gives them pleasure. We've got plenty of those in legal professions as well. But most people, from my observations, aren't criminals by choice. They do crimes because they have to, not because they want to.

The idea that the cop I spoke to views criminals as the enemy wouldn't surprise me very much. She's a cop. It's her whole job to oppose criminals. But what got me was that she assumed I felt the same way. She expected me to hate the guy who robbed me.

I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise either. We all have a lazy streak inside us, right alongside our basic empathy. It's so much easier to just hate people for being different, than it is to examine our own beliefs and try to improve ourselves. It's the path of least resistance.

In some situations it's easy to know the source of the hate: in domestic violence for example. If a kid grows up with an abusive father, and inherits all sorts of messed-up ideals about how people express love, they'll probably end up hating the old man. Or if some kid has a drunken mom who would rather buy more beer than get clean clothes for their child. But most of the hate I've seen these days hasn't been like those examples. This hatred is focused on groups, rather than individuals.

Nine eleven killed nearly three thousand Americans. More, if you count rescue workers who died after the fact. A few Muslims did nine eleven. Therefore, all Muslims hate America. Therefore all Americans should hate all Muslims.

A virus started in China, and then swept the globe. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died because of it. Therefore Chinese people must have unleashed it intentionally. Therefore they hate us, and we should hate them. ALL of them, not just the few scientists and leaders who apparently did it.

Gay people are different than most of us. They say they want to be treated equally, especially when it comes to marriage and death benefits. Clearly they want to be treated better than us. Because they're different, they must hate us. They must want us all to be just like them. It's obvious, isn't it? We should hate all of them for what we know they want to do to us.

Black people started global protests not long ago. They claimed it was because cops keep shooting them or strangling them or pulling them over without cause- a whole list of things they say are happening. And sure, there might be one or two videos of them doing stuff like that (ouch, that one hurt me just to type out: there are hundreds if not thousands by now). But those are just a few racist cops, right? Most of the blue uniforms are good people, just trying to keep us safe. Therefore blue lives matter too, right? Or better yet, all lives matter. Those black people in those protests clearly know that. They're obviously trying to put themselves above the rest of us, because we're not racist. We could never be racist. They have to be racist against us. That's the only explanation. We should hate those racist black people- all of them.

Those Jews are the worst of it, though, right? I mean how dare they claim that millions of them were killed in the fake holocaust? All the 'evidence' they've been able to dig up was obviously manufactured. Probably just to drum up hate against white people (and if you can't tell the difference between a Jew and a white person, you probably have a few Cohens or Levys in your ancestry). They're only saying they were slaughtered in droves to guilt people into giving them more positions of power. Because obviously they're already embedded in secret all over our government. Therefore we shouldn't just hate all Jews for being lying bastards but also anyone in a position of authority who says anything good about them. Or says anything we disagree with. In fact, we should probably overthrow all our current authority and replace it with our own new, pure, non-Muslim, non-Chinese, non-LGBTQ, non-black, and non-Jew paradise! Right?

You see how this can snowball out of control?

It's easy for us to believe that other people hate us, because it's hard to think about why we might be worthy of being hated. Laziness doesn't have to be external: it can be inside our minds as well. And if we don't challenge the hateful notions that are spewed at us- if we don't analyze them and accept or reject them based on who we want to be, we're not actually being our own person. We're nothing but extensions of the people who say those things in the first place!

I used to live my life in a haze. I didn't really care about any of these issues: political, social, environmental. If I'd been robbed back then, I could have very easily gone down this hating path. I could have told myself that all my problems were his fault. He was the reason I was alone and depressed. Him and others like him, who just took from others. Probably because they were jealous. Because they wanted to be like me.

I definitely would have wanted revenge, just like the cop expected. I might have thrown the whole legal system at him, to get him locked up. If taken to the extreme, I might have even figured out who he was and doxed him. If I'd been using social media, it could have made sure everyone knew what he'd done. All because it would be easier to blame him than to confront my own shortcomings.

Which is more likely? That all the people we hate actually hate us? Or that they've never even heard of us, have their own lives to live, and we're just being egged on in our hatred?

Please, everyone. Do what I did. Examine why you hate people- closely. Think about why you hate them, and who told you to hate them. Try to find out if any of the reasons you hate them are valid.

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