Why So Much Hate?
BY AWAKE! CORRESPONDENT IN GERMANY
“WHY”—a short word, yet one that demands an answer. For example, when it was seen on a tag among piles of flowers and teddy bears laid outside a school in Dunblane, Scotland, in March 1996. Just a few days earlier, a man had rushed inside and shot 16 children and their teacher to death. He wounded several others and then turned the gun on himself. Obviously, he was full of hatred—for himself, for others, and for society in general. Grieving parents and friends as well as millions of people the world over share the same question, ‘Why? Why do innocent children die in this way?’
That the world is full of blind, unexplainable hatred has likely not escaped your notice. In fact, for one reason or another, you may have been a victim of hatred yourself. You too have probably asked, ‘Why?’—possibly more than just once.
Positive and Negative Kinds of Hatred
“Hate” and “hatred” are defined as “intense hostility and aversion.” Of course, it is beneficial to have “intense hostility and aversion” toward things that are harmful or that could be detrimental to personal relationships. If everyone had this kind of hatred, the world would truly be a better place in which to live. Sad to say, however, imperfect humans tend to hate the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
Destructive hatred is based on prejudice, ignorance, or misinformation and is usually triggered by “fear, anger, or sense of injury,” according to one definition. Not having a proper basis, this hatred results in bad and repeatedly gives rise to the question, ‘Why?’
All of us know people whose characteristics or habits may irritate us at times and with whom we find it hard to interact. But irritation is one thing; the desire to do people bodily harm is something else. We, therefore, may find it difficult to comprehend how a person can nurse feelings of hatred for entire groups of people, oftentimes people he does not even know. They may disagree with his political views, belong to a different religion, or be of another ethnic group, but is that a reason to hate them?
Still, such hatred exists! In Africa hatred led the Hutu and Tutsi tribes to mutual slaughter in Rwanda in 1994, causing one reporter to ask: “How did so much hate accumulate in so small a country?” In the Middle East, hatred has been responsible for terrorist attacks by Arab and Israeli zealots. In Europe hatred led to the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia. And according to one newspaper report, in the United States alone “roughly 250 hate groups” are spreading racist ideas. Why so much hatred? Why?
Hatred is so deep-rooted that even when the conflicts that it has spawned are resolved, it remains. How else can we explain the difficulty in maintaining peace and cease-fires in war-torn and terrorist-plagued countries? How else can we explain what happened after the peace treaty signed at the end of 1995 in Paris provided that the city of Sarajevo be reunited under the Bosnia and Herzegovina-Croat Federation? Most of the Serbs living there began fleeing the city and its suburbs out of fear of reprisals. Reporting that people were looting and burning the buildings they were leaving behind, Time concluded: “Sarajevo has been reunified; its people have not.”
Peace among people who hate one another is at best a counterfeit peace, as worthless as counterfeit money. With nothing of real value to back it up, it can collapse under the slightest pressure. But there is so much hatred in the world and so little love. Why?
[Blurb on page 4]
Destructive hatred is based on prejudice, ignorance, or misinformation