When I was growing up in Milwaukee, my mother insisted that my sister and I learn to make our own clothing. This was not simply to teach us a skill; having experienced the Depression years, Mom couldn’t bear to pay the price for store bought clothing. I actually enjoyed some of this process - going to the store that carried the patterns and materials and “notions” like thread, buttons, zippers and bias tape, looking at patterns and planning my outfit. Then going home and laying it all out…the creative planning part of the process was fun!
However, when it got right down to the nitty gritty of cutting and assembling the pieces, my mother became tyrannical in her insistence that I get it right, and forced me to rip apart entire outfits and start over if they didn’t meet with her approval. On multiple occasions, I remember racing up the front stairs to my room and giving my door a good slam, feeling anger, even hatred, for being put in this position. How dare she tell me what to do with my own creation, I would fume.
And then, after some time went by and I had a chance to calm down (but still holding on to some hard earned resentment), I would re-emerge and wordlessly start over.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was briefly in the first stage of the ten stages of genocide, when we divide people into “them and us”, in my case “her and me”. Since she was my mom, and I not only needed her, I loved her, the first stage was as far as it ever went. As with most children trying to define themselves, my maturation process took care of most of my resentment and anger. But I still remember how strong and dangerous and out of control that feeling was.
I hate to admit this, but when I was working at a very challenging job in the Midwest, having a lot of doubts about my future, I was driving home one day after work. A woman cut me off, dangerously, on the highway, and something inside me snapped. I floored my car and gave chase, wanting to do this person some harm. It took me several minutes before I realized I was not only threatening to myself, but to all the other drivers around me, and was able to come back to reality. Several days later, I was still processing this episode where my ego took control of what was happening.
It feels to me like we are living in a time of increased hatred. My social media feed bears this out, as I now routinely unfriend people posting hate speech on my feed, something I’ve never done before because, well, I didn’t have any hate speech on my feed until recently.
Hate is one of the ways humans try to resolve inner turmoil, as the ego (which needs the full array of negative emotions to survive) comes up for air in an increasingly hostile world. The next stages of genocide, starting with step two, symbolization (such as the Swastika) already begin to address the emblems of hatred as warning signs, and something society’s constitutional systems can and should deal with, according to human rights organizations.
The next steps up are discrimination and dehumanization. Then comes organization (gathering your war machinery), polarization, preparation for getting rid of the people you don’t like/agree with, persecution, extermination, and finally when it’s all over, denial that you did anything wrong. As these step up, the measures against them should be also stepped up, to include condemnation, embargoes and international sanctions, diplomatic pressure, direct assistance to the ones being harrassed, armed intervention and international tribunals to call out the perpetrators to the world.
It ain’t pretty. As a matter of fact, hatred is probably the most counterproductive emotional response humanity has, and as hard as we might struggle, we can’t seem to get it under control and/or solve it.
However, some great art has been fueled by anger and hatred, and that can have a healing and educational effect on the people who witness it, and inspire humanity to right certain wrongs. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica about Germany’s destruction of a defenseless small town in Spain, and Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, detailing the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union are some examples of art forcing us to step back and consider the consequences of such actions. John Lennon’s song, “Imagine”, was born from his frustration and anger about our seeming inability to abandon hatred and get along with each other:
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
What would it be like to live in a world where our egos are no longer out of control some of the time? Is that even possible?
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