When you feel like you have been seriously victimized and oppressed in a particular social system, your discontent and anger carries with it the potential seeds of hatred, pointing fingers towards certain group of people, devaluing and dismissing their views and beliefs.
Although it does often do more bad than good, hate may in most cases be functional in making us avoid or banish other group of people. This can disrupt relationships and even interfere with longstanding friendships.
Hate is like a poison, eating you up inside and causing destruction. Anyone who has found themselves wrapped up in the arms of hate knows how damaging and mind-consuming it can become. Hatred hides common sense and reason, and makes you say and do things, which will only aggravate the situation. Hate, when left unchecked, it can motivate damaging behaviors, drain your spirit and darken your days. This quote from Buddha says it all:
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
– Gautama Buddha
However, you can control the feelings that can lead to hatred and destructive generalizations about certain group of people. Replace those hateful irrational thoughts with calmer rational ones, counter this destructive emotional assault on your mind and body and diffuse your hatred. Otherwise, it will lead to the most damaging forms of discrimination, hostility, and devaluing others.
Feed hatred and it will grow. Confront it and disassemble it and you will grow.
The idea that a certain group is “the devil” who is stupid, incompetent and bad is faulty thinking. Productive, meaningful dialogues in a more civil tone can help contribute significantly to awareness and education instead of yelling, cursing, harming, avoiding others, and being polarized with a “winner takes all” mentality.
If we are able to do this, we can make progress and move forward towards a more vibrant and prosperous society that benefits everyone without all of the emotional drama that’s being displayed these days.
The actual way to fight resentment and anger within you is with compassion, understanding and communication. You cannot achieve peace by yelling and cursing. You achieve peace by choosing to be peaceful.
As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
– Martin Luther King Jr. (1956)
