I’ve been thinking about hate a lot more than I’d like.
I got a couple of emails from an old buddy of mine this past week. Herman is an atheist and one of the qualities I enjoyed about our friendship years ago was our lively discussions about theology and spiritual matters. I enjoy healthy, friendly debate and seek out relationships with people who have a different point of view from my own. I don’t need people to tell me more of what I already believe.
From the tenor of the emails, my old friend had shifted from being passionate to dogmatic anger, from reason to hate. Not pretty.
I understand where anger comes from. A lot of folks are afraid and feel out of control. When we feel out of control of our lives we often look at who we think may be threatening our security and want to take them out. But it doesn’t really work. Not for long, at least.
We’ve seen a lot of that anger on the political fronts where Republicans are afraid of Democrats and do everything they can – including wasting millions of dollars of taxpayers‘ money – to hurt their perceived opposition with petty politics. And vice versa.
On Facebook, I have several “friends” who exhibit outright hatred of all conservatives, and other “friends” who mirror the vitriol with their posts against everyone who’s liberal. Although some of the posts are somewhat amusing, most are sad and fearful.
One of the most powerful lessons I learned from reading Stephen Covey many years ago was the power of working within the circles of influence around us. Focusing energy into changing things we can influence can make a huge difference. Putting resources into arenas in which we have very little influence is seldom ever effective. It’s also a drain on the “juice” we do have available.
The irony is that most of the areas I see angry people target their hate at are areas outside of their influence. So their vitriol is serving no useful purpose. It’s just stirring up an already muddy pond.
The most effective way to affect change is to build trust. Interestingly, voicing your anger and hatred doesn’t actually make you feel any better, just more angry. I know this road from having traveled it so often.
And telling people we hate them doesn’t cause them to change.
One definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing repeatedly expecting different results. So why not try something different from anger.
Charles
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