Hate

1992

The following themes underlie humanity's hateful and violent roots: You(I) have something I(you) do not have and I(you) demand we be the same -- like each other. The ostensible impossibility of this demand is frustrating, and this frustration is relieved by hate.

Hidden basic in the violent roots of humanity is the demand for sameness and a resentment of not being alike.

Humans want to be all there is -- a mental demand -- which in fact is a personal projection of themselves to the outside. This is basic pride -- one of the seven capital sins -- well-defined as an inordinate desire for honor, recognition, and attraction -- from self-love. It is selfishness in the most grandiose way. This is Cosmic Pride as accurately described by the tale of Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Cosmic Pride forces one to deny the limitation that we are less than God. There are two aspects of this:

(1)Pride forces violence to destroy those "unlike," thereby exalting one's self-group (me!) to become "all that there is (only me!)" even if it is because one's self-group, having destroyed all that are different, is "the only group left" (and therefore "all that there is").

(2)Pride forces one to dominate and control those "unlike," thereby rendering them so weak that they become incorporated by a pseudo-identification under the guise of dominance. That is, dominating becomes sameness by powerful pseudo-assimilation and control and therefore one's self-group (me!) is "all that there is (only me!)."

But underneath this cosmic pride is the contorted demand for sameness, i.e. to be like me is to be like them, just as long as we are the same. The impossibility of this results in hate -- which is the emotional revealing of the overt but unconscious demand for sameness.

By focusing on the superficies of color, language, nationality, ethnicity, religion, economic system, etc., differences are intensified as is the need to diminish "unlikeness" (those differences). The demand for sameness (being alike or else) looms larger and hate becomes more manifest. This intensification of differences proves the impossibility of sameness when perceived in the context of how specifically different we are.

The 1991 educational trends assumed under the label of "political correctness" gives a clear image of this phenomenon. Vociferously demanding that all groups be treated the same by a feigned ignoring of differences which brook no recognition of descriptions that may highlight differences for all groups varying from the handicapped to pedophiles, hate spews forth from such political-correct advocates that the muddled thinking manifest by reaction-formation and sameness are easily dissected and evident. That is, unable to deal with the lack of sameness, but demanding sameness, hate comes forth more from the advocates of political correctness than from those more conventionally bigoted -- but it is all bigotry just the same. It is all demand for sameness just the same. It is all reaction-formation just the same. And it is not being handled very well. Demanding an end to hate, more hate is forthcoming. And the process is the same for all involved.

The basic drive for sameness seems impossible, and from this apparent nullity springs the violent roots of humanity. The impossibility is accompanied by an unacceptable sense of helplessness which easily coverts into hate.

"E Pluribus Unum," (From many, one) is not a simple motto -- but it is a statement of one of the deepest strivings of human nature made mental, and hate is a manifestation of this drive remaining unconscious coupled with reaction-formation either repressed or projected.

Indeed, "E Pluribus Unum" is not merely the motto of the United States. It is a deep statement of a basic striving of human nature -- the roots of which are biblical in origin and religious in fullness.

"E Pluribus Unum" as a basic drive natural to human strivings, but misidentified and mismanaged, is the cause of a major human problem: Hate. Hate: The malicious human malignancy so much worse than the animal kingdom's "survival of the fittest." Hate: A peculiar anomaly in the evolution of animal behavior.

Humans are part of the animal kingdom in which hate does not exist except for humans. So, what does the human mind do to create the propensity for wanton killing? What does the higher mental capacity of humanity carry within it which compels aggression between other members of the same species? Between humans and other species? Between humans and what seems at times to be the entire world?

My hypothesis is: The underlying psychological reason for human hate (and all that follows from it) is the assault to personal awareness that occurs when one recognizes that one is neither fully human nor able to encompass all that one can see -- not only to encompass all but to be part of all -- not merely to have (or take) tangible goods or control of others, but to be identified as others.

This is pride in extremis: I hate whatever shows me my limitations. I will get rid of that which reminds me of my limits. This awareness of difference means "I am limited" which mistranslates into "I am inadequate" which calls forth "corrective action" most commonly manifest as hate.

Not dealing with the frustrating helplessness in response to one's limitations in being the same as others is the cause of hate.

Sometimes differences evoke a positive effort. That is, with the awareness of differences and limits, a conscious effort is made to have the positives of others by conscious confluence rather than unconscious reaction-formation into a violent removal of those differences. But this is usually feeble and rarely falls on other than deaf ears. Sometimes, people do imitate others positively but most often, differences are dealt with by hate as a method of coping.

Within us must be a force which is jealous of whatever is not ourselves resulting in the negative emotion recognizable as hate.

In the usual negative way of coping, we make excuses for ourselves and conjure up negative putdowns of others unlike us. Unmindful of our envy, we end up with a senseless pseudo-hate of those different. It is much more logical and rational, however, that we should love our neighbor because underneath it all, we do not merely want what he has but we want to be him. In fact, pride impels us to demand ourselves to be all. But reaction-formation contorts into its opposite: Hate.

The frustration is in our inability to embrace and encompass total humanity and the universe. Hate is the byproduct of humans competing and reacting to those unconscious forces. Three common styles of hate are: (1) tyrants, (2) reaction-to-tyranny, and (3) bigotry.

Tyrants

The most obvious example of hate is the violent power-seeking of individuals who literally try to conquer the world. History is filled by tyrants who have tried to do this. The tyrants' modus operandi is: Destroy and absorb by power all others making them to be "like me." that is, the tyrant gets rid of differences so he is all, and all are alike because those differences are now gone having been destroyed, or else they are like the tyrant by being under his power. The tyrannical promotion of one's own-kind-only is a denial-by-action of the humanity of others and the humaneness of oneself. This is a dehumanization of other groups so that the tyrant's particular group can do whatever it wants in a universalized way. The tyrant's particular group can do whatever it wants in a universalized way. The tyrant's own group is all that is left and by default the only group left results in a fraudulent total identity to be completed because the others will no longer be there in fact or in effect. In summary, tyrants try to complete the reaction-formation of their unconscious desire to be the same with those unlike by getting rid of the others.

But most of us are not of tyrannical grossness, neither having power nor opportunity to exert global hate. Thus, the capacity to be a tyrant does not explain hate coming from most of us.

Reaction-To-Tyranny

Of course, the misdeeds of tyrants justify (as much as hate can ever be justified) a defensive hate-reaction to tyrants. Some individual tyrants: Tamerlane, Attila, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Bar Cochba, Oliver Cromwell, Pol Pot, Stalin, Margaret Sanger, Saddam Hussein and Farakhan. Some group tyrannies: Caribs, Kali cult, Teocali, NeoNazi Skinheads, Islam by Sword, Act Up, Ku Klux Klan, apartheid in South Africa and its equivalent on the West Bank of Israel, the National Organization of Women, the White Supremacy Party, and the anti-Right-to-Life press and media of the United States.

For a targeted victim of any of the mentioned tyrants or tyrannies, the appropriate response is hate albeit evoked hate. Nevertheless, even this hate is based on aware differences wishing for sameness in the unconscious. In a real sense, retaliation is imitation and sameness even if no more than wanting to be like the tyrants by power. We will become the same by our getting rid of them.

Bigotry

While all have histories which teach whom to hate because of past victimizations, unless agitated in some way, most of us have not been actually provoked by tyrants.

So, not being tyrants ourselves nor contemporary victims of overt tyrannical atrocities, the subliminal hate most of us have, is to force others to be like us (or more accurately in the unconscious, us to be like them) by negative labeling and stereotyping. This is classical bigotry. Trying to maximize one's own type of humanness, the differences of others are dismissed (by reaction-formation) as inferior in some way.

Resulting is an inflated self-promotion made possible by a puzzling demand-for-sameness which is evident and best exemplified by the current bigoted definition of racism by some Negro scholars that "racism is white supremacy." The underlying psychological force is this: Wanting to have supremacy (which is to be like whites), blacks hate whites, calling them "racists" because of so-called "white supremacy." This is admittedly contorted, but the truth is therein as an unconscious frustration at not being the same.

Typical anti-Semitism can also be so recognized, i.e. the intelligent organizational talent of Jews is the envy of all. Always has and probably always will be. Unless recognized and dealt with by other than reaction-formation, anti-Semitism will persist. The same applies to many other groups also.

Another example is the frivolous and eager (and often hateful) use of the anti-Semitic label by some in the Jewish community: Hypersensitive to victimization, the desire to be victimizer (but safely) evokes demand-for-sameness with the alleged name-calling, so-called aggressor by name-calling oneself, i.e. "You dirty anti-Semite!"

The bizarre condemning of men by feminists coupled with exhortations for women to be like men is perhaps the most easily grasped example of how the desire for sameness is reaction-formed into hate.

In the past, as in the present, bigotry and some accusations of such are self-serving, special pleading illogicalities which are examples not only for indecent thinking but for contorted identification: "We will be alike if I diminish those different, and then I will be like them."

By such events of fraudulent untouchability, by super Blackness, super Jewishness, super Muslimism, super Feminism, or super whatever, sameness is desired but resultant is disengagement from the fullness of humanity.

Such bigotry is actually the promotion of one's own traits to the unwitting dehumanization of one's self seeking to relieve the unconscious desire to be like the one thought to be victim or victimizer as the case may be.

In summary, there appear to be three sources of hate present in the human species but not elsewhere in the animal kingdom: tyranny, reaction-to-tyranny, and simple bigotry.

Introspection reveals that sameness is what is desired and the success of one's own group in such regards will actually be a self-defeat. In contrast, genuine success is to be more like all the others! Hate is the perverse superficial man!gement of frustration at one's limitations in that one cannot be the others.

Another clue to this is a universal intriguing phenomenon I call "sociological appropriation."

Sociological appropriation is what every group must go through before realizing not only its limitations but it is also necessary for every group to realize its own desires to be more than what it simply is. This applies to every group. Self promotions by sociological appropriation realize self-limits and may (hopefully) realize a self-desire to be all others. It is a frustrating feeling-filled prevarication-filled step, but still a step in the right direction.

Some examples: The Russians after World War II claimed that they had invented almost everything from airplanes to baseball. Some African-Americans claim that Egyptians were black and that the true originators of Western Civilization were black. The Negro scholar Maya Angeloo is on record as proclaiming that William Shakespeare was actually a black woman! Homosexual groups appear to proclaim that any "great" person was homosexual, from Michaelangelo to almost everyone else who had no children. Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Protestant groups never fail to show their linkage to heroes, grandiose places, and positive events whether true or not.

The desire for sameness is clear, but to this must be added the phenomenon of reaction-formation. Somehow the desire for sameness is managed in a reversal which is known as reaction-formation. This creates the problem at times as well as manages it by hate. For example, homosexuality itself can be conceptualized as a reaction-formation to wanting to be the same as those fully heterosexual. Many sociological appropriations are manifestations of those operating forces.

Who claims what? Superficially, all this appears as "how great my kind are," but at a deeper level, it is a wish to be like others under the cryptic "I already am like them -- I did what they did (or so I claim)!"

Once again: the human quality of hate, so unnatural in the animal kingdom, is linked to mankind's mental capacity to see itself in fullness but, steeped in pride, is frustrated in being less than all that there is.

Tyrants, those reacting-to-tyrants, and simple bigots are all manifestations of hate exemplified by the singularly human propensity to be aggressive to other members of the species for aggression's sake far beyond any survival issue. (If alligators or lions or other creatures were to act as aggressively as humans, they would attempt to kill all the creatures they possibly could whether hungry or not and this is just not evident.) Hate (and what follows) is not natural to the Planet or to the animal kingdom. Humans must look into themselves. And, a new way of looking at all is needed.

The desire for sameness...to be the other...needs to be brought to consciousness. Hate with all its malignant accompaniments will continue until this is done.

So what can be done about it? Is there a rational way to achieve sameness without losing one's individuality and without denying one's own subgroup cohesiveness?

The answer must be yes...yes by Catholicity, the catholic embracing of all by Transcendental awareness, promotion, and mutuality.

The Transcendentals attest to our sameness as human beings. They cross all divisions. Transcendentals enhance similarities rather than differences without diminishing one's identity. The Transcendentals promote the unifying best and reject the divisive worst.

The Catholic, catholic (we are all more alike than different and we are all, all) Transcendentals are operative principles in all creative being. The Transcendentals are:

(1)ens: being -- the act of being;

(2)aliquid: identity -- the confluence of a being with its essence;

(3)unum: oneness -- the confluence of a being with its entirety;

(4)bella: beauty -- the confluence of a being with ascending (Uplifting);

(5)res: thing -- the confluence of a being with the prime matter sustaining it;

(6)verum: truth -- the confluence of a being with knowledge;

(7)bonum: good -- the confluence of a being with proper choice (Natural Law, i.e. "in concert with the Planet").

When the mind conforms to Life by operating through these seven Transcendentals, all are catholic (and Catholic whether one wants to be or not). All are embracing all, and all are as close to the same as can be acquired without the roots of violence. Hatred is not needed to relieve our frustration at not being superficially the same. But we are the same in the profound Transcendental encompassing of the universe.

Differences exist in all dimensions except Transcendentals which unify all humans and all being, if those who have minds will bring the Transcendentals to a conscious level in daily activity.

Without focusing on the Transcendentals, consciously or unconsciously, nothing works -- not a marriage, not child raising, not schooling, not family, not government, not community, not anything -- for very long.

It is only by the Transcendentals that we can be the same. Only when Transcendentals are espoused and embraced will we encompass all humanity -- and then we will not be focused on colors, languages, geographical boundaries, economic systems, or whatever other secondary things divide us. Instead, the primary things (the Transcendentals) will be unifying us. And hatred will not be the reaction-formation response to the unconscious desire for sameness.

Until we recognize the human need to be all including those unlike us, we will never copy in our lives without hate.

In the final analysis, we need our souls to be saved if we are to "save the world" so to speak. Only by saving our soul personally can we overcome hate and all that divides humanity.

The soul is the total Transcendental actuality of a human being. Its ens (act of being) contains much more than simple feelings or ideas. Indeed each of the following dimensions of the soul needs to be embraced, promoted, and expressed by each human as much as feelings and thoughts have been up to now. These make us to be the same.

The res is the corporal body which, contrary to common misunderstanding, is contained by the soul. The res is the most visible dimension for us in the material world. Nature rules, neurochemistry and all, how the soul relates and manifests in Nature. We tend to think the body (res) is all there is, but the other six dimensions are of equal or more importance.

The soul contains the aliquid which is the identity or form of the being, i.e. for human beings, the achievement in fact of total humanity and not ethnicity or color or anything else but human beingness.

The soul contains the verum which is the truth of an individual, i.e. the confluence of the human with reality itself instead of with television, movies, magazines, and newspapers.

The soul contains the unum which is the oneness of ourself, i.e. the conforming of the human being with her/himself and all desirables related to man.

The soul contains the bonum which is the good of the being, i.e. the confluence of the being with Natural Law.

And finally, the soul contains the bella which is the beauty of the being, i.e. its confluence with ascendancy or the "bringing out the best" of him/herself and all around.

It is nearly impossible to hate if one does this: keep aware of one's Transcendentals (soul) and projecting them, because by doing such, we all become the same.

If the future is to be better than the past and if the Third Millennium is to discover a new world, it will be by thinking soul as defined including all of the six dimensions as a part of an act of being which we are conscious of and projecting at all times. The Transcendental approach is the only way by which differences can be surpassed, nay, transcended, such that no longer will differences be confusing, challenging, maddening, unfair, or disgusting. And no more hate.

The superficial reasons which divide people such as sexual prowess or color or economics will be overcome because we shall achieve the maximum capacity to be fully human and no longer will we be frustrated to our own constrictive selfs in our own constrictive kind. We will be able to recognize our total human beingness regardless of the superficial differences that seem to loom so large today. We will see ourselves together. We will be together resignedly, and if basic needs are met, there will be no hate.