Any person possessed of a reasonably standard notion of moral behavior gets the feeling that one just can't afford to be wrong about a hatred they bear. If there is fear in one's mind, it is easy to see hate in the mind of those feared and confounding facts that would temper fear are then most unwelcome.
Oversimplification of the opposition is hatred's favorite ploy even to the point of making oppostion where none exists.
This is why so many, both leaders and followers, are so willing to simply not hear basic facts and not see simple evidence about feared groups of "others".
Beware: in accepting this accounting of strife, we must then accept an obligation to guard against hatred of haters and biggotry against biggots. Even with these, we must engage in ordinary conversation, not words hurled over ramparts. This obligation is its own benefit!
1 comment:
That is the crux of the whole thing, it seems to me - the ability to see yourself in the face of another. War is the ultimate result of the inability to do that...when we designate people as 'other', they cease to be people in our estimation and become 'the enemy'.
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