pastery

I do not really know where to start thinking about the concept of hatred and what it does to us humans. It like this dark, evil energy that can take over our entire being, soul and mind. It can possess us. It can control us. It can make us into monsters. Devils in human flesh. In so many ways it is created out of fear, lack of education and simplicity to look at others to blame.

I remember one time where I was listening to a friend who fled from Kongo how he explained that he always worried about the color of the t-shirts he was wearing. If he chose the wrong color, he could be shot on the spot. Why? What is the root of such incredible hatred and lack of humanity? Lack of compassion. Lack of acknowledging the human life in front of you when you pull the trigger. When you blow them up.

It is almost impossible to comprehend. You end up thinking why. Why…

When I listen to the survivors of the Holocaust and the stories about what went on during almost 7 years after the Kristalnacht 1938 I just find an enormous sadness fill me and like a stab into my heart. I have heard stories from veteran soldiers who burst out crying. Still shivering of the images they saw. They still cannot comprehend the evil acts. The treatment of other human beings as pure objects to nothing worth all. Nothing.

It fills me with a sadness not to be able to believe humans could do that to each other.

Why? What goes through peoples minds then?

You can maybe in a very dry way understand all the logical and argumentative reasons for what created a foundation to one of the most insane outburst of violence and hatred in the history of mankind – the Holocaust. I do see how we can at least minimize the reasons for it.

Yet.

It happens. Still. Stalin did the same in Soviet Union under the umbrella of the state of the people. What an irony. It happen in Cambodia in the 70s. In the Balkans in the 1990s. It happen in Rwanda 1994. It still happens in South America and Latin America. Guatemala. Honduras. Argentina. Peru. Venezuela. The list goes on. Genocides. Massacres. Total rapes and incomprehensible violations of human rights and dignity.

And…

Worst of all…

We let it happen still. Maybe that is the saddest part of it all.

Maybe it is the lack of reflection. Lack of insight. Lack of awareness. You see similar behaviors in demonstration mobs. Out of control masses of people when logic, reason, humanity and compassion is cast aside.

Yet at what time does the mob feeling turn into a sustainable society of hatred against your agony, your point of interest of hatred. At what point do we turn into creatures of brutality, evil and just soulless people and in many ways become worse than the most brutal animals? At what point do we turn into creatures wanting the others to suffer? To feel the pain. To see the other person abandon their soul and become an empty shell of an organism. No feelings. No thoughts. Just an empty living ghost.

What is it within us that turns us into these monsters?

Maybe it all is based in a misplaced laziness to direct an anger we cannot handle towards others and in a complex dance and escalation turn into something very ugly. Very evil.

Yet…

I do not get when the insanity of few turn into the insanity of the masses. Maybe if we understand that we can turn the good of few into the goodness of the masses.

Maybe. I hope so. What I do know is that goodness have to fight.