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cameronboy96

- 1 year ago

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Was humankind born to hate each other?

I've thought hard and my answer is starting to look like a yes and to me this is awful to think that we were made to hate each other. I keep looking at religious wars and thinking that they started because people hate such strong hate against each others religions. I think of social darwinism in which people used science to justify their racism. I keep looking and looking and see the world is not doing anything but create and keep hatred going. I hope that someone can come up with an answer that says this isn't true.

source: humanisthappiness.blogspot.com

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I think your question suggests an awareness in the 'right' direction. If you look at an individual that is working through their issues, you will usually see them coming to 'realize' they have issues to begin with. That seems to take awhile. But after that, there is a period of 'doing' things about these issues. I think humankind is still in It's 'awareness' stage in that it is finally coming to an awareness of what it is and the repercussions of it's behaviors. There are individuals out there who are past this and are helping to push humanity along in what would considered to be the next step (just as there are individuals working to push it in other directions). But this is just one of those things that won't hurry up.

Are we 'created' for specific reasons about this or that? I don't know. I've only been alive for 36 years and can't answer the 'why' questions. :) But we sure can talk about how we, as humans, have responded to life so far. And so far, there is still a lot of violence and ignorance. And you combine those two, you get hate.

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we were all created to serve self interest first(survival instinct) the manifestation of this is therefore hate. but as evolved creatures we are supposed to have risen above such apish behavior but the truth is all we've really accomplished is more efficient communication and the development of sounder architectural structures. as a specie we have a lot of growing to do.

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Hate comes from a lack of well-rounded education and diversity around you. The most RACIST people I've ever come across had never actually truly spoken to the race they "hated" or talked down upon. Funny, huh? We hate because we don't understand.

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I don't think we were born to hate each other. Newborns reach out with love and their parents reach toward them with love (if they parents are normal - and most are, at least in that regard). I think we were born to love each other and that God is Love. We were created by love and in love. I feel that and see examples of it everyday. You can see it if you look. But if you're sad about all the hatred, there are plenty of examples of hate to make you sadder. Start looking for examples of love being demonstrated. I guarantee, you'll see them! And you'll start to feel better, and you'll be encouraged to show lots of love, yourself, and assurance of love will grow in your heart. We all suffer from the effects of hatred in this world, but we also all benefit from the effects of love. So, get the benefits!

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Satan and his demons hated us first......."For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12

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I have come up with the arbitrary and researchless hypothesis that people have come this far through the trails of existence (stood the test of natural selection) not by naturally hating one another but by an innate sense of community and cooperation. This is probably true as long as it can be paired with mutual benefit. This benefit comes largely in part as a result of our need to not be lonely, which seems natural in all people (instinctual) and our need to feel safe, which a group of people can help provide that. Companionship seems to be a natural part of human existence on different levels. However, when our group feels threatened or scared by the presence of another group, this is when feelings that seem to be "hate" start to brew, and malicious action has often been undertaken. If the alternative route is chosen, for the multiple groups to set aside fear and attempt a merge or an agreement of nonviolence and trust, this must have been due to greater wisdom, because I do not believe it is a natural instinct to trust those who potentially threaten things that make us feel safe and good.
All in all, I believe naturally we exhibit compassion and companionship towards each other until fear and a threat to security are introduced. Add animosity and mistreatment to the mix and you may approach that which we refer to as hate, which has been the source of so much pain and confusion in the world. I believe, however, we are wiser to rise above those things that take us away from love. "Love one's enemies"

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All beings exist to evolve, all emotions (including "Hate"), actions, and consequences serve as lessons for an individual or, even others that observe. Humans evolve predominantly through positive energies. Inevitably, you too will learn that "hate" reproduces energies in your reality that will cause you displeasure and inconvenience.

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There is no such thing as "hate". Just as darkness is the absence of light, hate is the absence of love. Hate doesn't actually exist, therefore, we do not hate each other, nor were we meant to hate.

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Not made to hate - but it's just so much easier & convenient than the alternatives. This, combined with our deep-seated and seemingly limitless laziness results in it's frequent employ.

Don't despair - instead lead by example. Push society forward to a better place. There will always be terrible people - so too must there always be luminaries.

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I tend to view the world with an optimistic lens. Most people who know me would be rather surprised by me saying that. But I have decided that I believe that the intentions of most people and most peoples thoughts are basically like those of everyone else. I would say that a good measure of how the world thinks is the way that you think. We're all made from the same stuff and we're all biologically nearly the same. Although there are clearly differences between people especially in the realm of philosophy, a functional philosophical ruler to interpret the feelings of others about you is the way that you feel about others. Therefore- I don't believe that human beings were meant to hate. Because of the way that I feel about others, I believe that humans were meant to love all, hate only one or two, and like a handful. But that's not necessarily the right answer. It's just your individual perception.

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I'd like to think we are not born to hate. Unfortunately, I believe as the world becomes more diverse, society grows more fearful and insecure of becoming a minority, having to conform and/or change in general. Human beings, like animals, are creatures of habit...any threat to change in habit drives fear and insecurity. Survival of the fittest.

Fear and insecurity are powerful. Ego and arrogance are powerful, as well, and both play a role in how we all deal with fears and insecurity. How fear and insecurity is dealt with is probably the inherited and/or learned behavior interpreted as "hatred".

So we aren't born to hate. We are all born with a natural defense mechanism. We just don't all have the same defined threats. Therefore, the threats become weaker and the need to defend against them becomes weaker as well.

The good news is if we all don't have the same threats, we may breed generations with an unnecessary defense mechanism.

Kind of the Hatfield vs McCoy Syndrome. The threat and/or hatred was stronger in the first generation because all of the Hatfields and all of the McCoys had the same threat. But as generations passed, the threat/hatred lost velocity. Until, one day, no one knew what the threat was...so the threat/hatred (fear and insecurity) evolved out.

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People only hate because that's how it works in schools, with gossip, in the workplace, everywhere. People judge each other so much.

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Humans are like clay. We all start out as just something, a big blob of potential, until we decide to make something out of ourselves. We shape ourselves and decide who we want to be, what to feel, and how to act.

There is no "instinct", no "natural tendency", to hate; it is a decision that is made consciously and willingly by the human himself.

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Definitely not!

And has been said, "To act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man."

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No? That would be absolutely stupid and we would've died out centuries ago. We were born to love each other, that's what social creatures do. Without love there could be no society or cooperation. The reason hate is so up in our face is because it's relatively rare.

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One thing I have discussed recently with a friend is human's ego's.
It's a very underrated factor in a lot of discussions.
Imagine if there was a much lesser influence or complete lack of ego's in wars, religion, disputes, and day to day occurrences I believe it would promote less hate.

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I don't think there is any purpose beind humans hating each other, its nothing just nature, back in the beginning it paid to be tribal (which is where hatred comes from, clinging to commonalities and pushing away indifference) it was a survial trait passed down by our ancestors, and "humans are not that far out of the jungle, we are just semi civilized with baseball caps and semi automatic weapons" -george carlin
fortunately we dont need to hate any more to survive, it actually can be detrimental to ones surivial to hate in my opinion.. so I think we will eventually evolve away from it.

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Even animals have a natural instinct to become aggressive to protect their territory, resources, and potential mates.

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From the biblical point of view (You can skip right by me if you feel that the Bible is just a silly storybook), the reason that we hate one another is our fallen nature that was caused when Adam & Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden. At this point people became imperfect and while God wants us to love each other our sin nature (Natural urge to go against God) causes us to hate each other. The way to truly love each other is to come into a personal relationship with God and use the love that we have been shown by God through Jesus dying on the cross and showing that to others. To show this to others doesn't just mean giving God's message it means doing nice things along side that. That is a very basic explanation of the biblical point of view.

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You appear to have been infected with the negative Zeitgeist bug, beloved of pessimists and media watchers and makers worldwide..

This is in no way a good measure of reality.
The disease involves seeing the potential bad in every situation. Seeing all the bad things in the world and forgetting about all the good.

When you have worked with refugees who are smiling, and getting on with life, despite losing the entire families in the homeland war and fleeing that place...
Then
you can realise that hatred is not the winning force.

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Our survival throughout our evolution has been built on competition and violence and it's not until the agriculture revolution that we have been able to sustain life without having to fight for it. I don't know what kind of genetic or spiritually inherent elements still influence our inclination to compete but it is pretty clear they still exist. It isn't until we reach a fully enlightened state that we may finally reveal the process that can sever us from our primal urges and welcome total harmony into our physical world, but that's indeed to conclude that our primal urges no longer serve a purpose. As much as they can be damaging and hurtful in some areas, in others they can elicit a pure animalistic response that can attribute to our happiness also. In the end, much like anything in life, it all comes back to achieving a healthy balance.

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People aren't born to hate, they are just too selfish to love.

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Is there any way to stop it?

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No. If you put a bunch of babies or children of the same age in a toy room, they have no problem getting along. It isn't until parents, society, peer pressure teaches a child to hate that they begin to do so.

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Obviously not. We would not be here if this were true.

However, hate is not always a negative thing in real terms. It focuses energy, so as long as the thing hated is actually worthy of being hated (this is the bit where we usually go wrong), it serves a very useful and necessary function in human interaction.

People who are afraid of their emotions and choose to cling to the ones they like are not, in my view, really alive at all.

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read nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. he talks about the pathos of distance which is something humans do to seperate and call themselves better than others outside a group. Exculsion results in resentment which he says leads the excluded to call the excluders evil and the excluding call themselves good. This is a theory of course but even if true as long as we recognize the consequences of hatred we can get past these behaviors

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http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

no human was "born to hate" anymore than they were "born to love". humans are just "born"

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I feel we humans have an unlimited capacity to love. We also have an ability to learn. We've learned to hate, there is within us the overwhelming desire to love and to be at peace. We've gotten into the habit of feeding our fears, of listening to all that we've been taught to believe instead of listening to that part of us that is made to love. We've stoped trusting in and having faith in that loving kindness part of ourselves. What we feed grows. So the next time a thought passes by that is not rooted in loving kindness, let it pass on by, don't entertain it, don't feed it, feed what you want to grow and perhaps by doing so, we can see what we humans are truly capable of being.

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Warfare was so pervasive and deadly in the past, fossil records show that 25% of males were murdered. Conflict between tribes of humans was universal and intense. Modern humans were forged in hundreds of thousands of years of non-stop warfare. Societal intitutions may exacerbate "hate" but they cant create it out of nothing.

"It would seem as if men who had acquired a set of special qualities possessed an instinct to keep aloof from anyone who could adulterate these qualities. In healthy cultivated man, this instinct is so pronounced as to be a matter of common knowledge. Even among the primitive peoples, it has been noticed by scores of observers. Among the peoples principally responsible for civilization — the Egyptians, the Jews, and the Greeks — the abhorrence of the stranger was so great that the very word for stranger was a term of opprobrium."

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It is sad that the world is made up of people who think that the rest of the people should think like they do --- or become "other". When someone is "other" than you then there seems to be a need to change that other person, or war with them. I do not understand why we don't accept that we don't think the same. There is a diversity of thoughts and beliefs. It is OK to have a diversity. I don't think we are born to hate.

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