12 Ways We Teach Each Other to Hate

 

We humans have always been a contentious sort. But now it seems we are devolving collective hate. Hate can be triggered or taught. From personal, corporate, or political agendas, we observe a widespread effort to challenge and denigrate others, and they in turn resent it.

Courtesy Uriel-Soberanes, Unsplash

Linguistics professor Deborah Tanner at Georgetown University has written a disturbing book, The Argument Culture. The thrust of her analysis of our culture is that people divide into competing camps and develop a compulsion to win arguments by criticizing and diminishing those in other camps. In discussing issues, people with differing views become considered as enemies that must be defeated.

In such wars, many tactics are used to bolster our own positions and defeat the enemy. Here are  12 ways we teach each other to hate:

 

1.    Egotism. We are egotistic and self-absorbed. What we think is more important than what others think. If others don’t agree with us, we need to let them know they are wrong, which of course they similarly respond.

2.     Absolutism. Our own views are seen as absolute and irreconcilable principles continually at war with alternative views of others, who we imagine as our enemies.

3.     Categorizing People. We assign identities to people and place them in categories. Thus, we make it more convenient to attack many people at once as members of an identity group. Divide and conquer.

4.     Polarization. We habitually think of issues of having just two sides of an argument. This inevitably polarizes the issues and creates two camps of competing enemies.

5.     Exaggeration. To justify one’s position, it helps to magnify the flaws in the positions of others, and even to denigrate their character for holding such unacceptable positions.

6.     Threatening body language. We use threatening body language in advancing our arguments with others. These include scowled faces, loud voice, punching the hand toward others (often with an object in hand), and pounding the arm up and down. We “get in their face.”

7.     Character assassination. The accuser assumes a false mantle of virtue signaling, which in turn is not appreciated by those accused of being morally deficient.

8.     Assuming victimhood.  Claiming unfair treatment allows us to accuse others of oppression and thus assign to them guilt and shame. Name calling is the linguistic first choice of weaponry. Another weapon is to recall past abuse, even when such abuse no longer occurs. Next, current examples of presumed abuse are magnified and harped upon. In that way, opponents become irredeemable. Those accused of creating victims in turn come to hate their attackers.

9.     Excuse making. A basic reason for assuming victim status is that it provides excuses. We don’t have to take responsibility for any of our own missteps that contributed to our misfortune. We save face by blaming others, and thereby create another reason to hate them. I explore all this in my book, Blame Game, How to Win It.

10.  Demanding equity. We expect equity, not just the equal opportunity of a level playing field. We assume everyone is equally entitled, irrespective of effort, education, or ability. Thus, when others deny us equity, we hate them for being unfair.

11.  Revenge. Sometimes, we create enemies out of jealousy or desire for revenge over perceived imposed inequity.

12.  Cancel culture. We censor or otherwise “cancel” others, which of course generates reciprocal hate.

 

All this shreds the fabric of social harmony. It creates resentment and anger that otherwise would not occur. It becomes self-perpetuating. I fear our current situation will only feed upon itself and make things worse. Is this the price are willing to pay to win arguments?

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How Can a Country Learn from Its Erased Past?

I am reading a book about George Washington (Washington’s End) that is highly relevant today. Near the end of his first term, George decided he did not want to run for re-election. U.S. anarchists, inspired by the French revolution’s “reign of terror,” led Washington to conclude that Americans were unworthy of the government he and the other founders had created for them. Washington just wanted to get away from the rabble rousers and retire to his farm to enjoy his wealth. Then, as now, we were a country bitterly divided. Then, as now, large numbers of citizens wanted to cancel the culture of the American revolution. Jefferson convinced George that nobody else could hold our country together.

Today, Black Lives Matter and Antifa anarchists pose a similar test of citizen worthiness. Will we have the courage to stand up to those who threaten to “burn it all down” if we don’t give them what they want? Are we going to vote to sustain a government that gives us opportunity to care for ourselves or to exchange our freedom for a government that we hope will be our nanny?

Today’s voters are being tested for their worthiness. Their response seems to prefer a new “progressive” government to be our nanny. Our new government is spending money we don’t have to make life easier and better for everyone. The goal even includes providing public services to everyone outside our country if they will just come through our open borders. With that all that largess comes control, expressed in terms of cancel culture and political correctness.

Donald Trump, like Washington, could have just retired and enjoyed his wealth. But, like Washington, he sought an onerous second term in the hope he could save the country from destruction from within. Unlike Washington, Trump was rejected by the public. He faces great opposition from globalists who think it is wrong to put America first, that America is in fact a flawed and evil country.

We are supposed to learn from history, and this present generation has concluded that this history only shows all that was wrong with this country. By erasing this history, we eliminate the chance to appreciate how we have corrected so many of our past flaws. Canceled history prevents future generations from making the same mistakes. Canceled history prevents us from knowing what was good and right about our founding. We are told to begin anew. Will this fresh start prevent us from making new mistakes?

School systems throughout the U.S. have been negligent in teaching U.S. government philosophy and history. Students are being taught utopian Marxist ideas. Students are not being taught about the good things this country has done. I remember asking my grandson what he learned about WWII in his public high school. He said they only spent one class period on that. Most of the U.S. history instruction dealt with U.S. barbarism in the Vietnam war.

Decades ago, schools used to have civics courses that taught the philosophy and values of our founding and the God-given rights specified in the U.S. Constitution. Now, we have enemies of the Constitution. Freedom of speech is most obviously under attack. If you say things that are not politically correct, you may well be shunned and canceled. Book and magazine publishers are selectively rejecting manuscripts that express unpopular ideas. Conformism is the new standard not only for speech but general behavior as well. We are being herded like sheep into behaving the way our betters require. Communist China is becoming our new model for personal behavior.

The New York Times is sponsoring a new U.S. history curriculum called the 1619 project that asserts that the U.S. was founded as a systemically racist country. The evidence presented is that in 1619, a ship appeared near point comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia that carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, the Times says it is finally time to tell our story truthfully. Of course, the Times does not mention that this is not the whole truth of our history. The new curriculum aims to erase the whole truth of our history.

I just had a book published on truthfulness (Realville. How to Get Real in an Unreal World). We surely do live in an unreal world, dominated by lies, cheating, denial, delusion, deception, withholding, and pretense. All these forms of untruthfulness are being expressed by political activists who promote the agenda that all our history was bad and therefore needs to be erased. Worse yet, the cancellation has the hidden agenda of advancing control over us. It seems to be working as the activists intend.

 

Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence of Absence

It is hard to realize the existence of realities that that we cannot see or measure. This was impressed on me when I recently visited a planetarium in which the audience and I viewed a map of the universe created by the Hubble space camera. The camera had taken many successive snapshots of the sky as it moved along its orbit, saving each adjacent shot side by side. The overall result, projected on the curved ceiling of the presentation hall, looks like a bow tie. If we did not know any better, we would think that the universe actually has this structure, with nothing outside the three-dimensional bow tie. The confusion arises if we don’t realize that the camera is located in the center of its horizon view. The camera’s horizon is constrained by its orbit. To get a better mapping, it would have to create maps from all points in all theoretical orbits around the earth.

 

In this case, the evidence for a relatively homogeneous three-dimensional universe caused a central black hole explosion is missing. We might erroneously conclude that the “big bang” theory is wrong. But absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. This principle emerges in another context when we say that certain phenomena are “immaterial.” Material things have a chemistry and physics, and things that do not seem explainable in those terms are often called “immaterial.”

 

What about things we call “abstract,” such as probability? Probability is not defined as a reality but rather the likelihood that a certain reality may emerge. In Shannon’s Information Theory, for example, “information” would not be regarded as a material reality as such but rather as the probability that a certain material event may occur. Indeed, information’s lack of material reality was probably why Shannon chose to define it the way he did. Probability ideas apply to much of the “spooky” aspect of quantum mechanics.

 

In the field of neuroscience, many scholars use the words “immaterial force” to explain consciousness. Yet, how can a force have the force of mediating our thoughts and willed action if it is immaterial? In the field of religion, many theologians use the word immaterial to explain the soul as some kind of immaterial form of being. How can something “be” and yet not be?

 

Neither case explains anything. In both cases, “immaterial” is intended to have the circular definition of not being material. What can this word possibly mean? To claim that something is immaterial is to imply that it does not exist. We know from personal experience that consciousness surely exists, and there are many good reasons to believe that souls exist too.

 

A fundamental premise of science is that all things are material, including those things that we cannot explain in material terms. Here is a list of material phenomena that were originally thought by many to be immaterial, because at the time there was no evidence for a material explanation:

 

·       The germ theory of disease

·       Immunity to infection

·       X-rays and other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum

·       Heat and cold

·       Gravity

·       Curved space-time

·       Quantum mechanics

·       Unconscious Mind

 

Quantum mechanics is of particular interest and relevance to this issue. Numerous experiments have demonstrated that observing something, even if just by a laboratory instrument, can make apparent physical realities we did not know existed. Matter can go from one spot to another without moving through the intervening space (called quantum tunneling). Information moves instantly (faster than the speed of light) across vast distances. Clearly, this does not reflect the kind of reality we ordinarily experience. Yet it exists.

 

Two explanations are possible. One is that the act of observation actually creates the manifest physical phenomena. Another is that the physical properties were pre-existent in inapparent form. Neither possibility makes sense in terms of our present knowledge. While many physicists can describe quantum phenomena, no one can explain them. Nonetheless, the facts are demonstrable.

 

What then is meant by material reality? Real things can seem unreal (immaterial?) under certain circumstances. This  perspective suggests that everything could be material, though sometimes that material reality may not always be apparent. Most likely, things we think of today as immaterial, such as consciousness and soul, are real material phenomena that we think must be immaterial because we have not yet discovered their material nature.

 

Science, by definition, MUST deal exclusively with material things. It is not possible for things to exist and yet not exist because they are immaterial. Thus, those who cling to immateriality are obliged to defend their position with compelling logic and evidence, if there were any. The rest of us are left with the conclusion that everything is material, though sometimes that material reality may not always be apparent. This surely can apply to consciousness and the soul. Considering consciousness or the soul as immaterial precludes any possibility that science is relevant to these phenomena. On the other hand, if consciousness and the soul have a material reality that is not yet apparent, then science might find evidence to help document and explain those realities.