The Alchemy of Hate
It’s hard to keep my mind on much else today, other than on the upsurge of horrific violence against foreigners in my very own city. In places just kilometers away from where I live and work people are being kicked out of their homes, looted, beaten and set alight for being ‘other’. The taxi rank and supermarket a few minutes’ walk from where I am right now, have just shut down hours early in anticipation of another afternoon of fire and hate. I’m feeling alternately numb and horrified.
Naturally there are a number of lenses through which to try to make sense of what’s being called xenophobic backlash (though I’m not convinced that’s what’s actually afoot). There are economic explanations, political explanations, cultural explanations, even bureaucratic explanations if you listen to the sagacity of Mamphele Ramphele. And on all those levels there also possible actions to take if, like me, you are feeling appalled and grief-stricken by mob behaviour that one can’t help but compare with the sniffing and snuffing out of Jews only 70 or so years ago, or our own local brand of apartheid for that matter. Things you can do to contribute include political lobbying, supporting newly-homeless folk by taking blankets, food, toiletries and water to police stations and making your voice heard in the press.
But more than that, I have to engage with this violence personally and spiritually. Although I myself can cringe at the esotericism of this approach, I trust deeply that the internal eventually becomes the external and therefore that’s where to go when treating the cause of the disease, and not just the symptoms. If the world is only ever a mirror of the self (which is why Gandhi famously suggested that to change the world we must become that desired change ourselves), then the actions we see around us (yes, even theft, murder and the like) belong to all of us. Rather than that disheartening me, it inspires me. At last I can contribute. At least I can be part of making a new reality, when just dropping off some blankets (which I have also done) doesn’t feel like enough
It’s easy (and probably natural) to focus our outrage and judgment on the people bearing the torches and tyres or those in power who’ve let it come this far. Yet, if we do, the place we are coming from is exactly the same one that they are – hatred and blame. More of this in our country, and our world, can not be the solution. So today I’ve been looking in myself for these two thugs that I see mirrored around me. Perhaps for you there are more striking reflections than hatred and blame, giving you another set of questions to raise, but for me, that’s where I’m starting to look.
Hatred
Is there anyone you feel justified to hate? BEE fat cats, the Chinese, the person who hijacked your car, the taxman, your boss, the government, paedophiles, your sister who got all the privileges, Robert Mugabe?
The emotion of hatred exists and therefore has value. Feeling it and expressing it healthily must be available to us (and perhaps part of our problem is an overly politically correct context) but the rot sets in when we feel justified to hate and to act on that hatred in any way we like. Unreachable as this sounds, the only way to create the world we’d like our kids (and ourselves) to live in, is if we never let ourselves justify a perpetual hatred. After all, if our hatred can be justified, then why can’t somebody else’s? Swearing at someone on TV and burning down a shack are just a few degrees of hatred apart.
I’m investigating at the moment whether I’m holding onto any hatred. It’s not an easy task because those of us who like to think we are educated and somewhat self-aware, presume that hatred is something rather outdated, an emotion for the ‘less developed’ along with things like, say, sloth and wrath. But after persistent searching, some of the places that I’m finding speckles of hatred are:
· Where I regularly ridicule others (on TV, in newspapers, in conversations with friends)
· Where my highest values get threatened e.g. people that send me hate-mail about my work (yes, really) or people who don’t think my children are the cutest, brightest, most beautiful angels ever to be humanly conceived (no, not really)
· Where my social circle justifies hatred and I just slip into it (usually toward despotic, neurotic, psychotic or just plain stupid political leaders)
· Where I transfer my hatred from an ‘unacceptable’ focus onto a more justifiable one (being angry at my husband instead of at my baby, shouting at the cat instead of the CEO of the medical aid scheme and so on)
· Abstract areas of life – hating poverty, debt, ignorance, violence, mess, injustice and so on. Hating hatred, as I’ve already mentioned, keeps it alive and thriving.
Naturally it’s a little futile to examine all the external locations of our hatred without looking at the primary source, hatred of ourselves. I realise that sounds a little overdramatic, but I can’t tell you how many clients I have whose dream is to bring peace and healing to the world in one way or another, but feel quite justified to hate their own fear, addictions, body, habits, stuckness, inadequacies, secret desires or lack of clarity. How can we possibly transform hatred in the world if we are carrying it for ourselves?
Blame
Blaming illegal immigrants for the poverty, unemployment and women-lessness (yes, this is one of the major arguments) of some South Africans is (to me anyway) quite clearly a case of scape-goating. I found myself arguing vehemently with a friend today that the spate of attacks on foreigners was a case of locals being too loyal to the ruling party and finding another, less powerful, group of people to punish for the appalling conditions of their lives. During my convincing debate however, I realised that my own argument, just like that of the looting mob, was rooted in blame.
I’m not suggesting that people should never be held accountable nor face the consequences of their choices. But there is a difference between calling someone to book, and blaming them for your sorrows. And here’s the difference in a little example from my own life:
One of my husband’s few Extremely Irritating Sickening Habits (EISH) is spending hours on his computer upstairs. I regularly blame our untidy house, my small writing output, all our debt, my children’s dirty hair and anything else that concerns me on this. There is some legitimacy to my complaints, and just this evening we made a deal about some of the no-go times of day to be on the computer (bath-time, breakfast-time, during a fire and so on). Asking him to be accountable for chores that we share is one thing, but blaming him solely for Complaints A – D above, is an escape and one that can only leave me paralysed and resentful with no options for meaningful action. If the story you are telling yourself also leaves you in that position (or if the only action you can think of is torching someone’s home) then it’s highly likely you are blaming.
When (or maybe in present company I should be saying if J) you do encounter blame and hatred in yourself, the only way to heal it is, paradoxically, to love it better. (Or were you thinking that feeling hate and blame towards your hate and blame was gonna dismantle that hate and blame, huh?). Just the awareness of when and where it comes up for you, already dissolves it somewhat and if you’d like to take it further then have a conversation with that yucky (as my son would say) part of you until it feels heard and tells you why it is acting that way. We know that criticising and punishing a young child all the time only produces more undesirable behaviour, why don’t we practice that towards ourselves?
As we create more compassion in ourselves, it will spill over into our lives, and into the world at large. That’s the only way I know how to alchemise hate.
