Overcoming Hate

by Val Serrie, Date: 12/12/2005 Article # 038

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Think about how you make a friend.

All friends start out as strangers. But then one person shares something personal with the other. Then, the other responds in kind by sharing something personal back. If the level of sharing stays at that level, then they remain friendly acquaintances. But if it continues deeper, so that the sharing escalates into sharing deeply personal thoughts and feelings and fears of each to the other, then the friendship deepens. The two become close friends. A type of love develops. This is because we are all worthy of love. By sharing ourselves we show our “love-worthiness” to another, and they show theirs to us.

You may not agree with all the actions of a stranger. But when you take the time to truly understand them, and understand what they feel and understand what motivates them, then you begin to understand why they do what they do. And you can find forgiveness.

Sometimes we are simply overcome by events and the best intentions go awry, but a true, deep understanding of the other will withstand a lot of troubles. When you have invested significant time and energy and effort into a relationship, you care for the other person’s welfare, and they care for yours. This is friendship.

The opposite of friends are enemies. Typically, enemies are people who don’t know each other well. They don’t know each other’s mind, so they don’t understand their needs, fears and desires, therefore they don’t understand their motives, and therefore don’t trust their actions.

In the TV series called "Star Trek: The Next Generation" there was an episode about a highly renowned negotiator called Riva. He was called upon to settle the dispute between two warring factions on a troubled planet. As he walked into the briefing room on the way to the planet, the crew of the Enterprise started to give him an explanation of what caused the war and the basis of the disputes. He stopped them.
He said something similar to this: “This war has been going on for over 100 years? Then I don’t need to hear what originally started the war. Your facts will say that it is over some disputed piece of land or such, but by now that has become irrelevant. It has carried on too long. By now it has become personal. They hate each other personally, and the only way to fix that is to find some common shared goal that they each want to strive for and work toward. We must forget the past and work toward that future.”

I think that is a wise insight toward how people hate each other, and how to fix that, but I also suggest the idea of getting to know each other better. On a personal level. Truly understanding each other at a level that allows one people to see the other not as some demonized group, but as people, like themselves. People with similar hopes, dreams, fears. Sting once wrote a song in the midst of the cold war of the 1980’s called “Russians Love Their Children Too” . That’s it.

In February, 2006, Steven Spielberg will be trying a project to encourage peace in the middle east between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He will buy 250 video cameras and he will split them into two groups. He will give 125 of them to Israeli children and 125 to Palestinian children. Each group of children will videotape their daily lives and make a film of how they live. They will show their friends and relatives, and they will talk about what it is they want and their hopes and fears. Each will pour their personalities out, not to each other, but to the camera. To a piece of art. A film. Then Spielberg will take the movies made and swap them, giving the Palestinians’ movies to the Israelis, and vice versa.

I think this is an excellent, highly commendable act. I love the concept of this project, and I am very impressed by Spielberg for thinking of it and putting it in place. THIS is how you eventually solve a 100 year war. Not with missiles. Not with rhetoric. Not even with enforced “tolerance” of each other – but with understanding. To understand someone truly and deeply is to see the goodness and the worthiness in them. That is how you overcome hatred. That is how you make a friend. And THAT is what is needed.