Hatred

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At the end of the year they are telling us what ‘the word of the year’ is. I have no idea who decides this and what its purpose is. Do we need a word of the year? Will life be so much poorer without it? However, for the year 2025 I think that the word hatred covers the entire year. It is the word most used and most expressed. Everywhere and by all authorities. And individuals have sent out a record number of hate messages on social media, the medium that ‘unites people’. The place where you can have the most ‘friends’, the most ‘likes’, the most ‘support’.

 

Hatred or hate is an intense negative emotional response towards certain people, things or ideas, usually related to opposition or revulsion toward something. Hatred is often associated with intense feelings of anger, contempt, and disgust. The Bible calls it a destructive, sinful hostility, but Christians all over the world display a hatred against something they perceive as ‘evil’, as something profoundly immoral. Immorality is something that is not conforming to accepted standards. Accepted by whom? Any group of people can agree to accept a certain behaviour, certain actions and certain reasoning, which makes everything that doesn’t conform to that agreed standard ‘immoral’ and ‘evil’. It serves the purpose to keep the standards of such a group clean and secure, free from infiltration by strange, foreign and ‘unacceptable’ ideas. Within such a group, people can easily adhere to clear guidelines for their lives. So maybe one can imagine these people ‘to hate’ their society, their community, being infiltrated by other non-conformist ideas and behaviour, while at the same time not displaying any hatred towards other groups that live their lives based on a different morality. Hence, morality is an agreed set of rules a specific community has chosen to live by. Such a group could then hate any attempt to interfere with their standards, with their morality, while at the same time allowing others to use different standards, a different morality.

 

Bringing two, or more, different sets of rules, different moralities, together will always create clashes. People within a group, within a community, cannot, at the same time, adhere to opposing views of how life should be lived. Simply put, even if we all agree that we need to be nice to one another, different moralities will create conflicts and hatred around an issue. ‘Being nice’ may mean to me that it is my duty to try and prevent my neighbour from doing something that I believe might be harmful to someone. Hence I interfere in my neighbour’s life on the basis that I am nice to him and to others. ‘Being nice’ may mean to someone else that he allows his neighbour space and freedom to do whatever the neighbour wants to do, or believes he needs to do in his life. ‘Being nice’ may mean to a third person that he keeps telling his neighbour what is morally correct and what isn’t. Forcing different moralities closely together will ensure that sparks are flying and that fires will ignite.

 

The root cause of hatred is stemming from a mix of fear, ignorance, and insecurity, often fuelled by perceived threats, past trauma, or feelings of powerlessness, leading to a need for control or for a defence against inner pain. Anything that leads to a deep sense of fear, a fear threatening the very existence of life, turns into hatred against whatever is being perceived as that threat. Undermining the basic foundations of a community leads to an existential fear, leads to hate. Weakening the moral structure of a society will lead to hate. Forcing people to accept rules, behaviour and ideas that don’t conform to the accepted standards will lead to hate. Pretending that one set of rules has more value than another and therefore trying to implement that set of rules in communities with a different commonly held belief is immoral and will lead to hate.

 

It is very interesting to note that in our western society hate has been labelled a crime. But apparently it is not all hatred that is a crime. For instance, it is perfectly acceptable to hate Putin or Hezbollah, without being accused of a criminal offence. Hate crime is defined as a criminal offence against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity. Hence, hate is only a crime when it is an offence that is motivated by a bias, a prejudice, against very specific aspects of life. Unless you hate Putin because he is heterosexual, your hatred for the man is not classified as a criminal offence. Hezbollah you are allowed to hate because they adhere to a different religion, and you still are not committing a criminal offence. But in this case, this religion based bias is acceptable, because Hezbollah is included in our list of legitimate hate targets. Our authority conveniently provides us with a list of people and organisations we are suppose to hate. If we don’t, we are labelled a terrorist or a terrorist supporter, which means that we ourselves become a legitimate target for hatred. Providing legitimate hate targets acts as a safety valve for the community. Citizens can vent their frustration unlimitedly on the subjects on the list, refraining from directing their hatred towards anything or anybody else, who is supported by the creators of the hate list. Some you must hate, and others you commit a crime if you exhibit any opposition at all against them.

 

Maybe I completely misunderstood the main message of Christianity, the moral compass most of the western world is supposed to be built upon. All my life I thought it went something like this. “Jesus taught followers to love their enemies, to do good to those who hate them, to bless those who curse them, and to pray for persecutors, thereby directly countering hatred with radical love, compassion, and forgiveness, even turning the other cheek instead of seeking revenge.”  Fighting for what we believe to be ‘our right’. Denying others the same right and the same freedom we demand for ourselves. Carrying an ever growing arsenal of weapons to defend ourselves and to be used ‘in the prevention of being attacked’. To attack is the best defence. Claiming the right to defend oneself. To revenge is to execute justice. The core message of authorities of communities that speak about Christian morality has become ‘an eye for an eye’. Do we need another Gandhi to tell us that an eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind? We are still playing cowboys and Indians, good and bad. And everybody, every community, is the good guy. And everybody else, every other community, is the bad guy. Let’s now all get up and save the world.

 

I am lost.

 

A person who hates Jews is said to be antisemitic. What is a person who hates Palestinians called?

A person who hates gay people is said to be homophobc. What is a person who hates heterosexuals called?

A person who hates the woman’s right movement is called an anti-feminist. What is a person who hates the man’s right movement called?

 

If we are no longer allowed to see our own community as ‘better’, as ‘superior’, to other communities, to see it as the one community I love to be part of, if we are no longer allowed to primarily look after the moral compass of our own community, how will our community be able to survive? If nobody is allowed to nurture their own community, to keep it pure, to maintain its traditions, to establish its own right and wrong, what will there be left for people to identify with? Or has someone somewhere decided that people identifying themselves as ‘belonging’ to a specific group has to stop, has become immoral? All religions have to intermingle, have to merge, except the Jewish religion. All countries have to force unions and have to accept supra-governmental powers, except Israel. All countries have to integrate other cultures within their communities, except the Jewish people and Israel. The Jewish community is allowed to keep itself pure and doesn’t need to accept outside interference. Who has decided everybody else will have to accept outside interference?

 

I am lost.

 

If we all want peace, why are we creating and sustaining wars?

If we all want to be loved, why are we spreading so much hatred?

If we all want to be left alone to live a quiet life, why are we interfering in other lives?

If we all want our truth to be heard, why are we not willing to listen to others?

If we all want to live without fear, why are we making ourselves a threat to others?

 

Why don’t our actions match our words?

 

Is there anyone left who understands what ‘unconditional love’ means? Agreeing to live in peace on the condition that ….

 

 

 

December 2025