When hate and hate collide

This is hateful and disgusting.

Hate is divisive, it always has been and always will be. That's the point, really. If you hate someone or something, you don’t want to be associated with it in any way; you want to drive it away. 

Hate divides and fragments what might otherwise be united. I suppose that, to a degree, the United States has never been completely united (the nice thing is, freedom doesn’t demand total unity). But now, in part because it's so easy to access information — legitimate and illegitimate — the fragments appear shaper than ever before. 

To believe that hatred runs in only one direction is not only wrong, it's dangerous. There's a notable distinction between activist groups that seek to protest peacefully and hate groups, whose only purpose is to divide, disrupt, and destroy. That said, it's incredibly naive to think that line hasn't been blurred beyond recognition these days. 

This is also hateful and disgusting.

The peace we claim we want — the unity we supposedly seek — will never be realized as long as we continued to hide in echo chambers that tell us only what we want to hear rather what we ought to know. 

These echo chambers are the cable TV networks that feed us information, they’re the radio talk shows we listen to with unflinching loyalty; they’re the celebrities to whom we yield the power to shape our opinions and, of course, they’re the social media networks — let's add blogs to that list, too — that allow us to surround ourselves with scads of like-minded individuals. 

Please understand, there is nothing wrong with having a favorite cable news network, nor is there anything wrong with listening to talk radio. There’s nothing wrong with having a favorite celebrity or two, and there is nothing wrong with using social media. The problem comes when we allow those things to think for us. As an echo chamber gives us the same words repeated over and over, these other examples often provide us with a singular opinions over and over and over again. 

We are told that we, as a society, have progressed from what we used to be. In some ways that is absolutely true. But at this point, with hate levels rising and tolerance plummeting, our modern society’s accepted way of communicating has not made us better. To the extent interpersonal communication still exists, it continues to diminish as more extrapersonal options become available. At the risk of coming off like an old curmudgeon, I’ll carefully point out that the art form once known as face-to-face conversation may not be dead, but it’s definitely approaching the end of a ghastly free fall. 

What you’re reading should in no way be considered a pushback against modern technology; after all, I’m not typing this out on an old Smith-Corona and you’re darn sure not reading it on newsprint. No, my concern is not modern technology as much as it is what modern technology is doing to us. See, while things like satellites and the Internet have effectively made us a global community, they have also helped to exploit the difference between us. 

And that brings us back to hate. 

Let’s first make sure we understand that hate existed in idyllic days gone by. It absolutely did. It played a pivotal role in the Civil War era, and it thrived in the Jim Crow South. That terrible hate divided us, and it continues to do so. Reality suggests that hate cannot be wished away, and bumpersticker responses to it clearly haven’t worked either. 

Hokey though it may sound to some, I happily put my faith in the belief that only love can conquer hate. It’s the application and implementation I worry about. 

See, it’s going to have to start somewhere, and it will require a colossal movement that ultimately asks strangers to place their trust in each other. There’s just no way that can happen while we’re still hiding in our echo chambers, because those places exploit hatred and fuel fear. They breed agendas, political and social, and they seem to shun the search for commonality and understanding. 

Finally, I’ve got just one small caveat for those who’ve kept reading all the way to the end. 

Here it is: If you like what you’ve read here, and confidently assume it's meant for opposing fragment groups and their unfathomably offensive agendas, you missed the point.