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Affiliation
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School of Public Health, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA. |
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Abstract
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When we think about addictions, we usually think about drugs and alcohol—maybe gambling. Hatred is not only a seductive addiction but also the biggest existential threat to mankind. Its positive feedback loop penetrates family, national and supranational narratives (Maziak 2018). Its viral contagion masterfully oscillates between lysogenic and lytic stages at the will of mankind. It allows children—our collective future—to be hacked to death.
Within the past century, inherently inane hatred has claimed the lives of millions. From failed diplomatic experiments that led to World War I, the systematic genocide of marginalized and subaltern populations during World War II, the ideological clash of communism and the free market backed by the global hegemonic superpowers in developing nations during the Cold War, to the recent genocide against Muslims in Bosnia or Tutsis in Rwanda, humankind self-destructs when our hatred goes lytic. Hatred lowers our collective cognitive defenses of rationality and heightens our desire to blame others, to feel more powerful and find an explanation—regardless of the absurdity or implausibility. Hatred is no different than the same addictive poison that is inhaled when smoking a cigarette—the only difference is that the secondhand smoke of hatred from an individual can affect millions.
There is a famous piece of Persian poetry that describes all of humanity as a one, and when one part hurts, we all hurt: In trying to treat the hate locally with hate, the hatred metastasizes and our chances of survival are very slim. Hatred is a self-perpetuating oncogene that can be found in all of our DNA—both consciously and subconsciously. Our societies have taught us to otherize certain groups due to past trauma and pure prejudice.
This is the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide where Hutu neighbors turned on their Tutsi neighbors with machetes, clubs and their bare hands to inflict a painful and horrific death. Twenty-five years ago in Rwanda, children watched their mothers be raped and fathers be hacked limb by limb to death like a fallen tree branch (Uwizeye et al. 2016). Churches’ walls are still stained with blood where toddlers were swung like a baseball bat in batting practice against the wall until skulls cracked and tears dried. Transgenerational consequences—both personal and systemic—continue to plague survivors and their children (Montgomery et al. 2019; Roth et al. 2014; Self-Brown et al. 2014).
But for the first time in history, our immune system was able to defeat this strain of hatred without a different hatred. Our T4 cells were still delayed in identifying and recruiting the T8 cells; however, in Rwanda, a local spontaneous missense genetic mutation arose in our T8 cells where forgiveness was employed to destroy hate.
Where hatred empowered neighbor to hack neighbor to death with machete, forgiveness emboldened the bereaved widows and children to continue to live. Tutsi leadership in Rwanda refused to allow Tutsis to take revenge on their neighbors’ barbarism and brutality. Tutsi leadership removed these tribal and charged labels and focused on rebuilding and repairing the Rwandan collective ...
Language: en |