In her routine, the stand-up comedian and actor, Sarah Silverman had a valid observation: She said that she is a product of her upbringing. Her liberal activism is not a surprise, she said, given that she grew up with progressive Jewish parents.
You are perhaps nodding in agreement.
What about the children who grew up with parents who taught them to hate? It is not difficult to imagine that there are adults who hate pick-your-group, and these adults have kids. They are not going to teach their kids to love everybody when they are filled with hate for some "wrong" kind of people, right? (Here's a lengthy essay on one such real life person, if you are interested.)
modi, putin, trump, duterte, and the like (all men?) have mainstreamed hate. What previously was said and done only behind closed doors and in secret is now openly said and done. Unlike the small pox or polio virus, hate apparently cannot be completely eliminated, and it keeps coming back to cause epidemics over and over again. And, in the process, the hate virus infects even people who were brought up by parents who taught their children well.
Over the past few years, it seems that Muslims have displaced Blacks as the most hated group. It is just bizarre that the hate virus goes after new targets if attacking the old targets do not produce the virulence that was once possible. It does not matter to the religious that their messiah preached about love, and not about hate. We humans are messed up.
Even the Buddha's name cannot stop his followers, it seems. Yes, I am referring to the crazy hate-filled Buddhist monks leading the war against Muslims in Myanmar. I first blogged about this back in April 2013. Imagine that!
In 2014, I wrote that it is practically game over when even Buddhists commit genocide. In 2015, I was shocked that even the Dalai Lama could not get the attention of the Myanmar politicians; they didn't care for what the respected religious leader had to say.
Earlier this year, before the fascist's official swearing-in, I wrote that we should stop saying "never again" given how much we have stood by witnessing the Myanmar genocide. Should we be surprised then that the rest of the world has gone on with its business of hating immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, gays, trans, ...
Is hate, or evil, a permanent feature of the human condition? Or, "As the American clergyman William Sloane Coffin put it: “Nothing is
easier than to denounce the evildoer, and nothing is more difficult than
to understand him.”"
3 comments:
Of course there is hate in the world and it will never go away. Its not easy to struggle against billions of years of evolution, although I know you are not seeing it that way !! In the animal kingdom, hate is the dominant theme.
Yes, we have not succeeded at all in trying to minimise , let alone eliminate hate. Somehow it seems easy to stir up negative emotions and seems so difficult to maintain the positive ones.
The Rohingya situation is really sad. As it always is the case, the common people are sandwiched between a terrorist outfit and a brutal state. And they are the ones who suffer horribly.
Tsk Tsk. Mind your language young man !!
I am not bothered too much about what Augustine thought or did. That's his problem !
Whoever wants to do whatever in the privacy of his or her bedroom - let them do what they want and its none of anybody else's business.
The courts are already diluting the anti homosexual nature of Indian laws. Very shortly the ban will simply be removed although its very likely that sex with an animal will remain forbidden by law !!!!
The issue of same sex marriage will however be unlikely to be resolved anytime soon in India. One of the complications in India is that family law is governed according to religion. There's Hindu law, there's Muslim personal law and the like. That's why triple talaq existed for long in the Muslim community although Hindus were not bound by that.
Looks like you accidentally posted the comment about Augustine and same-sex here ...
1. "I am not bothered too much about what Augustine thought or did. That's his problem !"
Unfortunately, it did not merely stay as his problem. That's exactly what the entire post was about. Augustine and his penis problems resulted in a religious thinking that has come to define sex and marriage.
2. "although its very likely that sex with an animal will remain forbidden by law !!!!"
Perhaps that was in jest. But, it is not funny because one of the arguments that anti-same-sex groups have always offered is that legalizing same-sex relations is nothing but a slippery slope that will take us to legalizing human-animal sex.
3. "One of the complications in India is that family law is governed according to religion."
I have always argued that government has no place in sanctioning marriages. If religions have different rules for marriages then it is up to the followers to practice them or not. We might be born into and raised in a religion, but as adults we have all the freedom (in most countries) to practice whatever we want to practice. I don't see this as a complication as you do.
The state has gotten involved in marriage matters because of taxes and benefits. The moment government says married people get certain benefits that unmarried do not, then we run into the challenge of defining what marriage is and, therefore, who gets to marry.
Marriage as a religious sacrament is different from marriage in this "secular" framework.
And, btw, "the complications in India is that family law is governed according to religion" is one of the many leftovers of the bastards who divided and ruled the Subcontinent!
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