Intermission - Q1 of 2025

It’s been a while since I’ve published anything here. This is partly because every time I try to write there is something much more important and terrible happenning in the world that I’m not qualified to write about. Everything else including whatever it was that I was trying to write about seems trivial and inconsequential by comparison.

Many years ago I’d have said that there is very little evil in the world and that most people you will meet are good. I still sort of believe that people are good, but I’m beginning to think that the word “most” may not be readily applicable.

School children has this would-you-rather question about a big red button.

“Hypothetically, if there were a big red button that when pushed gives you a million dollars, but also kills a random person, would you press it?”

It is safe to say that the answer to this question is predominently yes.

More worryingly, the reward doesn’t need to be nearly that high. It seems, for some, there doesn’t need to be a reward at all as long as the person who would be harmed is of a specific race, sexual orientation, body dysmorphia, where they were born, or religion. There’s enough hate to take the place of a reward.

People aren’t born this way. Decades of being conditioned to cast out a group of people gradually dehumanizes them. With enough rhetoric, likemindedness, and reinforcement anything can be normalized. Anyone disagreeing – and is not a member of the outcasts – can be easily disregarded as being the enemy or at least misguided. Hate becomes self-sustaining, and can last generations.

We can win battles or wars, but we are not going to really move forward as a species unless we figure this one out – how to teach compassion, and how to reason someone away from hate?

Contrary to popular opinion I think pushing the hateful away is not a sustainable solution in the long run. Suppressing hateful behavior without corrective guidance has historically just made the hateful group more resentful and even more entrenched in their beliefs. Ultimately they will – as evidenced in recent events – have enough momentum and intensity to turn the tables.