Have you ever noticed how much hate there is in the world? If you spend much time watching TV News or reading the newspapers you have. There seems no end to the hate that people feel. The seem to hate those that are not like them or their group. They hate people who are the wrong color or the wrong religion or those who speak a different language. Even people with the same catagory of religion, like Islam, hate each other if one is Sunni and one is Shia. Christian religions are just as bad. I live in Utah where the predominant religion is Mormanism. The Baptists have protests at the Mormon's semi-annual conferences and say the Mormans are not Christians.As near as I can figure it out, it's because of a disaggreement over what constitutes the "Godhead".
My theory is that people hate what they fear. They fear the "other",that which is not me or mine.What if I'm changed by assocciating with the "other" and my people don't recognise me anymore. What if being "gay" is catching?
I once heard that the opposite of love is not hate,but fear. That really made sense to me. So what if we combat hate, which is really fear, with love. Sometimes it's really hard to understand the "other" because we really are quite different, with many different experiences and traditions. Maybe we could agree to be different and accept those differences that we can, then look for samenesses. There has to be ways we're the same given we're both human. Maybe then we could work to love that sameness about the other and eventually,if not love the differences, at least give them some respect.
It's not likely that we'll get world peace tomorrow, but maybe we could make some peace in the office or nieghborhood to start, work on the world later, if it's still around.
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