Published: September 05, 2006 09:46 am            

Stopping the hate involves ‘reframing’

Editor’s note: The following is the second of four weekly columns leading up to the Sept. 21 Stop the Hate Walk in Clinton.

On Sept. 21 the Clinton community will have its annual Stop the Hate Walk from Clinton Community College to Ashford University (“The Mount”). This event is a prelude to “A Peace Conference: Giving Witness to Nonviolence” sponsored by the Clinton Franciscans and Friends on the following weekend, Sept. 29 to Oct 1.

The motivation of the Stop the Hate Walk comes from concern by Clinton community leaders and educators about all kinds of violence and intolerance. The event gives us an afternoon to walk and reflect together on these vexing questions: How do hate, intolerance, violence, prejudice and racism degrade the quality of our lives? What can we do about it?

“Stopping the hate” is much easier said than done. I’m reminded of Nancy Reagan’s futile admonition to “Just say NO” to drugs. More recently, George Lakoff has written on this “neurolinguistic” problem in his book, “Don’t think of an Elephant.”

Try as we might, the image of an elephant still lumbers majestically into the three-ring circus of our consciousness. Likewise, thinking of “non-violence” is hard to do without also pondering stark images and thoughts of violence.

How can we get beyond this paradox? It might help to accept that people will get angry with each other from time to time. Anger, fear, pain and loss are part of being alive in a human community. We trip on each other’s toes, suffer in accidents, get in each other’s way, take more than our fair share, talk more than our fair share, get humiliated by gossip, get dumped in a romance and lose a loved one to death.

Anger, fear, pain and loss are part of nature’s toolbox for solving these problems of living in community. We can see these basic emotions hard-wired into the anatomy and physiology of the brain. However, most other thoughts and feelings that accompany anger, fear, pain and loss are learned and can be chosen.

Hate is certainly one of these learned attitudes. Often when anger relates to injustice, the choice not to hate is more difficult. Students encounter bullies in school. Sometimes the bullies are teachers and administrators. Violence and abuse by trusted, but untrustworthy, adults visited upon children.

Corporations lay off workers and cut benefits due to “outsourcing, downsizing, mergers” and outright corruption. People fall victim to crime and violence in their neighborhoods. People are denied opportunities to prosper by prejudice, racism, and discrimination. Pollution and environmental degradation bring chronic disease and fewer opportunities to commune with wilderness.

Although it is far away from us in Iowa, people are maimed and killed in acts of war and terrorism. Sometimes this comes home to us when someone close to us is serving in uniform or is “in the wrong place at the wrong time” of a terrorist event.

Hate is as much a thought as it is a feeling. Hate is like a videotape that we play over and over to ourselves in situations where we feel unresolved anger, fear, pain or loss. Some psychologists see depression as anger or hate turned inward on the self. We sometimes self-medicate with hate in order to treat our despair and depression. We sometimes play these “hate tapes” to restore energy in the face of despair or to feel less left out from “us” by hating “them.” Politicians prey upon this human tendency with propaganda messages telling us who to hate and why we should hate them.

How do we stop playing these hate tapes? It’s not as easy as turning off an iPod or Walkman. A new tape needs to be made. Lakoff calls this “reframing.” It involves imagination, creativity, critical thinking and a lot of forgiveness. It involves a new pattern of thinking that is kinder and more compassionate toward not only others, but ourselves.

Walking, while thinking and discussing problems with friends, is a tradition that has been practiced since the times of Plato and Socrates. Let’s take a walk on Sept. 21 to replace the old hate tapes with new, more peaceful ones.

John Ivens, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Ashford University.

        

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