Sunday December 4, 2005 How can you hate people you don't even know?

I don't know you. How can I hate you? I've never met you. I probably never will meet you in my life. The people in my life that I have dealt with personally can only number in the thousands – that leaves millions and millions of you that I will never come to know. Most of you don't have any idea of who I am and how I feel, but some of you hate me just because of where I was born. Some of you hate me because of my color or race or age. How did this come to be?

Since you have never met me, it must be a learned thing. Someone in your life has taught you how to hate me, even though they or you have never met me. If we met, we could very likely learn from each other and even come to like or at least respect each other. Instead, we learn from our teachers or our leaders to hate anyone who is not like us. Anyone who doesn't think like us is evil. Only people like us are good. We know the answers and everyone else is wrong.

I think we've proved this to each other over the centuries. In the name of religion or commerce or peace, we have killed millions of each other. Here in America, we “discovered” a new world and eliminated millions of the previous inhabitants. We have fought the French, the English, the Canadians, the Mexicans, the Spanish, the Germans, the Japanese, the North Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis. Those who once we considered our enemies have since become our friends or allies and some who were once friends are now considered enemies. We have wasted the resources and lives of generations of young men for some long forgotten reasons that seemed so important then. We learned over and over to hate and fight and kill. We are taught that this is human nature.

I don't believe this!
I don't hate you – I don't even know you. You have friends and family and are concerned with providing yourself and your family the best life that you can – just like me. I don't want to take from you what is yours. I want us to share whatever we can to give us all as much comfort in this life as possible. I don't want you to take from me – but I don't mind sharing. There must be a way we can all get along and help each other. We spend so much time hating and fighting and protecting and building walls that we have little left to share. We spend our future on the machines of war when we could be helping each other and tearing down the walls.

What's wrong with us? Why can't we learn from past mistakes?