HATE

HATE

By 

Fay E.A. Reid

Hate is not an innate emotion. We are not born with hatred. Fear is innate but definitely not hatred. No, it is learned behavior, something that has to be taught.

When I hear, or read something about hate I’m always reminded by a song from South Pacific by Rogers and Hammerstein, “You’ve got to be taught”

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear You’ve got be taught from year to year It’s got to be drummed in you dear little ear You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made And people whose skin is a different shade You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late Before you are six or seven or eight To hate all the people your relatives hate You’ve got to be carefully taught You’ve got to be carefully taught to hate.

My mother was born in 1911. A time before people received a decent education. Her mother died in 2018 of the “Spanish” Influenza [which wasn’t Spanish at all, it actually originated in the US], was carried by our soldiers to Europe and spread like wildfire around the globe. It got the name Spanish, because word of the deadly disease was suppressed in the warring countries of World War 1, but neutral Spanish newspapers reported it.

Anyway, my mother, Lillian, and her older sister Amy, were raised by their maternal grandmother in the small Northern Ontario town of White River.  Great Grandma was even less educated than my mother and aunt; she was born in Belfast Ireland (with all the Irish superstitions) and raised in England among the working classes. After High School Aunt Amy spent a year in normal school [I have no idea why schools to teach teachers are called ‘normal’] and she taught school for forty years. Mom got a year of business school and became a secretary.

The point of all this is they (my great grandmother, mother and aunt) were very superstitious. Every day of her life Mom read her horoscope in the newspaper and believed every word of it. She had her tea leaves read and her palm read and believed that too.

By the time I was born in 1933, Mom had a lot of these ‘beliefs’ firmly ensconced in her brain. Probably one of the many reasons she disliked me. Among her superstitions was a fear of persons with diabetes. This is especially funny since she developed diabetes type 2 in her old age. 

Her irrational fear of persons with diabetes, led to two very unfortunate instances. In both cases there was a man living on the other side of the street who had diabetes. A ten year old me was forbidden to walk on that side of the street, even though that side had sidewalks which our side didn’t.  I met the man once at Halloween when I was collecting dimes for the starving children of Europe and refusing candy. He was a really nice man and gave 5 dimes (which in 1943 was a lot of money)  The other incident was also a man living across the street, but in Sacramento, CA,  from where she and her sister were living. This man was both diabetic and alcoholic. Aunt Amy was looking out their front window. The guy was sitting on the sidewalk, with his feet in the road, and toppled to his side as I got to the window. I told my Mom and Aunt to call 911 and ran out to see if I could help. I had become CPR certified from classes I took while teaching school so I administered CPR until the ambulance got there.

Mom also didn’t like Native Canadians, people who didn’t speak English (and immediately after WW2, Canada took in a lot of refugees - so their were plenty of people for her to dislike) the very, very few people who were darker skinned.

I think it was from Mom’s dislike of so many people that I learned NOT to hate. I like homosexual men, they make really good friends. I like Jewish people and AfroAmerican People. Oh, yes and diabetic people too.

I do hate some people’s behavior - donald trump, and jd vance - for instance but it’s their behavior I hate, not because they are light or orange skinned. I hate people who scam, especially those who prey upon elderly who may be losing some of their mental agility.  

I don’t like guns and have never owned one, because they are smelly, loud, and dirty. I have no objection to hunters. I could not personally shoot another animal but realize the havoc we (Homo sapiens) have caused among deer, especially. We have managed to kill off most of their natural predators who kept their numbers under control, so now the only way to help them avoid illness and overpopulation is for us to hunt them. As long as it isn’t me, I’m okay with it.

As human beings, we’ve come a very long way from the days when people suffering from leprosy were driven from their homes, or when people with plague were abandoned and forced to die unattended in their homes. Or when cancer and diabetes were treated as “sins” and persons who had these diseases and disorders were isolated, untreated even with common courtesy.

In this day, when science has taught us so much about the really bad actors, bacteria and viruses.There’s no use ‘hating’ them since they are incapable of caring, only of recreating themselves in greater numbers at the expense of whatever organism they invade.

I think it’s long past time for us to recognize there exists only ONE species of humans. Regardless of our outer appearance we are ALL Homo sapiens. Period, end of discussion. There are no subspecies, there are no real differences - only cosmetic. Yes there are some totally, rotten, useless, individuals and they need to be dealt with. But too many of us, including some sitting judges, who are so in awe of wealth and power, they refuse to pass judgement (their job) or to pass sentence (also their job).

Therefore, it is also past time for all of us to take up the real challenges we face. The ever-warming climate. We’ve already passed the tipping point the best we can hope for is mitigation. That much is still doable. So a few billionaires slip back to being millionaires - tough patooties. So, we won’t die off, but our children and grandchildren will be in extreme danger the longer we take to act.  Which brings me to another of my personal hatreds - people who are so self absorbed they care nothing if their actions cause real harm to the ecology in which we all live or of the future generations of not only Homo sapiens but hordes of other species. (I admit I don’t care if cockroaches die off)

Hatred of the kind trump and his maggots support is deadly to life on planet Earth. It’s time for all to prevent it.