Mass Shootings. Racism. Protests and resulting violence Terrorism. Jihad. Ecomonic and Political Systems. Genocide. Imperialism.

Is it even possible that any human society can be fixed from the inside?

Is reform possible, or is our civilization destined to spiral downward out of control? If I have learned nothing else in 2016 is that both of our political parties are completely devoid of integrity, with platforms and values designed to appeal to their constituents with only one goal in mind. Winning. But what does winning mean. It mostly means that people gain or retain power. What do any of them intend to do with power once gained?

What does this election mean in the light of our ability to solve any of the problems that we have?

Do any of us really believe that once elected any of them will actually follow their conscience with integrity? That any will act in virtue devoid of self-interest? Or even that the ideologies that any of our candidates espouse or advocate will even result in improving the situation?

What does any of that have to do with the basis of hate?

Agree with me. Agree with me that hate or at least the same root is in part responsible for all of those problems. The same root. It begs the question, what is the root of hate. The basis of hate. Where does hate come from?

Let me substitute a word for hate. Call it disrespect. Disrespect seems tame compared with hate. Think about it. Isn’t hate just an extreme form of disrespect? Disrespect is an opinion about the relative value of another human being. We are holding an opinion about the value of another who is for better or worse, more like our-self than different. It doesn’t matter why we hold that opinion. Does it? Is any reason valid to hold that opinion? Strength, beauty, wealth, ancestry, ethnicity, virtue, intelligence, celebrity, talent, honesty, honor, compliance, courage, ancestry, achievement, kindness, daring. It doesn’t matter which attributes we use, we still are locked into a comparison of ourselves to others. What is the basis of hate. It starts with comparison. It turns to competition. It gets back to winning.

We end up with status. The opinions of all of us about each others value gets coalesced and aggregated. We create and agree to formal and informal measures of value within our social structure. Status is the socially recognized agreement about how to value each other.

So what causes it. Is it our economic system? Is capitalism more or less responsible for disrespect than socialism? Is it that the “haves” have so much more than the “have nots”? Will the disrespect stop if we create a more egalitarian distribution of wealth? Or will we then elevate some other attribute on which to base respect and therefore confer status?

Is it somehow religion? Is it the Christians who started it? Or the Muslims? Or the Jews? Or is it neutral? Or do we just co-opt every religion when our social structure demands a means of comparison, of valuing others, of conferring status. In societies that have valued wisdom, religion has appeared to be a codification of social wisdom.  So religion can play a role, because in a social structure that has multiple religions, we create “parties” each promoting their brand of wisdom (aka religion). Our different brands of social wisdom create differences in local culture within our diverse society.  These differences represent fractures in our system of valuing each other.

Is science somehow involved?

Of course, because science is our current international flavor of codified wisdom.  In a sense, science is a religion. Not because of some metaphysical or supernatural aspect – as so many religions have, but because it is a system of organizing and managing wisdom within society.   With different systems of wisdom, we tend to create conflict – (which I define as a dissonance in the way we assign value to each other within a single society).  We create systems of disrespect – we disrespect people because they follow a system of wisdom that is different from our own.

What about race?

I think race is a way of tokenizing cultural differences.  In the visual differences between races, I can make assumptions about culture. We generalize about race to infer differences in culture. Its visual. We also generalize about other visual signals of culture including the way we dress, the cars we drive, the homes we live in.  The interesting thing that I have realized the more I encounter others from different cultures and races is that we all share the same human nature. We do not always share culture and we do not have the same way of valuing each other.

This is where technology plays a role.

The technology that makes it easy to travel plays a role. It is easier and less expensive than ever to travel and emigrate around the world.  That means that our human culture becomes more and more diverse.  It is less and less local. We still have sovereign nation-states but our economy has become global. The internet has made the world much much smaller, and in fact has made it easier to share information and culture in a way that has never been available before. But our social practices are often closer to the tribal and group dynamics of primitive people.

At our core, we are still tribal.

We are global citizens with local, ethnic, and occupational identities. Our “identity” is the important facts of our culture that we value. As tribesmen we value people in our own tribe above others. In no other place do we see this aspect of human nature than in the fans of athletic teams. Sports is the only place left where we can freely express this “disrespect” of other tribes. Sports is our proxy for warfare. It serves as a way for us to identify with our own tribe.

Don’t miss the point, churches, cities, companies, unions, races, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political systems or parties,  even which technology we use (Mac vs. PC; IOS vs. Android) also serve as virtual tribes that all form part of our identity. Crime families and gangs are negative examples of tribes. Tribal behavior comes from a time when humans had to band together to overcome dangerous forces of nature, when we were hunter gatherers, before we grew crops and domesticated animals, before we built cities.

Making it political.

It gets ugly when those who wish to gain power over us, to lead us or to rule us, use our tribal identities as a means of manipulating us. They tell us that we need to support our tribe. They tell us which other tribes we should perceive as threats. They say we need to stay united against a common enemy. Recently since the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, we have seen certain tribes use “victim” status as a way to gain power.  This has produced the notion of a “protected minority” – which is a powerful status for a tribe.  It means that in the large social context that that tribe has gotten some protection from larger competing tribes.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t change the dynamics of tribalism. We often act as if respect is a scarce commodity. This is a problem. If I respect you, does that necessarily diminish the respect I have for others? In a primitive tribal society, it was hunting grounds that were under dispute. Food was a scarce commodity, especially during seasons of famine or drought.

But our technology has made it possible to feed the world, so we are no longer really competing for food. Yet we are not satisfied with merely eating, we need more. We create competition where none really need exist.

So why do we still disrespect each other?

I can come to only one conclusion. We all want respect. We all want some form of status. It is part of human nature. It is one of the seven deadly sins. Pride. That is my conclusion.

It is pride that causes us to disrespect others. Pride that causes us to hate. Pride that causes us to devalue the lives of each other. Pride that causes us to sit in judgement, saying I am better, I am more important, I am smarter, I am more righteous. Pride that says these lives matter, and these lives do not.  Pride is the basis of hate.

Is there a solution?

If I am right, then I can say that this problem goes deeper than laws. You can’t legislate it away. It goes deeper than education. You can’t teach people how to overcome their nature.

The only solution that can be had is one that changes our nature. Can you imagine a solution that does that?

The value of a man.

Pride changes the way we value each other. I think I have established that. So the question that must be answered is whether a man has some inherent value. Science tells us that the average human is made up of less than 20 US Dollars of chemicals. So our value can’t easily be established in financial terms, based on our chemical makeup. So where does our value come from. The US Declaration of Independence makes that case that man is given value by his creator. Science has told us that man’s creation was purely random, accidental. So how much value can an accident create? Science (our prevailing system of social wisdom) has not really come up with a good answer for how to value a man. So we are at an impasse. We don’t have a creator that can give man any inherent value, so we are left to our own devices. Man values man. It is and has always been a recipe for disaster.

Mass Shootings. Racism. Protests and resulting violence Terrorism. Jihad. Ecomonic and Political Systems. Genocide. Imperialism.

The results are not pretty.

Its a problem.

If the problem is sin, then one religion has an answer. Christianity claims that God Himself has solved the problem of sin, once and for all. But it requires that man accept this, and invest in it, so that God can transform his life. And there you have it. In Christ, we can have a new nature. The solution.

Is it really a solution?

If you look at the history of mankind and the history of Christendom, there are definitely examples of when Christians have acted in pride acting like their religion was a tribe. Mostly I wonder if those people who were leaders of those times were Christians, were born again, were transformed by Christ’s work on the cross. But I find it hard to argue when confronted with this evidence. What I can point to is the evidence of my own conversion, and how when I recognize that I am but a vapor, compared to a God who created and who sustains the universe in eternity – It is easy to be humble, and to try to see others through God’s eyes.  Because. He. Created. Each. Of. Us. We are all of equal value to Him. It is His valuation that matters. If only we all could agree.

The basis of hate is pride. God has already provided the remedy for pride. The God that science cannot admit exists has the answer. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ, our Lord.