#278: We Hate Everyone: Against the Politics of Vitriol

The only thing we seem to agree about nowadays is that we hate everyone. What does this mean? Why is this? What can we do?

If you’ve been around this planet for a while, you may have noticed that “we” has become a category, and that we hate everyone who doesn’t think like us. If you’ve been born more recently, to you this is maybe normal because you’ve seen this all your life—and for that, I’m truly sorry. It’s not always been like this. I mean, it has been around, but it’s gotten worse.

Who Is This “We”?

Maybe that’s the first part of this question. Well, there’s a neutral “we”—we as human beings. And we as human beings, or we as life forms, are tribal. Life forms oftentimes congregate with each other because there’s strength in numbers. There’s cooperation that enhances our lives, and without others we oftentimes can’t live well. We can literally not live without others because of reproductive needs, but also it’s better to be in a group with others oftentimes because it’s safer. We can build off each other; we can help each other. So that’s what it is.

We seem to also prefer to be amongst those who we are related to—and that, of course, isn’t always the case, but there are gradations of that. So parents feel closer to their children, grandchildren, and brothers and sisters, but eventually it thins out, especially when you’re in groups where everybody’s kind of related. The closer the physical relationship is, the closer the relationship can be—and it can be a relationship of love and of hate. Sometimes the more you know somebody else, the more you fall in love with them. Sometimes the more you know somebody else, the less you like them.

That may be a little overly generalized, but that seems to be how human beings function. Which is why any system that wants to break up family bonds, close friendship bonds, close locality bonds and replace them with some larger abstract model is typically not succeeding very easily and has to employ tools beyond the pale, you could say.

The New “We” and Cancel Culture

But the “we” that we are seeing emerging now isn’t always something predictable. Suddenly we are faced with something that some people have called cancel culture, call-out culture, calling culture—whatever term. We are supposed to produce shibboleths, code words that communicate to people around us whether we agree with them or not, whether they can count on us or not, whether we are part of their group or not.

And this kind of pattern is oftentimes heavily policed. So do you say “Democratic Party” or do you say “Democrat Party”? Do you distinguish between conservatives and MAGA? Do you distinguish between Christians and Muslims? Do you distinguish between Protestants and Catholics? Do you distinguish between mainline Protestants and evangelicals? You get the picture.

Sometimes these are old patterns; sometimes they are new. Linux versus Windows is new. I know if you like Linux, you’re completely convinced that everybody will adopt Linux. In theory, that sounds maybe not like a bad idea, but you may overestimate people’s computer knowledge—Linux is complicated. Now, if you hate me for that, you prove my point.

The Need for External Enemies

So this “we” that hates everyone is a “we” that needs that security of agreement for themselves, but it also seems to need this external enemy. There are some cases in which that seems understandable. If you’re part of a group that’s been persecuted, you have kind of a reason to be a little suspicious of everybody else. You have kind of a reason to want solidarity around you to feel safe. I get that.

But assuming that everybody else is out to get you if they don’t say the right word may prevent others from coming to your side. So you see this in all parts of life, and there are several explanations for that. I mean, mostly it comes down to: you live in a bubble and everybody confirms what you’re saying, and so you believe that your own reality.

Maybe. Probably. But with one caveat: I think human beings are more intelligent than that in many cases. Sometimes we consciously create this bubble, but we are very much aware that there are other things around it. Sometimes I observe that people who want to vehemently disagree with me on some things seem to want to hold on to their position because they just don’t want to allow themselves to think differently—as if a different thought makes themselves insecure in their position. That’s what thinking is about. Or that they soil their humanity, or that they somehow compromise their ethics just by allowing a thought that they don’t approve of.

And that’s not a phenomenon on any particular political side, but I seem to observe this everywhere.

Politics as Vitriol

So we are filled with the idea now that politics is about vitriol. It’s about hate. It’s about vehement disagreement. And if you dare to seek compromise, you compromise yourself. The first person I heard talking about it like that actually was John Boehner, and he, I believe, said that literally: “I don’t want to compromise my values.” But compromise is necessary. Compromise is why we can function as a group.

The Role of Technology and Algorithms

So part of the bubble building is, of course, this new technology—which you see me using here—where an algorithm rewards or punishes us if we say things a certain way. I’m assuming I’m going to be punished for being kind of a middle-of-the-road person. I’m not doing this for money—I’d like to, maybe, but I don’t want to quite sell out yet on the concept of complexification.

But these algorithms, they drive us into corners. And then, let’s say you say something and people like it, then you want to say some more things that people like, and so on and so on. Or you say something that people don’t like and your numbers go down, and you rely on the income because by now you’ve built your whole life around this, and then suddenly you avoid talking about certain things. I get that.

Walking the Middle Ground

I am typically—to some people’s annoyance—always trying to be very careful of how I say things and what I say. I’ve had people trying to get me to say certain things, certain words, just because of that shibboleth thing.

Is what Israel is doing in Gaza genocide? I don’t like what’s happening there. I don’t know whether I need to put a label on it. I know that Hamas has a clearly genocidal agenda. I know that some Israeli politicians have said some bad things that could amount to desires for that. But overall, doesn’t it suffice to be able to say, “I don’t really like what’s going on there, and I wish people would just get along and people would be able to live with each other”? Is that not enough? Do I need to now put myself in a certain position when the situation is not that clear historically speaking, overall?

I mean, that’s why on my blog I have an article “For Israel, for Palestine, for Peace”—because you can be for both and you can be for peace.

An issue I’ve spoken out about is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is a clear-cut case. Russia has been the aggressor against Ukraine. Russia has committed genocidal attacks for decades against Ukraine. There was the Holodomor. There’s a clear pattern; there’s a clear trajectory. And yet my criticism goes against the Russian government. It does not go against all of Russia. It does not go against the Russian people unless they have been actively, willfully, without any fear of punishment, been supporting that war.

Choosing Not to Hate

So no, I can’t hate. Of course I’m human; of course I can hate. I don’t want to, and I put myself in a position where I deliberately aim to not be hateful.

Do I hate Vladimir Putin? I hate what he does, but he is a fellow human being. Do I want something bad to happen to him? I want him to stop this war. Of course I have feelings of vengeance, of destructiveness, but as a human being, I have to work against these impulses. No, I can’t allow myself to go over—in Star Trek terms—to the dark side.

We have to work against that. We have to work within each of ourselves to aim for love and for compassion and for understanding, even and especially towards those we don’t like, towards those who are problematic—because it’s easy to love the people who are lovable. It’s not easy to love the people who are not lovable.

And that’s what all of human ethics and morality have moved towards, or tried to. It’s always about working against our darker impulses.

The Problem with Dismissal

So this tendency—if we disagree with each other, to hate each other; if we disagree with each other on one thing, to dismiss everything—that’s not good. It’s not good, and it’s bad for me to say so, but it seems to need to be said. It seems to need to be said. It seems that we need to think about this more and more because we’re increasingly living in an algorithmic world where even whatever we call AI—these large language models—may be affirming these tendencies in us because they learn from us.

AI, or large language models rather, are trained on how we think. They analyze ourselves; they learn from us, and they reflect us back to each other. It’s like that scene in Spaceballs where they figure out there’s a recording of everything that happened, and then they say, “Wow, let’s predict the future,” but they can’t because it hasn’t happened yet. So they all only stare at a picture of themselves. This is what AI is at this point—it’s a reflection of ourselves.

And we can’t expect that reflection to necessarily have the same values as us because apparently we don’t agree with our values either.

So What Do We Do?

Do I agree with everything people say? Of course not. And I’m a very talkative person. My impulse is always to say something. It’s always helpful. So we need to sometimes know when to say something, sometimes not.

I meet people that I disagree with all the time. It’s not comfortable, but it explains something about humanity, and ideally we learn something.

So when I hear something I don’t quite understand or comprehend, can I reject it? Sure. But I’m not learning anything, and I’m not giving myself a possibility for growth. I’m not giving the other person a possibility of growth, and I’m certainly not engaging with them respectfully and lovingly.

Can I dismiss them as crazy? Everybody that voted for the person they would never have voted for—are they all crazy? No. Are they? Or maybe they have other priorities. Maybe they see the world differently because maybe it is different. Maybe I live in my bubble. Maybe I’m not seeing everything I need to be seeing.

Maybe we don’t live in an either/or world. Maybe we live in a world where all of us are having to make decisions based on our own situations, and maybe we don’t always have the capacity or the luxury to take everybody else into account. Maybe also some people know more than we do. Maybe their principles are much closer to ours; however, some special case is dividing us.

The Complexity of Issues

Is abortion about women or babies? It’s about both. It’s about the unborn life growing up in the body of a woman. I think it’s smart for me, as a man, not to say too much about that because I’m not a woman. I cannot have children. I’m a biological male, so I don’t want to play into a tradition of biological men telling biological women what to do.

Sometimes it’s good to see where your limitations are. But this is about more than just women but also about unborn life. Maybe it’s also about the fathers. Maybe it’s also about society. Maybe there’s a complexity of factors that lead to the tragedy that an abortion constitutes.

You may see from my awkwardness talking about this, but also by alluding to all these other factors, that this is a very complex topic that cannot be reduced to either side but is something that we have to come together on. But it is these very complex topics that should tell us to have humility, to listen, and to find solutions beyond mere ideology, propaganda, or whatever you want to call it.

Living in Complexity

We don’t live in an either/or world. We live in a world of complexities. If I have a government and I don’t like the government, they sometimes do the right thing; sometimes they do the wrong thing. But if it’s my government, I have to do what I can to understand and criticize and/or support wherever needed. But I can’t operate with vitriol. I can’t operate with hatred. I have to operate with trying to increase my understanding, communicate that, communicate openness, live openness.

And this way, maybe contribute to a little bit less hatred in the world. That certainly is my hope here.

[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]