What Are Humans Without Humanity?At University of South Carolina-Aiken
What Are Humans Without Humanity?
Jul 18, 2016
Our Own Destruction
Love, an emotion that every human has in common. No matter if you're black, white, Spanish, Asian, or European. Everyone loves someone...or something whether it be money or an object. It's a feeling that cannot be denied and it's not a thing that can be turned off like a light switch. It's effortless, or should be, to love the people around you.
We effortlessly love our family. We effortlessly love food. We effortlessly love our pets, who can't even speak back to us. We love strangers who compliment us or the cute girl who smiles at you in school. Sometimes we even love those we wish to not love. Like the boy who broke your heart or the best friend who stabbed you in the back.
But you know what's not effortless? Hate. Yet it is a feeling that seems to be spreading like wildfire around the world. Personally this is not an easy emotion for me to feel and I don't think it should be easy for anyone to feel. It takes time and a lot of a person's energy to feel this emotion.
In order to feel hate you must feel it deep within, it most consume every fiber of your being until you feel or see nothing but darkness. Until you allow yourself to see no love or potential light in others. You allow yourself to feel hate because you've been taught to hate. I truly believe that hate is not a natural emotion, but that it is more learned that anything else.
Because let's be honest, what infant is born knowing hate? None. No child looks at another with hate unless they are taught to hate. And that's the thing, they are. We as a human race are responsible for teaching and forcing hate when love is a natural reaction for most children.
We teach that it's okay to hate as long as you hate what I hate.
We hate others for their skin color. We hate others because of what they chose to worship. We hate others who have too many opinions. We hate others from different countries with historical stereotypes. We hate others who enact violence but chose to answer with more violence.
It's exhausting, really, to feel this emotion. It drains you. When a person allows themselves to continue to hate, it means they've stripped themselves of their own happiness. This is just a small example on a rather large scale but what if your parents taught you that all Middle Easterners were horrible and you should never create interaction with them. Are you not going to smile or wave at a person who waved at you on the street because it looks like they could possibly be Middle Eastern?
Frankly, it is ridiculous the amount of effort that people put into hatred towards others. Instead of enjoying what precious time you have on earth, you dwell on all things dark. A person that hates another is never and will never be happy. They will die with a cold heart and a dissatisfied soul. And sadly, this is the world we've come to live in..
Hate has brought police shooting people, people shooting police, Paris being bombed, ISIS attacks, oh and as I am writing this, I turn on the news to see over 1,400 injured in Turkey due to a possible military coup d'état...the list doesn't end there, though.
Don't get me wrong, these issues within the world are much deeper than most of us will ever come to understand and more detailed than one article could explain. I have no ultimate solution to these problems either but I do know that hate is a driving force behind the problems that relentlessly exist.
We are the authors of the world yet we continue to rewrite history. We spread the Word of God yet we continue to hate the people He created. We teach a hate so deep that it leads to violence. Soon there will be nothing left to hate, soon the world will cease to exist. We are humans but we have no humanity.