Writing About Hate and Love

A portrait of Tyre Nichols is displayed at a memorial service for him on Jan. 17 in Memphis, Tenn. NPR website 1/28/23

I love writing about joy, I love writing about love, but sometimes I must write about hate. Why? Because it’s with us, and every now and then it raises it’s evil head and shines upon us. I began writing this in my journal 1/28/23, Saturday morning around 6:00AM. The news report of Mr. Tyre Nichols’ killing and video footage released the day before was most disturbing. It left me, and the world, grappling to understand how this happened. I wrote ten pages by hand about my thoughts, and spent the next week, typing them into my computer and trying to organize them more efficiently. I ended up with a five page sort of essay exploring group behaviors. It’s organized by my earliest memories of being seen by others in When a Baby Smiles, behaviors of bullies and victims in school in The Lure of Excitement, understanding group behaviors in Mob Mentality and Group Think, examples of South Africa’s transformative experiences from violence in Truth and Reconciliation, and a discussion of solutions in Interdependent Love. I look forward to your comments.

 

When a Baby Smiles

When a child or a baby sees someone, lays their eyes upon them, they immediately smile, and that smile warms our hearts and we smile in return, first inside, and then it oozes out onto our faces. Smiling feels good. The baby knows it too, and they return our smiles with more smiles. But what causes a baby to stop smiling as they grow up? Is it the lack of returned smiles? Is it rejection?

 

When I was maybe three or four years old holding my mother’s hand as we walked passed people in a grocery store, I saw a woman sitting by a window looking at me. She had a mean expression on her face, no smile, none of the sweet faces I was used to seeing. I wondered if she didn’t like me. Then I thought, what would happen if I smiled at her, and so I did. She was stunned. Her eyes widened and then almost immediately a huge smile spread across her face. That day I realized two things: that if you smile at someone they might smile back, and that people may look mean, but that doesn’t mean they are. People may not realize they’re frowning. Today we call that the “mean resting face” and other terms. But what causes a naturally smiling baby to grow up and stop smiling and not see the greatness in people as potential playmates, companions, or protectors? What gets in the way of our humanity towards others? 

 

It is unnatural to hate someone. Hate is like a callous that grows over our ability to love, a hardening of our hearts like nephritis is a hardening of our kidney’s cells. And when too many cells die the organ stops functioning effectively and it needs outside help, like dialysis. So too, when our ability to see others in loving ways becomes hardened, we need help in loving one another through the aides of “devices” outside of our bodies, people.

 

People can help other people filter their pain, their hate, and turn it into love again. Hate is love surrounded by calluses. Hate is the absence of love, like darkness is the absence of light. What can heal a broken spirit? Love. Love from God, love from another human being. Animals as pets can be comforting and loving but they cannot replace human love. In the absence of love, Evil can worm its way into a calloused heart like a parasite looking for a host. Hate is a doorway for Evil. Evil’s most effective strategy is for us to believe it doesn’t exist. Evil whispers in our ears. Evil urges us on. Evil tries to convince us that it’s okay, in the moment, and many of us don’t see it coming.

 

The Lure of Excitement

I recall being a young child in maybe fourth grade, and a group of classmates were running around the room hitting another classmate while the teacher stepped out. The three or four boys were led by one of the popular boys, a boy whose growth hormones well surpassed the rest of us scrawny kids, and he was cute. The boys ran around our classroom circling our rows of 20 or so desks while the rest of us sat and watched silently as they hit a particular girl classmate. Maybe she initially tried to protest, but now she just sat there with her head down as each boy hit her as they raced by.

 

From my desk in the back of her row, I could not see the girl’s face. I rationalized that she didn’t seem to be hurt or maybe she understood it was a game kids played. Perhaps if I saw her face and that she wasn’t enjoying this “game,” I would have made the decision to help her, to make the boys stop. But I didn’t.

 

As the boys continued to run around our cluster of desks, creating a rising air of excitement I could feel and see on their faces, I became enticed. I wanted to feel like they did and prove that I was bold too. By being out of their seats, running around, and hitting her, they challenged classroom rules, written and unwritten. Their boldness defied authority at a time when we adolescents were desperately trying to grow up, to mature, to get out from under our mama’s legs and skirts. The problem was at ages 8 and 9 we were still children and needed instruction, lessons in compassion, and the discipline to not follow after what seemed fun and exciting at the moment. And so without good sense, or really seeing the girl, I left my desk and joined the boys in the melee. I hit her as we raced by her seat and sat back down before the teacher returned. But it’s the feeling I had afterwards that was most memorable. I didn’t feel like the boys, not the way they looked to me. I didn’t feel joyful or triumphant. 

 

After returning to my seat, I looked towards the girl, still only seeing her from the back, her head down, and I felt sorry for her, Jean. I was sorry for what I had done to Jean. I asked myself why? Why did I take part in doing something I had never done before? I learned later the experience was called mob or herd mentality, behaviors people do in a group they would not normally do alone.

 

Mob Mentality

Mob mentality has a mind altering component, like becoming swept up in the action, and a growing sense of connectedness to others that can lead to a willingness to take part in something that you normally would not do. It could be looting a store during a riot when stealing is something you don’t do, or joining others in attacking a person, kid, adult, or stranger when you would not do that alone. 

 

At the core of mob mentality that inflicts violence on others is Evil, pure and simple, like taking part in a lynching, burning down someone’s home, school, church or store, or spraying a crowd with bullets when you don’t normally carry a gun. Some say Evil lives in all of us and has the potential to emerge at any time. But unlike our emotions, Evil comes from the outside. Evil is invited in. Hate is not an emotion either, it’s learned.

 

That day in class, I learned something about myself, how easily it was to get caught up in the action and how easily my mind was influenced. I felt sorry; I had made a mistake, and I didn’t do it again. But I was too ashamed and immature to apologize for my actions at the time. Fortunately, I was a child who had the opportunity to grow up, mature, and do better. Now, I’m the one who runs towards fights to break them up, and if caught early enough, simply yelling “Stop” can awaken people back to their right minds. The last time I saw Jean was after high school when she stopped by my house as an Avon cosmetics distributer.  She seemed to harbor no ill feelings, and she had kept her happiness. 

 

But what prevents a bully from overcoming their childhood challenges and adopting better behaviors? Is it because rewards continue for the same bad behaviors? Does the child continue to get away with hurting others, animals, kids, and eventually marginalized groups? Does boldness and defying authority become the celebrated actions? And what happens to the victims if they don’t overcome their childhood challenges, the child who was rejected, unpopular, whose adolescent awkwardness lasted longer than their peers? Do they grow up looking for opportunities to be popular, to stand up for something, to feel a part of something or some group, even if it’s evil in nature? 

 

Group Think

Some groups cultivate evil behaviors. They sustain it by rewarding those who commit violent actions in support of the group’s ideals and through group think, when unscrupulous and ideological ideas are not challenged within the group. They become an incestuous set of beliefs, often needing intervention and accountability to others outside of the group to break the spell. Perhaps that’s what unfolded January 7, 2023 when a group of Memphis police officers beat Tyre Nichols causing his death. 

 

Mob mentality usually happens in the moment, and when the dust settles there’s remorse, a shameful realization of what you took part in, like the January 6 mob attack on our Capital, a gang fight, or maybe attending a lynching. It’s horrific and the experience wakes you up to never do that again. But if that behavior is repeated, if remorse is pushed aside by justification, then Evil’s voice has convinced you otherwise. You have slipped into the dark side. You have become a host for Evil. You have exchanged your humanity for unnatural human behavior. 

 

The late Bishop Desmond Tutu wrote in his book God Has a Dream, that those who tried to dehumanize people with horrific torture and inhumane treatment during apartied in South Africa were victims too. In the process of trying to deny others of being seen as human, they lost their humanity in the process. Those officers lost their humanity before that night on January 7^th. There were officers who led the beating by being bold and defying the system of authority to protect and serve the community. There were officers who aided and abetted by holding down or propping up Mr. Nichols so the leaders could beat him more, and there were officers who were bystanders, their silence possibly interpreted as admiration by those carrying out the assault in their group. But did any of them see Mr. Nichols, really see him? Were they indignant because he ran away, and “made them” chase after him? These large stocky 200+ pound bodies chasing after a 140 pound young man. 

 

Evil was riding on their shoulders egging them on. Evil had metastasized around their hearts, minds, and body. Only a disruption, an outside intervention, could have woke them up and broken the spell. Group think and the evil cultivated within their group, prohibited them from seeing Tyre as a fellow human being. Some group think behaviors have been so deeply engrained and last for so long, supported by propaganda and public manipulation, that they become systemic with laws passed to reinforce them. It takes years, decades, centuries before the spell of manipulation is broken, like the perpetuation of “race,” skin color, religion, and gender, as a construct for judgement, separation, and killing of fellow human beings.

 

Truth And Reconciliation

Bishop Tutu served as the chairperson for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission during the early days of the postapartheid government under President Mandela. President Mandela set about healing his country, the victims and the perpetrators, as a first order of business. The Commission gave perpetrators the opportunity to appeal for amnesty by telling the truth about their horrific crimes against people. The assailant had to face their community of peers, victims, and the families of their deceased victims, and ask for forgiveness. Their humanness was given a chance for light again, and the victims were given a chance to unburden their pain. The process paved the way for tremendous transformation from suffering to healing and love.

 

Bishop Tutu also reflects on President’s Mandela’s transformation in God Has a Dream. He said Mandela was a very angry young man when he went to prison in 1964.

 

He was a young man who was understandably very upset at the miscarriage of justice in South Africa. He and his colleagues were being sentenced because they were standing up for what seemed so obvious. They were demanding their rights that in other countries were claimed to be inalienable. At the time he was very forthright and belligerent, as he should have been (73).

 

Bishop Tutu goes on to say, that the 27 years on Robben Island “mellowed” Mandela. 

 

He began to discover depths of resilience and spiritual attributes that he would not have known he had… He learned to appreciate the foibles and weaknesses of others and to be able to be gentle and compassionate toward others even in their awfulness. So the suffering transformed him because he allowed it to ennoble him (73).

 

Nelson Mandela allowed his imprisonment to ennoble him and not embitter him, and he gained a greater humanity and compassion for others, even his jailers. 

 

Interdependent Love

We have the ability to be healed, victims, families of victims, and perpetrators. We can help each other heal no matter how terrible the act. I trust Bishop Tutu’s advice and council, he’s someone who has witnessed and heard the most horrific actions of “the fruit of human evil that has a profound effect on the world” (Our Daily Word, January 2023 Topic).  Bishop Tutu believed the act does not turn the perpetrator into a demon, that all of us can be transformed, that we can’t and should not condemn anyone to being irredeemable.

 

In the USA, restorative justice can work, but alleged assailants are incented to hide the truth and not confess in order to save themselves and their organizations from punishment. What happens when a person’s criminal behavior is left unchecked? What happens when a person gets away with hurting other people? Are they reformed? Are they remorseful and never choose that behavior again? Unlikely. When we do wrong, commit a crime towards another, we must confess and take moral responsibility. 

 

How can we help rehabilitate each other? We can’t do it alone. Outside intervention and oversight to provide checks and balances are needed. Organizations cannot monitor themselves just like good governments, businesses, and schools cannot. Those who commit bad behaviors need a time out, need someone to talk with to better understand the causes and effects of their behavior. They need the ability to learn and practice better behaviors and an assessment of their progress; it’s an iterative process.

 

Our police organizations are necessary. They run towards danger when the rest of us run away. We need them to run towards danger, often putting their lives at risk, because they love us, not because they’re at war and only protecting the members of their group. We need our officers to love all of us, including the people acting out their worse behaviors. We need our officers to see our humanness in spite of our foibles, weaknesses, and awfulness. And we need to see theirs too. 

 

I guess I am writing about love.