It is a grievous mistake to suppose that hatred is congenital—that it arrives with the child, like a birthmark or the shape of the nose. No, hatred is not a blood-born inheritance, but an infection of the soul, introduced by suggestion, nourished by imitation, and hardened by years of unexamined grievance. We are not born clutching hatred in our tiny fists. Rather, it is pressed into them by those who came before—sometimes unwittingly, sometimes with malevolence that masquerades as tradition.
If one consults the findings of prevailing psychology—as I occasionally do, though not uncritically—one finds that children, left to their own devices, exhibit no innate animosity toward the stranger. They must be taught who to fear, and more importantly, who to blame. It is as Rousseau once lamented: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Hate is one such chain—cold, deliberate, and forged not by nature but by nurture’s more sinister hand.
This notion—that hatred is acquired—does not comfort as one might wish. The truth seldom does. There is something profoundly unsettling in the knowledge that what corrodes our common life is not some wild impulse, but rather something cultivated, like a garden of weeds left to thrive in the corners of our souls.
Throughout the years, I have turned this stone over countless times in my mind: what is it that we truly hate, and why? Each time I believe I have found its root, it eludes me—like some nocturnal creature burrowing deeper into the thickets of the human heart. Hatred is nothing if not clever. It dresses itself in the garments of loyalty, of patriotism, even of justice. But if one dares to strip away the masks—however delicately—they will discover fear. Fear is the face that hatred dares not show, and yet it is always there: primal, shivering, unresolved.
Freud, in his somewhat gloomy wisdom, might have called this a projection—the self’s trembling transposed onto the face of the Other. Kierkegaard, too, spoke of this shadowy unease—an existential dread that, when denied, curdles into aggression. How often have we seen men lash out not because they are evil, but because they are afraid, and cannot admit it?
Now I must confess—my life, by most measures, has been comfortable. This comfort, far from being a refuge, poses its own peril. Hatred does not always thrive in the crucible of suffering. Sometimes it germinates in the plush quietude of privilege, where imagination atrophies and the sufferings of others become invisible. In such a state, one ceases not only to feel, but to see.
Rawls warned us against the complacency that privilege breeds—a kind of moral sleepwalking, where one mistakes the silence of injustice for the harmony of peace. The soul, dulled by comfort, becomes fertile soil for suspicion, for resentment, and ultimately, for hate.
But let us not delude ourselves with the modern superstition that hatred can be exorcised through legislation or silenced with slogans. The roots of hatred are too old and too deep for such measures. It cannot be defeated merely by policy; it must be confronted in the quiet moments of honesty—where one dares to ask, not “Who do I hate?” but “What fear am I trying to bury?”
I have been asked, often with subtle accusation, whether I harbour hatred toward those who malign my faith. The question itself is a snare. It demands a binary where there is none. I do not hate those who revile me—not out of saintliness, but because I refuse to let their darkness dictate the weather of my soul. As the Stoics rightly said, it is not what happens to us that matters, but how we respond. And to respond with hatred is to surrender one’s sovereignty.
There is, too, a kind of meanness that arrives with a smile. It is the nastiness of the polite persecutor—the one who questions your legitimacy with the soft cadence of civility. Here we encounter what the sociologists call symbolic violence, but which the Christian would simply call hypocrisy cloaked in charm. These are the hardest faces to confront, for they wear the mask of concern while slipping poison into the wine.
And yet the fault, dear reader, is not only in them—it is also in us. We inhabit a world that rewards noise and punishes nuance. In such a world, to hate is easier than to think. We scroll, we sneer, we shout. We are reactive, not reflective. And in this tyranny of immediacy, the quiet disciplines of charity, patience, and introspection are trampled beneath the feet of spectacle.
Consider the upheavals that erupt in response to perceived slights. They may seem disproportionate to some. But people do not riot over trifles. They riot because something deep and sacred has been bruised. This does not justify their violence—but it does demand our understanding. It is too easy for the West to scorn such reactions, forgetting that its own past is riddled with witch hunts, lynchings, and book burnings.
It is a grave error to think of hate as merely a sentiment. It is, in its most potent form, a structure—a system that defines the margins and exalts the centre. The furore over books, films, and ideologies is not always about the content itself, but what that content awakens: old wounds, buried shames, and ancestral shadows. Jung was right—what is denied in the collective returns with a vengeance, demanding to be seen.
And now, in our digital coliseums, hatred has found new arenas—amplified, monetised, and algorithmically curated. The same hand that scrolls for entertainment can now be enlisted in campaigns of vilification. Words become weapons. Civility becomes weakness. And truth becomes whatever sells.
This is not merely unfortunate—it is dangerous. When free expression is strangled in the name of safety, or criticism mistaken for hate, we do not diminish hatred; we give it a masquerade. Nietzsche warned us of this—of ressentiment, where morality becomes a tool of vengeance, not virtue.
It is tempting to meet provocation with silence or sarcasm. But if I could, I would rather sit at table with the provocateur—not to shout, but to question. What do you gain by wounding the already wounded? What glory is there in deepening division?
This, I believe, is not naïveté. It is a form of survival. Societies do not endure by suppressing conflict, but by transforming it into conversation. The alternative is not peace, but fracture.
History has taught us, time and again, what lies at the end of such fractures—Bosnia, Rwanda, Germany. When men cease to speak truthfully and listen charitably, the abyss opens beneath their feet.
To be tolerant, in such a time, is not to be limp or listless. It is to practise a discipline—an act of will, even of courage. It is to bear the sting of insult without recoiling into vengeance. But tolerance is not the same as acquiescence. I will not strike you for disagreeing with me—but neither will I flatter your falsehoods.
True freedom, as Spinoza knew, lies not in reacting blindly, but in understanding deeply. Frankl, too, saw that between stimulus and response there is a space—and in that space lies our power, our dignity, our humanity.
To be tolerant is not to be passive. It is to walk the narrow ridge between cowardice and fanaticism. It is to love the truth more than one’s comfort, and justice more than one’s reputation.
And here, perhaps, lies my deepest unease with the contemporary secular vision. It claims to celebrate diversity, but too often it demands uniformity in return. It opens the gates, but only to those who sing its tune. In such a theatre, the truly dangerous man is not the fanatic, but the thinker—the one who dares to dissent, to doubt, to ask questions that are not pre-approved.
But maybe danger is necessary. Camus spoke of the rebel—the one who says “no” not to destroy, but to affirm a deeper “yes” to the dignity of man. It is often the dangerous ones who rouse the world from its sleep.
And sometimes, the most dangerous thing of all is to be still. To step out of the dance, to resist the rhythm of outrage, and to think. In a world of performance, reflection becomes rebellion.
For in the end, wisdom does not lie in echoing the prejudices of our forebears. It lies in questioning them. And when we do, we become more than mere heirs of anger—we become architects of something nobler.
This, I believe, is the task set before us—not to abolish hate by decree, but to disarm it by courage, by charity, and above all, by truth.
