Believe me, it would be easy to do so.
In the past 24 hours, I have heard on the news that a man killed his ex-wife and all of her family. I heard that a man held a number of people hostage in an Australian cafe. And finally, worst of all, I heard that 130 children were killed in Pakistan due to a terrorist attack.
Of course, I heard about all of this because our media holds closely to the adage: “If it bleeds, it leads.” I know all of these details because the bad dominates the good in the nightly news. And, if you were listening to the nightly news well, nightly, you may hold to the impression that humans, on the whole, are going to hell in a hand basket of their own making.
And if you believed that, well, I couldn’t very well tell you that you were wrong. Because that is what it looks like right now, doesn’t it? If I was an alien, swooping in from outer space, I would probably hightail it out of the Earth’s atmosphere. In fact, I would let the humans duke it out instead of using my own alien firepower to dominate the race. As an alien, I would grab a snack and watch the show.
But of course, this is all because we’ve been stretched as tight as drums and instead of admitting that we have a problem or that we need help, we’d rather grab a gun. It is fascinating that in a time of extreme connectivity, in a time where all of your friends and family are a text away, that so many of us should feel so alone, so ostracized. But we all do.
So, why don’t I hate humanity for all this? Why don’t I hate them for not recognizing all of this before it is too late? Is it because I am human too? Is it because I recognize that everyone has a good side and a bad side? Is it because I know that everyone is fighting a hard battle inside? No. Although I wish I could be a better person myself, believing all of that.
I don’t hate humanity because we are incredibly predictable. For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction for us. If there is love in the world, then there is hate. If there is violence, then there is peace. If there is pain, then there is joy. No matter what, there is an equal amount of everything.
It’s a beautiful system. Because whenever there is ignorance and darkness, there is someone trying to provide knowledge and light. Now, there is such a thing as a false sense of justice. Sometimes the tidal wave of humanity is too great to squelch a single evil thing in the world. We crush it and smother it, and that means that a great thing cannot rise in its place because it has been doused too quickly. We can’t learn from it. So, we must be careful of leveraging too great of a remedy for too small of a poison and vice versa.
And mind you, I said I don’t hate humanity. That’s a far cry from loving them. But I’m working on it. One day at a time. Because as I’ve said, when there is room for hate, there is also room for love.
Bailey Dailey 