Mark Edmonson pointed out in a New York Times articles something that is actually quite obvious. He said, “Our culture is amok with binaries.” I have called it ‘My way or the highway’ thinking. This is particularly true in politics but this attitude has seeped into many aspects of modern life. For example, in can still be seen among some religious communities where each thinks they have a monopoly on truth and the “other religions” wallow in ignorance.  Sadly, many Mennonites think that way, though not as many as before.  There is some improvement. For example, my teacher Will Braun, did not think that way. He always worked hard to avoid such binary thinking. He was a Christian but admitted that there is truth to be found in other religions.

Sports is one field where binaries still rule and the glaring ugliness of it can be seen there.  At hockey games or football games as soon as the referee makes a call adverse to “our side”, we tend to leap up in with venomous disgust. We can’t stand it.  I have even seen parents jumping and screaming at very young refs of games in which their children are participating. It is ugly enough to tarnish the sport.

And really, we must admit that these games and these perceived injustices are really pretty insignificant. Why do I love the North Carolina Tar Heels and hate the Duke Blue Devils? They are both great basketball teams and live about 7 miles apart in North Carolina. But there is a lot of hatred between those teams, and sadly, not all of it is good natured. Some of it is vile and really the differences between the two sides are puny.

This is what Freud called the “the narcissism of minor differences.”  And their sole purpose is to keep insignificant binaries alive. Yet, even though I know this is true, when I watch the next basketball game between Duke and North Carolina is will be dying every time Duke makes an unlikely basket or North Carolina misses an easy shot. These small differences to me are very important. My bad.

We should not think and see in black and white, nor even gray. We should think and see in colour. Glorious colour.

Will Braun’s attitude which he got from his interpretation of the Bible was that we are all God’s children.  My wife Christiane says something similar, also wisely, “Even Hitler was loved by his mother.”

At least one thing is clear in this topsy-turvy insecure world. That is that there is a lot of hate out there. Really there is more than enough to feed a dozen worlds.

This is how Mark Edmondson put in the New York Times awhile back:

“I find hate to be virtually omnipresent in the current culture. Libs hate conservatives, and conservatives hate ’em right back. People hate politicians, the elite, MAGA hats (and their wearers), social media (though they cannot stay away from it). Some hate the rich. Some despise immigrants. People hate the media. They hate corporations. They hate capitalism. They hate woke and cancel culture. They hate globalism and globalists. They hate this president. There is love out there to be sure — for Beyoncé, for Pedro Pascal and, yes, even for this president, but hate trumps love by a mile now, or so it seems to me.”

I am a college basketball fan. I prefer it to professional basketball. My favorite teams are the University of Manitoba Bisons and North Carolina Tarheels. In North Carolina they take their basketball very seriously. The fans basically get insane about their times and even more their rivals. The hated rival of North Carolina is Duke University only 8 miles away. Those teams, and particularly their fans, hate each other with extreme passion. I remember once on a trip through the deep south of the US, in North Carolina where both of those Universities are located and we stopped somewhere and I started chatting with a woman who was a rabid basketball fan. Like me she was a Tarheels fan. I mentioned to her that it was too bad North Carolina had bad season last year. She was outraged at this comment. How could I say that?  It was true that by their standards they had not won many games, but they had beat Duke. Nothing else mattered. It was a great season because of that one win.  Her fandom was defined by her hatred of Duke.

Edmondson mentioned something similar in his article:

“One may define oneself — one may define the self — through hate. One day you are a blank slate, a void. But you can become yourself simply through hatred. You define yourself through your antipathies. I hate the church. I hate my school. I hate my parents, hate the administration, hate the president, hate the fascists, hate the communists. And maybe you begin to hate the Red Sox, too. I know any number of people who define themselves at least in part by hating a sports team. Take a bow, Duke University basketball.

Suddenly, you have stabilized the self. Do you want to be somebody? Well, now you are. You are the person with a stunning palette of hatreds. You don’t need to have positive allegiances to define yourself: The negative ones will do. Suddenly, ambiguity and nuance disappear, and you become Someone, with all of whose energies flowing in the same direction.”

Rene Descartes a famous French philosopher wanted to find certainty in the world.  That was tough to do.  He had an interesting way of doing it. He decided he would not take anything for granted. He would doubt absolutely everything he possibly could.  The one thing he found that really must be true and could not be doubted was that he existed.  Even if a malicious super-being was trying to fool him he must exist because he was being fooled. He was thinking, so he existed.   As a result, he concluded, I think therefore I am.

Edmundson suggested that perhaps there was something just as certain in the modern age and that was that hate existed. I Hate, therefor I am.

All if know is that I don’t want to be such a person. I don’t want to be defined by hate. Even hatred of Duke. Or Trumpism. There is much more to life than that.

Hatred and Extremism go together like love and marriage. Or should I say like hatred and marriage? Or as a friend of mine would say, pea and porcelain.

Recently, an Albertan radical posted a manifesto on line in which he said “women’s sole purpose is to reproduce and modern society is marginalizing men.” Clearly, he was aligned with the Incel movement. The Woe is me movement which attracts a lot of dissatisfied men. Besides, women, he also hated real estate developers, elites, pornographers, and Jews hence establishing his credentials as pretty omnibus hater. Perhaps we should call him an egalitarian hater. It surely was a simmering list of hatreds that could only spell trouble. And this is what it did.

I think hatred metastasizes. It spreads and brings cancer to everything on which it alights. And eventually, it brings death.

After publishing his manifesto on-line he travelled to Montreal to cause a ruckus. He visited the area that contained a number of powerful companies and began an incident in which a Montreal cop and an innocent bystander who happened to be Jewish, were shot and killed. I think I heard the bystander was actually shot by the cop.

All this accomplished was making it clear that Canada was home to domestic terrorism too. Perhaps our terrorists are just more incompetent than their American heroes. Certainly, no better.

Who are we? Are we hanging on to the hate? Or are we trying to be more forgiving, more generous? Do I want to be on the side of Trump?  Not really. But we have be aware of our natural tendency to wallow in the hate, and judgement. So often that is where we want to go? Is that where we should go? Trump, as we know, cannot resist is impulses.  How about us? I don’t want to follow him down this path (or any other path for that matter).

Will Braun, our CMU instructor, said used an expression I have never heard before “hate reading.”  But I immediately thought I knew what he meant.

First, most of us like to read things, or watch things, that we agree with. I that is natural, but it is a tendency we should guard against. When I lived in the US I tried to watch Fox News, but shamefully, I found it very difficult to read.  They just seemed to have an entirely different definition of truth. Truth was what the right wanted to be true.

Journalist, Amanda Ripley says, “we soothe ourselves with the knowledge that all Republicans are racist rednecks or all Democrats are precious snowflakes who hate America.” Will Braun did not want to do that. He suggested we should guard against too easy feelings of superiority.  As Braun a professed Christian,  said, “Sometimes we move from loving our enemies, to loving to have enemies.” Another mistake.

Robert Talisse  an American philosopher, political theorist and chair of the Department of Philosophy said,

“People like to complain about political toxicity, and then just blame the other side.”  Isn’t that what toxicity is all about? It was what leaves their mouths; not ours. Talisse also said this: “We are not necessarily more divided, on actual issues but we hate each other more. We like disliking the other side. We like toxicity.” I agree. I don’t like to admit it, but I think I have felt that way. We don’t want to give up the hatred of the other side because we like it so much.

This is closely connected to what Braun called “hate reading.” We eagerly read something new when we think it might give us more ammunition against the other side.  If we can add it to the list of stupid things “they” have done, we are pleased. The more outrageous things the others say the better, because it justifies our hate. Again, I admit I do this. I am a sinner. How about you?

I have to admit I read a book by Kristen Kobess du Mez from this perspective called Jesus and John Wayne and in it she filled it with stupid things (in my opinion) Christian evangelicals had done and as I read I highlighted them. My bad. I wanted to remember these. They seemed like they might be valuable ammunition in my next encounter with evangelicals. Not really a great reason to read or enjoy a book. Does that make me a sinner?  My only defence, is that at least I never denied being a sinner.

Hate reading is reading for the wrong reasons and I should control that impulse.  I promise to curtail that impulse.

The governor of Utah at the funeral of Charlie Kirk said he would unplug from social media.  I know others have tried this too. That certainly is one way to avoid hate listening or watching or reading. We find the hate or the feelings of superiority entertaining. It shouldn’t be entertaining. This is not our best selves when we do that.

To say, and admit deeply, that we are all the children of God, requires hard work. It is not easy to think like this. It is hard. To be Christian, Braun suggests, requires such an attitude. Because I am Christian he said I have to do this hard work of avoiding hate.

Braun said he went to a spiritual retreat where most of the day was spent in silence, but each day they said a prayer that went something like this:

“God says we are a work of art crafted in fatherly and motherly care. God welcome us and celebrates us in love.”

This is the opposite attitude from that of the Pharisee who wanted to celebrate that he was not like other people.

Can we say that Donald Trump is a child of God? How about Hitler? My wife always reminds me that Hitler’s mother probably loved him. Is Hitler another child of God. Can we really say that? It’s pretty hard.

Braun’s view is that we must all work hard to avoid being judgmental because we are all children of God.

Who ever said being anti-polarizing would be easy?