People Are Hard to Hate Close Up. Move In.
Have you ever resented, mistrusted or judged someone because their point of view didn’t match yours? Have you ever rushed in to hasty generalisations based on prejudice, the news or social media? I must admit: I have. It’s easy to hate people from afar.
However, the hate and anger that we express towards others often mask pain and fear. It’s much easier to be angry than to deal with difficult emotions.
In our society pain and fear are often thought to be a sign of weakness, so most of us cover these emotions with rage and denial. But ‘when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain’. Suppressed pain will always find a way to surface. It only goes away when we acknowledge it and care for it.
But it’s not wrong to feel angry. Anger is a completely normal, natural human emotion that we all carry inside us. It signals to us that something is wrong and needs changing. However, if we ignore it or stay angry for too long, it becomes destructive.
Throughout the history, and even today, we have witnessed people offloading their anger and fear by the use of dehumanising language and images. Dehumanisation is the process of creating an enemy image and moving people out. As species, we are wired to care for each other, but by using dehumanising rhetoric, we create a moral exclusion which makes it okay to hurt people. Dehumanisation has been at the core of numerous acts of violence and must not be tolerated.
‘When we engage in dehumanising rhetoric or promote dehumanising images, we diminish our own humanity in the process.’
Brown invites us to transform our anger into love, compassion, courage and other life-giving emotions. When the transformation takes place, we start to see our shared humanity and divinity that resides in each and every one of us. When we move in closer, we are forced to see each other for who we really are. When we put aside our opinions and beliefs, we begin to notice that we have more similarities than differences: ‘we feel love and we know pain. We feel hope and we know struggle. We see beauty and we survive trauma.’
However, when we move in closer together, we are bound to experience difficult conversations. Brown shares Dr. Michelle Buck’s tools for conflict transformation:
- Don’t avoid certain conversations by simply agreeing to disagree. Take the opportunity to find out how the other person feels about a certain issue. You will not only learn more but will also deepen your connection.
- Speak out your intentions. Understanding each other’s motives and interests will help to handle difficult conversations.
- Distinguish between past, present and future by focusing deeply on the now and the mutual things you want to achieve in the future.
- Stay open-minded and listen with desire to learn more. Be curious and truly listen to what they’re saying rather than wait impatiently for your chance to respond.
‘We have to listen to understand in the same way we want to be understood’.
Judging other people is easy. I challenge you to move in a little closer and hear their story first.
What did you think of chapter four? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Discussion questions:
- Do we have to believe in the same things to feel connected?
- Have you ever changed your mind about someone when you got to know them a little bit better?
- Have you ever experienced/witnessed dehumanisation? How did it make you feel?
- What tools do you use to help you navigate difficult conversations?