Intolerance and Hatred

Dealing with Intolerance and Hatred Current mood: lonely

Human minds are prone to various influences from within and outside. Most of these influences are caused due to our prolonged engagement with the environment that we live in and the value system we develop over the early ages of our education both formal and informal. Our minds and soul are subjected to various forces that interact with us both physically, psychologically, and from the unseen forces of nature. The unseen forces may have the overwhelming influence on our body, mind and soul. All creations are given a part of God that remains intact through the early ages of our life and remains intact until the days of formations. Once we start interacting with the outside world and start forming opinion we either enlarge the goodness of our hearts or shrink them based on the type of influences we are subjected to.Parents and teachers have a critical role to play in the formation ages (5-12) of a child in implanting the value system and the roots of culture.

The sense of negativity is the root cause of Intolerance and hatred. The roots of such implantation come from the exposure of the children and adolescents to the negative environment and the family setup they undergo. A happy family hardly produces a negative oriented child given the love they get from their parents. The most vulnerable children are the ones who come from broken homes, who witness the negative arguments between their parents and their eventual breakup. These arguments leave a daunting mark on their mind frame and thus the roots of positive thoughts get clipped from the very early ages. Another vulnerable group are the ones who gets unfair treatment from their teachers at school. The positive thoughts come from the sense of balance and contented mind inside. The question is how do we produce such a balance inside ones mind. The task is not that difficult if the parents and teachers are careful enough in how they treat their children or the students.

In general, people get involved in conflicts because their interests or their values are challenged, or because their needs are not met as expected. Some people have more internal resistance than the others and have the power to accommodate others views and utilize internal mechanisms to filter the information out to the advantage of self-development.

The central piece of conflict is the negativity of our thought process. The more negative we are the more conflict we generate. Conflict is a natural and very typical phenomenon in every type of human relationships, at every level: From interpersonal (the realm of psychology) to global. It is easy to resolve or help resolve a conflict stemming from a clash of interests. It is more difficult to deal with a conflict that emanates from a clash of values. And it is even more difficult to handle a conflict in which at least one party's basic human needs are not satisfied. That is why such conflicts usually are deep-rooted and intractable. This negative thought process, when we grow up, leads us to develop our individual relationships on the basis of similarities of lower calibre rather than the strengths of the diversities of higher calibre. This is due to our understanding that is formed in our early lives to keep away from diversity. Diversity is never shown as strength. As a result the individual and group relationships tends to create cells of individual strengths that are similar, and become antagonistic to the other cells that are also formed on the basis of individual strengths of a different kind. Then starts the process of an ever-escalating competition among these cells for establishing the ultimate influence in all aspects of life. The negativity of our thought process somehow does not allow us to be able to sit together and utilize our strengths for a common cause of the good for the society or the nation. During our childhood, we do not learn the value and the spirit of team efforts. On the contrary, our formal training leads us to the competition of individual strengths. Our curricular and co-curricular activities in the schools and colleges are dominated by individual strengths. The only avenue for practicing group efforts is sports and games. Even in those events, we tend to utilize our individual strengths and try to win the game rather than developing any collective efforts of individual strengths. Based on our initial upbringing, we start making social comparisons on the basis of individual ability and merit, and any stratification that is not attributed to differences of individual skills or worth is considered unacceptable. Such a change, of course, marks the beginning of inter-group conflict. Strong group identities resulted in an 'us' versus 'them' division that lead to inter-group animosity. Competition between these groups simply intensified the mutual dislike.

It is this paradoxical process, particularly its more complex version, which takes place at the societal level that; Social Identity Theory aims to explain. According to this theory, every individual divides his/her social world into distinct classes or social categories. Then, within this system of social categorization, individuals locate themselves and the others. The sum total of where they are located with respect to each category and classification constitutes their social identity. In other words, one's social identity consists of how one defines oneself in each social category (gender, geographic location, class, profession, etc.).Creating conducive home-environment so that our children can develop positive attitudes towards life in general: The key factor in this component is first the mother and to a lesser degree the father. All parents should attend community classes regarding positive attitude building techniques. Local religious institutions or community groups who then will keep on monitoring the individual progresses can organize these classes. Mothers should be taught not to use the “white lie” tactic of feeding their children or inducing them to study. These do hit short-term successes in being able to feeding the reluctant children or inducing them to study but no one consciously realizes the long-term damage this does to the negative senses that it creates. When we grow up we do the same things with our children because now it has become part of our culture. As an example, most mothers would say, “look, look, the eagle is coming to eat your food, and as the child looks to find the eagle, the mother forces a chunk of the food in his mouth and the child being busy with finding the eagle gulps the chunk down”. When he/she grows up, they tend to use the same techniques in getting something done from others that one consciously would not do. These are the items that we should teach in our community classes. We should also teach the items that provoke positive thinking. Childhood is the time when one picks up the cultural trends and the mothers are the most important factors in that building up process. We have to teach the mothers adequately so that they can transfer positive attitudes in our early childhood.

Reform Primary and Secondary Education Syllabus and Takeout any Negative Teachings and Replace them with Positive Mind Building Items:

Our ill-fated education system is the major breeding ground for developing negative attitudes amongst our children. Our education system must be turned into a more objective weapon of building future citizens with conscience rather than readying individuals for the available jobs. Talking about my generation, we always had taken our education as a pill or quinine. We had never looked forward to attending our classes to learn things that aid us a human being. We never look at our education as the preparing grounds for a complete human being. The very culture of reading books to pass the exams has to change so that we can look at education as a career building effort rather than an instrument to finding future jobs. The teachers have a tremendous role to play in building positive attitudes in the classroom. The senses of fear and intimidation and has active role in learning rather has counterproductive outcomes. Teachers can take out the element of fear from the minds and hearts of our children. This element gives rise to negative thinking when we grow up.

Role of Religion in Building Positive Attitudes:

Religion is a major tool for building conscience and positive attitude provided they are given in the right doses and in right format. The current state of religious teachings is also characterized by negative overtones. We look at the differences among various religions and highlight the inter-religious tensions building items. We never emphasize on the bridge building efforts of religion. No matter what religion one follows, if they were followed properly then this world would have been a lot better place to live. We should highlight the events of religion that shows the human bonding and the endurance of the hardships without retaliations and the sense of kindness and forgiveness. Most religion has specific events that breeds tolerance and the power of endurance amongst its followers. We should encourage our young generation to follow these events and be part of the cultural transformation of our society.