Hatred and Human Health

Animals do not hate. They may fight in self-defence, they may kill for the same purpose or for food but they are not driven by hatred. It does not indicate any superior genetic make-up. It is because they do not have as many social norms as human beings have and they do not have legal norms at all.

To elaborate this, let us see what happens when an animal A intrudes deliberately or by design on the territory of another animal B. A challenge is thrown by B and the challenge is in the form of aggressive sounds and display. Fangs are bared, ground is scraped, chests may be thumped, manes are spread out and even body colour or odour may be changed to scare each other. Thereafter, if there is marked superiority of one over the other, the inferior one takes flight. If the relative strengths are not clear, there is a fight. This fight or flight syndrome is well recognized by psychologists and it is known that human beings are no exception to these impulses.

Now let us see what happens when a human being A feels threatened by another human being B. Social norms discourage aggressive displays, legal norms discourage fight. In most of the cultural settings, even flight carries a negative connotation. In certain situations, the physical conditions do not permit flight. For example flight is not possible when on a running train or when A and B are in different cars in a traffic jam. The result is that body chemistry has prepared it through excessive adrenaline production for fight or flight but neither option is permitted. The result is that the human being is left in a state where he does not want to be. The simple word for that state is helplessness.

This helplessness is the beginning of that unique human trait called hatred. When physical fight and flight is not permissible, mental violence takes its place. The individual takes it out on the aggressor in his thoughts and he waits for opportunity to take it out in deed. If the later opportunity does not come for a long time, the individual is not able to restrain the urge to translate his thoughts into action. The result is breach of social or legal norms or of both.

What happens when the rationality of the individual is so strong that he feels that the payoff for a breach of norms is too expensive in terms of social or legal sanctions that are bound to follow. He has to exercise a large measure of restraint incompatible with his inherent capacity to do so. This is what is called stress.

The concept of stress had been used for long in physics and in engineering before it was used in human psychology. When force is applied on a body, it develops forces inside which oppose the effect of the external force. These internal forces are the stresses. At any point of time, the external force has to be equal to the internal force to maintain equilibrium. To create a matching internal force, the body changes its shape. The greater the applied force, greater is the change in shape required to equal it. The change in shape of the body is called strain. When the external force is removed, the internal force also vanishes and if the body then returns to its original shape, it is called perfectly elastic. If it is not able to do so and undergoes permanent change, it is called inelastic. Contrary to popular belief, steel is more elastic that rubber as steel undergoes lesser permanent deformity than rubber.

What is the relevance of this lesson in physics for human health? We have seen how the denial of fight or flight opportunity results in development of stresses. These stresses are the efforts of the human body to cope with the external restraining forces. The process produces some strain in the form of changes in the body. When the external force is removed, the body, if it has the requisite elasticity, should return to its original state. However, since perfect elasticity is unknown in the world of physics as well as in humans, some deformity results from each episode. The deformities are cumulative. If you stretch a steel wire and then leave it, repeating the process a large number of times, gradually its length will increase noticeably. Similar change may start appearing in a human being who is subjected to stresses repeatedly.

We can carry the analogy with physics a little further. As the stress increases, so does the strain. Yet, this happens only up to a point. If stress is increased beyond that point, strain starts increasing very rapidly, out of proportion with stress. Even if the stress is somewhat reduced, strain keeps increasing and only substantial removal of stress can prevent further reduction in strain. The matter reaches a state of plasticity where it is deformed by small forces. If more stress is applied when plasticity has been reached, the matter ruptures. For example, if excess force is applied in pulling a steel wire, its length will start increasing rapidly and unless the force is removed it will break. Every object, irrespective of its size, shape and composition has a level of stress at which it displays plasticity and then breaks unless stress is drastically reduced.

Similar is the case with human beings. As stress and strain build, at a point, we show rapidly increasing deformity in our behaviour and if the stress is not removed the breaking point arrives. That is the point at which acts are committed the motive for which is difficult to comprehend. The helplessness, which had been stored as hatred, finds the breach in the wall of rationality and flows with devastating force leaving the individual a bewildered spectator of his own actions. Once the forces are dissipated, even the individual is left asking himself, “What made me do it?”

We have to live in human society and with social and legal norms. These are slow to change and usually follow the need for change. It is rare that a society changes its norms in anticipation of coming situations or as soon as a situation develops which demands a change of norms. Thus, while the norms are always changing, these are mostly behind times. As a result, those who are at the forefront of change are in conflict with norms. The society calls them radicals or extremists in one form and geniuses and intellectuals in another. The society is not the source of this classification. It is these individuals who are at the leading edge of change who are the source of it.

One group has higher self-control and its members release their stresses through words and images. All writers, painters, film directors and other creative individuals who find the society and its behaviour pattern insufferable pour that feeling of helplessness and generalized hatred on some medium. If they have the talent, they are heard and seen and non-violent change in social and legal norms takes place.

The other group either does not have the talent to outpour their feelings in a manner where it finds a vast audience or does not have the self-control to restrain the urge to destroy what it hates. The result is violence and suffering for the society at large.

Having dissected the process by which our psyche undergoes deformity, reaching a point of gradual loss of control and finally the breaking point, it is easy to see what can be done avert these situations. Let us list the issues which lead to this situation:

1. Repeated exposure to situations which stimulate a fight or flight response.

2. Restraining forces of social and legal norms or the physical environment which make both fight and flight impossible or at least costly.

3. Development of feeling of helplessness and hatred.

4. Building up of stresses and consequent strain.

5. Increasing permanent change and development of generalized non-specific hatred.

6. Arriving at a point of no return.

7. Breakdown.

The obvious solutions, seriatum, are:

1. Avoiding situations which stimulate a fight or flight response. One method of dealing with an aggressor is to retreat before an aggressor has started the aggressive display. To some this may sound like cowardice. I will show in a moment that it is not so but let me first state that self-inflicted injury is no symbol of bravery. If you retreat when the territory being threatened is not your own, it is wisdom, not cowardice. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If you wait till the body has stimulated the fight or flight response, then even flight may use your body resources in a non-productive manner.

Yet, it may be asked how we can retreat without being threatened. If we are on the lookout for preliminary signs of aggression, these are in plenty. The aggressor, obviously, is one who is already in the plastic state. He has undergone a deformity which will be manifested in his behaviour. He is not normal. He needs help. By not falling in his trap, you are not only helping yourself. You are helping him also in staying away from self-invited trouble. That is certainly not cowardice.

I have spoken earlier of the limitations imposed by physical environment where retreat may not be possible. How to retreat when the aggressor is in a mood to create trouble on a running train? The retreat need not be in physical space. It can be to a corner in your thought space. If you start thinking of a happy outing you had last year with family and friends, maybe his aggression will die of recognition hunger.

Maybe. And maybe not. Nothing is a remedy for all situations. If he succeeds in stimulating a fight of flight response in you, then…..

2. Quit if you can. Let me repeat. There is no cowardice in staying out of trouble. Invoke legal norms if you can and if the legal apparatus is helpful. Relieve your stress in a harmless or even beneficial way. I have known a person who kept a large metal trunk in his room. Whenever somebody tried to provoke him, he quickly reached home and beat that trunk with a stick while hurling epithets at the cause of annoyance. I am not recommending this method for anyone as better methods are available. If you can go out and your health permits, go for a jog. At the end of it, you are likely to forget about the troublemaker. If you cannot go out after somebody has disturbed your sleep with a crank phone call at two in the morning, do a stationary run indoors. If your health does not permit that, listen to your favourite music, watch your favourite TV channel, surf the net. Perhaps the ultimate is to write it down, not only the event but your prescription for such persons and for the society to minimize the harmful effects of such persons. That is what the geniuses and individuals do. Maybe, you also have the talent.

3. You are helpless only when you convince yourself that you are helpless. There is no situation without an alternative and the limitation lies only in our lack of willingness to think of alternatives. Think that you are on a desert island. The trouble maker is a force of nature. If it is cold, you retreat to a warm place. If there is none, you try to create one. One thought is supreme in your mind; how to escape what threatens you on that desert island. Is it cowardice of wisdom? You do not hate the force of nature. You grant it its nature. The weather is bad, not that it is trying to punish me, you reason. And you hope; the weather is never the same always. You find an escape in space, if you can. If not, you find in time, in future. The aggressor is nothing more than a force of nature. If he were a thinking, rational individual, he would not be an aggressor.

4. We are more than half way through. If you do not have specific hatred, you cannot have non-specific generalized hatred. The latter kind includes hatred for oneself. The fellow picks up a gun, kills strangers and then kills himself. Would anyone like to be in his shoes? His is a state of extreme misfortune. Should one hate the unfortunate? Think of your good fortune that you are not like him. It will make you feel relieved of the stress that his actions may have built up in you.

5. But hatred is too powerful an emotion to be dispelled by a few thoughts. We hate because of helplessness as we have seen above. But in certain situations of helplessness, we do not hate. The neighbour’s music keeps me awake during the night and police have not responded to my call. I do not want to be called a trouble in the neighbournhood and I do not want to fall foul of the law. I keep tossing and turning in my bed and feel helpless. By morning I hate him enough to feel like breaking his head if I could do that without spoiling my fair name in the neigbourhood and without going to prison.

But think of your baby crying the whole night and keeping you awake. You don’t call the police, you call a doctor. The doctor is annoyed. Nothing wrong with your baby, he says. Babies do have difficult nights at times. You spend the night trying to comfort the baby. As the sun rises, the baby falls into a tired sleep with a smile on his lips. As the first rays of the sun fall on the angelic face of the baby, you feel like angel mother yourself and bend down to kiss him.

What is the difference between the two situations? It is what the wise have called otherness. In the previous situation, the source of annoyance is the other. In the latter, it is your own. What you consider as part of yourself does not annoy you. The food you eat is sustenance. The same food falling on your clothes make them dirty. Inside you, it is part of you, though it may be a worse sight inside than on your clothes. The ancient Indians seem to have realized this problem. It is only the trouble created by the other that is trouble. We fear that the other will create trouble, we fear that we shall not be able to do anything about the trouble. Then we hate the other. So they preached:

Na tu taddvitiyam bhavati. There is no other

Dvityadvai bhayam bhavati. If you treat as another, fear is generated. Then hatred is not too far.

Vasudhaiva kumbakam, they said. The entire earth is your family.

Aham Brahmasmi: I am the Universe.

Tat tvam asi. You are also the same.

What separates you from God is the degree of your Ananda; the bliss. When you reach the state of infinite bliss, you are God, who is call Peramananda; one in the state of ultimate bliss. All of us can thus be God, we are all potential God, and he is only one. Na tu taddvitiyam bhavati. God is infinite and so are we. Infinity has no parts. Ishavasyopnishad says it mathematically in a beautiful verse:

Purnamadah purnamidam purnatpurnamudachyate

Purnasya purnamadaya purnamevavashishyate

That is whole; this is whole; this whole emanated from that whole.

After creating this whole, what remained is also whole.

Or as the mathematician says:

Infinity plus infinity is infinity;

Infinity minus infinity is infinity.

Whom will call you other than the infinite that you are? And whom will you hate as another?

6. When you see someone who is approaching a point of no return, the plastic state where even small amount of stress cause a large strain, see in him as a diseased limb of your infinite self. He is your baby who is crying during the night keeping you awake. Even your own consciousness is a part of the infinite you. Own the crying baby even if it is inside you. Ring up the doctor. Maybe, he will assure you that there is nothing wrong with the baby and that he will sleep in the morning with a smile on his face. And you will bend to kiss that angelic face.

7. If we follow the above, this may never arrive. Yet, if in spite of all treatment, one part of my body may fail to recover, I minimize the pain and learn to live with it. In an extreme situation of gangrene, I may sever the limb from the body to save the body. Even then I regret having to do it, I do not hate the limb for developing the gangrene. I know the limb would not have developed gangrene if it could avoid it. It was beyond its control. The rest of the body also contributed to the problem of the limb. The brain failed to give the right command, the marrow failed to make the right anti-bodies, the cells failed to regenerate themselves. The gangrene was a collective failure of various components of the infinite body. The limb’s amputation was sad, regrettable, unavoidable. Yes, the society will have its prisons, in some places even gallows, mental institutions. There will be drop-out, failures. And they are part of the infinite whole which has to share the burden of its own failure.

Is there anyone left outside the infinite me whom I can hate? If none, then all I can pray for is:

Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah

Sarve Santu Niramayah

Sarve Bhadrani Pashyantu

Ma kashchidduhkh Bhagbhvet

May all be happy

May all be without disease

See everyone as good

May pain fall to the share of nobody.

And that includes the infinite me.