Fearmongering and Hatespeech (or, the Big Bad Wolf)

From the time we're little children, the stories we're told clearly illustrate concepts of good vs. evil. There's a clear good guy that we're supposed to identify with, and a bad guy, for which we have a cocktail of hate, fear, and disgust. Look at the story of the three little piggys, little red riding hood - they both have the big bad wolf. That personification of our fear and hate.

From an anthropological standpoint, it totally makes sense. As small children, it's very valuable to our survival to know what things are dangerous and we should fear. If the story involved the "friendly wolf who just wanted a meal to feed his starving family," then maybe we'd be trying to give it food scraps instead of running for shelter. We need to learn very early on what we should fear, and what we should stay away from - because if we don't, we'll die.

But, it becomes dangerous when we continue this behaviour into adulthood. The big bad wolf is dangerous, but it is also a friendly animal trying to feed its family. It's not malicious, it's just trying to survive, just like us. As adults, we can analyze it's methods and intentions and treat it accordingly. We still respect it's power, but we don't hate it.

If we hated it, we would hunt it to extinction. With a modicum of empathy, we can learn to coexist.

Now, let's carry this thought into our relationships with other people and cultures. People use fear and hatred to justify war and discrimination. Replace the big bad wolf with communists, Muslims, blacks, homosexuals, etc., and we can see how society tells the story - and how that story changes over time.

The truth is, we need to feel hatred and fear towards a group to justify going to war with them, to ourselves. If we start looking at people in Afghanistan as people who are just trying to survive, who are afraid of us, they feel suffocated by our expanding global grasp - then you start understanding, rather than hating. It's true there are terrorist groups, but they exert their power for a reason - because they're afraid of us, or feel powerless and need to exercise that power. Because they see US as the big bad wolf. If we can understand their motives, since they are people just like us, then we can treat the causes of their anger rather than vilifying. Because when we view them as the big bad wolf, it's really only a way to murder them with a clear conscience. Which gives them a reason to murder us with a clear conscience. Which gives us a reason to.....

Without empathy, we will always be susceptible to war.