The nature of hate
I recently finished "The Rwanda Crisis".
The Rwanda Crisis: History of a GenocideApr 15, 1997 by Gérard Prunier.
It provoked a mini-discussion between my closest cousin and me. His reading of history was that the genocide in that country was sparked by a history of abuse by the Tutsi of the Hutu. M. Prunier mentions that there were abuses of each to the other, but lays the blame primarily on the Belgian colonialists for creating what amounted to a caste system. His theory (as best I can understand it) is that this created in the Tutsi a belief in their own superiority and in the Hutu a belief in their own mistreatment by the Tutsi and even the belief that the massacre was actually defensive--because, supposedly, the Hutu believed that the Tutsi would slaughter them eventually. And, in fact, there was such a massacre in neighboring Burundi. (This is a terribly simplified synopsis of M. Prunier's thesis).
But my question is this: does that kind of hate or paranoia--or whatever the catalyst-- have its origin in some wrong done to a group? For instance, the Jews never did anything to the Germans (although all kinds of horrors were imputed to them). I don't know of anything the Armenians did to the Turks or Kurds to have prompted that genocide. And I would say, if anyone had a right to hate it would be the black South Africans--and there was no retaliation on their part...astonishingly enough.
I think actually people hate because they need someone to hate, someone to blame (perhaps ultimately because they hate themselves, or just because they need someone or some group on whom to exorcise whatever disappointments or entrenched, perverse frustrations they have in life).
I don't know the answer. But I wonder.
The Rwanda Crisis: History of a GenocideApr 15, 1997 by Gérard Prunier.
It provoked a mini-discussion between my closest cousin and me. His reading of history was that the genocide in that country was sparked by a history of abuse by the Tutsi of the Hutu. M. Prunier mentions that there were abuses of each to the other, but lays the blame primarily on the Belgian colonialists for creating what amounted to a caste system. His theory (as best I can understand it) is that this created in the Tutsi a belief in their own superiority and in the Hutu a belief in their own mistreatment by the Tutsi and even the belief that the massacre was actually defensive--because, supposedly, the Hutu believed that the Tutsi would slaughter them eventually. And, in fact, there was such a massacre in neighboring Burundi. (This is a terribly simplified synopsis of M. Prunier's thesis).
But my question is this: does that kind of hate or paranoia--or whatever the catalyst-- have its origin in some wrong done to a group? For instance, the Jews never did anything to the Germans (although all kinds of horrors were imputed to them). I don't know of anything the Armenians did to the Turks or Kurds to have prompted that genocide. And I would say, if anyone had a right to hate it would be the black South Africans--and there was no retaliation on their part...astonishingly enough.
I think actually people hate because they need someone to hate, someone to blame (perhaps ultimately because they hate themselves, or just because they need someone or some group on whom to exorcise whatever disappointments or entrenched, perverse frustrations they have in life).
I don't know the answer. But I wonder.
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