Contemplating the Ying and Yang of Hate And Love

This week, like thousands of others who work in television, I was prepared to make the journey to Las Vegas to attend NATPE [National Association of Television Programming Executives]. Felled by the flu at the last minute, I decided it was not politic to fly nor humane to meet anyone in my condition.

I could not bear light. The thought of watching television brought waves of nausea. Settling into quiet and dark, I spent a week cut off from most of my informational lifelines, especially television.

It has been a very quiet time. And the quiet has been good. I do not recommend the flu as the vehicle to find time for a personal retreat but I do recommend retreat time.

The country cottage was the location where I was felled and it was a wonderful location for quiet time. Fresh snow [18 inches of it] lies across the land; the geese on the creek are huddled together for warmth [it’s below zero] and the moon has been nearly full, washing the landscape with a pale white light, almost bright enough to read by.

My main contact with the outside universe has been the radio – and through it I have captured a picture of the world.

NATPE made the news because Ted Turner, always to be relied upon to be controversial, compared Fox News to the Nazi Propaganda machine before World War II and, of course, that got telegraphed far and wide, resulting in comment and counter comment.

His words were particularly pointed, and I suspect he thought of this, because the news is also awash with remembrances of the 60th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The words of world leaders were carried by radio to the world’s billions. The demand for “never again” sounded strong; my sick room thoughts caused me to wonder about the psychological roots of hatred.

There is a good reason to pause and be concerned about this – in our current environment we are developing uneasiness towards those of Muslim background that needs to be monitored and managed if it is not to spill over into irrational actions.

I heard about a suicidal man in California that caused the death of at least eleven others when he abandoned his car on the train tracks when he decided he really wasn’t ready to go.

What was he or wasn’t he thinking? Why take others with you when you want to go? They aren’t of the same mind as you.

All around us the world we live in is affected by individuals who think only of their goals and not of the consequences on the aspirations of those they affect.

The suicide bomber in Baghdad does not think about the fact that the people he is killing don’t want martyrdom; they want to get their marketing done.

The Nazis were supremely organized and very focused in their murder; the terrorists are supremely non-discriminating.

Hatred is pandemic and an epidemic; a disease of every century it seems. Irrational hatred has been the sorry sickness of our species.

And I cannot help but be struck by the flipside of the hatred equation: the impossible lengths humans will go to help other humans. Moments of epic tragedy create moments of heroic opportunity which result in humans more than rising to the occasion.

What lives with me about 9/11 is the tenderness of survivors [and all in the city that day are in some way survivors] to other survivors, the gestures of help to one another, topped by the sacrifice of all those who raced to help those in the buildings and died doing so.

It was true in the Tsunami and was true at the side of the railroad tracks in California; it is true in the streets of Baghdad. Once the bomb goes off, the crowds gather to help and save.

This is our ying and yang. Why is it, though, in 10,000 years of recorded history we have not been able to marry them together in better harmony?