What to Do With All This Hate?
And what to do with all this Joy?
Dear Lithium,
I know nobody has a magic solution, but is there any way you’ve been able to make peace with the amount of hatred visible every day? As a Canadian, watching the new wave of anti-lgbtq Q-anon shit move north in a big way is terrifying- I worry about my future a lot, and it feels like watching a train coming down the tracks at me in slow motion. It hasn’t reached legislature yet, but I’ve watched people my age shift farther and farther right, and the pride crosswalk in my town has been vandalized so much in the past six months that the town has given up on cleaning it. I don’t have a lot of friends to talk to about this, and I haven’t been able to come up with anything internal that makes me feel less overwhelmed.
Want to ask your own question?
Write into Dear Lithium here.
Dear Overwhelmed by Hate,
There is so much hate. There is SO much hate. In the Dhammapada (3rd Century BCE) the Buddha said:
Ah, so happily we live,
Without hate among those with hate.
Among people who hate
We live without hate. (197)
He said
This city is built of bones,
Plastered with blood and flesh,
And filled with
Aging, death, conceit, and hypocrisy. (150)
Maybe a bit different from the average Buddha quote on Pintrest:
My point being that while we tend to feel like “shit is getting really bad rn,” that even 2500 years ago Buddha identified the cities as being built with bones and plastered with flesh and blood. 2500 years ago Buddha identified that, not only were the people around him filled with hatred, but that by living without hate he could still be happy amongst them.
Easier said then done.
It’s difficult to live without hatred when we ourselves are the very target of hate. When my brother calls my mom warning her that that transgenders are going to give his one year old son estrogen while he’s sleeping, it can be hard for me (a transgender) to not rouse some anger and some hate in return. So the very first step for me is to get my mind under control. This is one of the primary recommendations in the Dhammapada I was quoting above:
Irrigators guide water;
Fletchers shape arrows;
Carpenters fashion wood;
Sages tame themselves. (80)
Speaking solely for myself, I see no way forward in a society such as this aside from doing some sage-like shit. So, yes, hate is a problem. It’s heading our way more and more. The pace at which it advances towards us seems to be ever increasing. And as it encroaches I am not going out to buy a gun. I am not yelling at transphobic street preachers. I am not trying to change my brother’s mind. My very first step is mind control. They live in anger, I live in joy. They live in fear, I live in joy. They live ambitiously trying to get the next big thing, I live in joy in the here and now.
Bestie, I can think of no better way to live in the face of societal hatred than to be just actually joyous. So it’s not that the hate cools down, it’s that we learn to get our own hate and fear under control. We can even do this in the face of mental health crisis, for this type of spiritual joy is not “brain chemical” dependent.
As to how to control the mind? This is somewhat of a different matter entirely. We build awareness for our actions. We build a strong, strong ethical framework. We slow down on the drugs and the partying. We associate with people who make us better, not worse. We learn about the dark corners of our minds. We dance.
With love,
Lithium
P.S. If you find this post intriguing, you may be interested in signing up for an upcoming workshop I’m leading alongside my friend Madison. It’s called “Ritual Mind Protection: Fortification Against Cultural Hatred.” It’s on Sunday December 15 at 4p PT / 7p ET. We haven’t opened registrations yet, as we need to finalize a couple things, but if you sign up for my Substack mailing list you’ll get an email when registrations open. It’s going to be really cool, we’re going to look at the role of ceremony and ritual in how humans have historically protected their minds, and you’ll even get to leave the workshop with a protection ritual of your very own.