COLUMN: Hat's assault on reason

From Mike Liskey's "The Road Less Traveled," Fall '96 From Mike Liskey's "The Road Less Traveled," Fall '96 A plague on both your houses!" were Mercutio's dying words in the film version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Hatred between two families resulted in his mortal wounding, and before he died Mercutio cursed both families for causing so much suffering. The two families happened to be the Montagues and the Capulets, but the hate they generated could have come from any two families, groups or individuals. Anger is so easily justified as a necessity; hate is often rationalized as justice. But isn't hate, regardless of how it's euphemized, still hate? Can degrees of hate be measured? Would suffering caused by the Ku Klux Klan or the Black Student League differ? Do the crucified and the lynched feel a difference? Hate is an evil, negative energy that empowers individuals to feel superior, not equal. Destruction, not harmony, is its end result. Hate is like the "dark side of the force" in the Star Wars movies -- and in ways similar to Luke Skywalker, the young, slinky-looking hero in Star Wars, I continually feel the pull of the "dark side." The wind blowing through campus seems to call out, in that deep, Darth Vader-esque, gasping-for-air type of voice, "Mike, come to the dark side." I resist, but still feel the strength of the "dark side of the force" here. Like the smog in Los Angeles, it seems to close in around me -- suffocating, choking, blackening my insides with the pollution of hate. It tightens my neck, pains my back and clenches my jaw. It divides my attention and drains energy away from my body. I try to escape by car, but no freeway goes far enough. Hate is usually produced in those large polluted factories known as government and political institutions. They control our lives by assembling and releasing their product of hate upon the world. It trickles down the social classes until, like a cartoonish snowball, it becomes overwhelmingly large and destructive. Governments and administrations perpetuate hate by withholding limited resources and making the people who would receive them believe they are nothing without these resources. Like starving dogs fighting for a bone, people hate to secure their share of these limited resources, generously thrown out by their "master," the "haves." These "haves" create the illusion that the only resources are these limited resources that are thrown among the people to divide. A new level of "haves" and "have nots" is created within the disillusioned world of the "have nots." At this contrived level, hate runs rampant as people are reduced to animals, fighting for what the hate factories say they must have. Without these "necessities," people are made to feel naked and vulnerable. And when the human spirit feels vulnerable, it must put on the strongest armor available -- that made of hate. So strong is this material that it protects and shields from the deadly weapons of fairness, logic and critical thinking. These three weapons allow individuals to exist beyond their personal comfort zones; without them, the self can't exist in the broader world. As Buffalo Springfield sang, "There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong." Our society creates nothing but hateful battle lines; unfortunately, everybody believes these artificial lines are right and must be observed, maintained and enforced. Turn to your left and you will see a Montague, turn to your right and you will see a Capulet. Everywhere, there is a different "house" and we are all divided, each "house" loving to hate and hating to love. I must risk giving away the ending to Romeo and Juliet by saying that most people won't understand how widespread hate is until their own hate has killed their capacity to love. I join with Mercutio and echo his parting words, "A plague on both your houses!"