Reality Check Classics 2/9/97

LOVE & HATE

"Hatreds do not ever cease in this world."
- Dhammapada I.5

So said the Buddha some 2,500 years ago somewhere in India where HATE was as strong a human emotion as it continues to be. The Buddha also spoke of LOVE. This emotion was not as prevalent. This is also the case in 1998 as we approach the end of the decade, century, millennium and tumble further from the truth of HATE. It is because HATE is easy, disguised in millions of faces and excuses. LOVE is far more difficult; attached to conditions and crying out for restitution. In the great battle of humanity HATE beats LOVE hands down.

Hitler called it pride. Ghandi called it oppression. Manson called it fear. Freud called it sex. Dylan called it order. Jesus called it devil. HATE has been structured, manufactured, bought and sold in a host of ways. It has seduced bigotry, war, murder, rape, and poverty. It has been run by politics, religion, and billion-dollar advertising campaigns. All the while it is disguised as LOVE: LOVE of country, LOVE of God, LOVE of family. It is the march of the damned.

HATE is an indomitable emotion because it can be recycled as revenge and equality. Centuries of repression have rendered African Americans, Native Americans, Homosexuals, and women reactionaries to HATE. To survive they must return HATE. This is the cycle of humanity. This is the bullshit we have been sold by HATE. It is silence and din all at once, running in the shadows of our best smiles and jokes. It is tossed aside as radical thought, or the babbling rhetoric of the silly street barker trying to struggle his/her way from under its weight.

HATE doesn't need a return emotion. This concept is left for LOVE. To HATE we only need difference: a different border, a different God, a different color skin, a different preference in lifestyle, different body parts. To LOVE we need beauty, warmth, a desire; a need to know that it will be returned with interest like a bond. LOVE has been shrunk into film, sex, jingles, or some petty greeting card sentiment mixed in a stew of pap.

LOVE is considered a given between parents and their children, husband and wife, or people shoved into the same nationality, race, and gender; by circumstance or generations of stupidity. LOVE is the sheltered emotion; beaten and tattered by ignorance and fear. To LOVE or speak so is to be buried beneath the pile of those who use its mask to separate us from the truth of existence.

This truth is simple: Only LOVE can conquer HATE, not some attempt to fight fire with fire or stand in a corner and wait for a promised heaven if we're good boys and girls and eat our vegetables. Of course this is the type of thought which has put quite a few of the good people out of the life cycle. We know who they are and they are gone. We celebrate them. But we forget them. We are here. We should give it some thought now.

HATE is kicking LOVE’s ass. Check the record.

First published on 2/23/97 in The Aquarian Weekly. Included with many others in jc's new book, Fear No Art available now on jamescampion.com!

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