Hate: An Avoidable Emotion – If Only…

The reaction to the Bellville Synagogue shooting is entirely predictable.  It is similar to all other previous reactions to such events.  Empty, blatantly uniformed rhetoric.  Hate motived violence is condemned and we are promised that it will be legislated out of our lives by punishing the offenders.  Yet the occurrences persist, as they always have, some raising the alarm that their frequency is increasing.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Hate, racism, misogyny etc. and etc. has been with us for time immemorial.  Since there are so many more of us we simply have more incidents of hate motivated violence occurring.  Given this reality, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that there is a pervasive absence of will to seek an explanation and based on it implement remedial and preventive measures.  This apparent absence of will is especially egregious since there is an empirically sound explanation and based on that strategies have been implanted producing very promising results.  

Historically, most if not all prophets have had more than less the same message:  you do not have to live like this, a better life is available to you in the here and now.  More recently the lovable cartoon character Pogo, created by the satirist Walt Kelly, started the explanation with this brilliant insight:  “We have met the enemy and he is us”.

If its not aliens or mythological Greek gods causing our pervasive misery the logical question becomes what is it that we are doing to our selves, as Pogo concluded.  The empirically sound evidence is that since time immemorial we, the people, have allowed a very few to create environmental conditions that obstruct the activation of the cognitive developmental potential with which we are all born. Since time immemorial we humans have lived under siege like conditions.  Currently, there are some one hundred and thirty armed conflicts raging globally.  In Ontario our health care and educational sectors are under attack, homelessness/drug abuse is rampant and most of us are barely able to get by financially.  These have always been and continue to be conditions that obstruct the activation of our innate cognitive developmental potential.

In constant survival mode the human strategy is to seek tribal membership and/or remain stagnant at the tribal stage developmental perspective.  The price of membership is easy, simple and requires no thinking.  All that is required is to abide by the tribes’ prescribed beliefs, values and ways of behaving.  This mostly involves hate for the other, wanting what the other has and doing whatever it takes to get it.  Under siege conditions we are too busy surviving to see or understand what is happening let alone do something about it.

Even well intentioned, well schooled and scholarly people fail to recognize that their messages to save the environment and convince people to act differently are distorted by prescribed tribal ideologies.  While change is constant, progress in ameliorating human misery is minimal at best.

What motivated the Scandinavians to include in their elementary and secondary school curriculum the deliberate activation of all students’  cognitive developmental potential is an intriguing curiosity.  Clearly, they are not afraid of their children growing up to be tolerant of the different other, responsible, critical thinking and problem solving real adults.  While this initiative is still very much a work in progress they are already starting to reap the benefits.  Reportedly they are considered to be the most egalitarian global nations and they are not yet finished disrupting the establishment’s status quo.

Adolescents struggling during their tribal stage of development are barely barrable.  The chronically stagnated are at best difficult and at their worst predictably nasty self-righteous violent people at the slightest provocation.  Since the work required to accomplish that which we must (grow out of our tribal stage perspective) will take several generations to complete, yesterday would have been the best day to start doing it.

 

Alexander T. Polgar

Author who writes about this kind of stuff.

It is time to bring the wild west mentality of capitalism under control

Lately, much has been said, written and protested about the potential evils lurking in the depths of artificial intelligence and its life source data centers.  Those opposed and leery of it clearly know very little about change throughout history.  Although change has always been an inevitable constant, nevertheless almost always the first reaction to it has been opposition.  The reactionaries act as thoroughly unaware that once a proverbial genie is out of the bottle it cannot be stuffed back into it.  Moreover, most reactionaries act thoroughly unaware that there is a vast difference between change and progress.  Change is constant, progress not so much.  To illustrate this important distinction, consider that we have vastly changed how we kill each other.  The weapons are exponentially more sophisticated each year than they were the year before. The fact that we are still killing each other in some 130 current armed conflicts globally is evidence that change in the weapons have no progress component to them. The change benefits only the few in control of the military industrial complex, we the people not at all.

Artificial intelligence and the data centers that feed them represent a genie out of the bottle change that is going to make a very small group of tech bros, we all know who they are, much richer than they already are.  How it will benefit us, the consumers remains to be seen. Does anyone, who reflects for just a second, believe this genie can be stuffed back into the bottle?  Such stuffing would be an unprecedented historical event.

To the credit of a precious few aware of the distinction between change and progress there is in our behaviour repertoire initiatives to regulate or otherwise control change and extricate from it progress.  While so far not very well, nevertheless such initiatives are in our historical repertoire.  This makes regulating change a far more doable albeit challenging objective than stuffing that proverbial genie back into the bottle.

So, protestors everywhere against artificial intelligence and its life source data centres, focus your energies on demanding real, sustained and transparent oversight of this change with so far little, if any, evidence that it includes progress from which all of humanity will benefit.  If there are people with the skills to create technological change, there also must be people with the skills to gleam from it progress through seriously sustained regulatory measures.

The difficult but doable objective is to find ways by which to compel our elected representatives to do what they are elected to do.  Not stuff genies back into bottles but to regulate, create relevant oversights with which to extract beneficial progress out of change. Change that greatly benefits only the few tech bros should no longer be acceptable.  Progress, that benefits most, if not all, of us, should be the new sheriff in town.

 

A Response to the “Need to Respond to Hate in Tangible Ways”

The following was written in response to an opinion piece published by the Hamilton Spectator Monday the 6^th of April 2026.  I urge you to read online what Professor Ameil J. Joseph wrote.  When I read it, it left me lost for words.  From an associate professor academic it would not be unreasonable to expect better.  I wonder what grade he would assign to the paper if it was submitted by a student. I also wonder what criteria was applied by the Spectator for publishing it.  I wonder even more what criteria was applied to reject my civil response that could have been, should have been harsher.  No one, especially an associate professor, should be given a pass for writing in such a way that contributes albeit inadvertently to the perpetuation of hate that has been and continues to be a horrible global problem.

 By definition hate is intense dislike and when it is felt toward another it can and often is lethal.  Professor Joseph rightfully identified this to be a critically worrisome phenomenon.  However, this treatise could benefit from a broader and actionable perspective..

Professor Joseph’s opinion piece is very academic, in fact too much so.  He spends three quarter of his words describing the problem.  After acknowledging the existence of organizations such as the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre he asserts “hate requires more than reaction,” but does not elaborate what that should be.

 A tangible response to people individually or in groups who promote the hate of some other, while not explicitly stated by professor Joseph, assumedly would be punitive.  We all know, or should know, the futility of trying to control thinking and behaving by means of punishment.  It does not work.  It drives behaviour out of sight but not out of sinister insidious occurrence.

 While we indeed must move beyond reactive responses to hate driven behaivours Professor Joseph’s plea to “invest in a sustained, city-wide strategy against hate, one that is properly resourced, institutionally supported and led with and for those most effected” is commendable but what does it mean. This assertion should be, must be operationally defined.  What observable and measurable actions are required to achieve equally well-defined objectives the achievement of which culminate in the reduction, perhaps even the eradication of hate.  Said differently, what needs to be done so that people can outgrow their stagnated tribal stage perspective at which no independent thinking is required.  All that is required for membership is abiding by prescribed beliefs, to hate, value membership in the tribe and act on both. 

 Continuing to do the same things, to “address hate” albeit better funded and coordinated, and expecting different results is said by some to be the definition of a not very admirable state of mind.  The doings , which are undefined in the opinion piece, have been done for decades.  The same “things” have produced only the dire need to continue to do the same “things”.

 An alternative perspective is provided by Walt Kelly’s lovable cartoon character Pogo.  He said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  Hate is an acquired taste.  No child is born with it.  It is learned and it is mostly prescribed by one’s reference group otherwise known as tribe.  Hamilton is not unique to have tribes that prescribe hating some other.  It is a global problem attributable to profound and pervasive developmental stagnation.  On a good day most of the world’s population is tribal.  Under the slightest duress people regress to even more primitive ways of thinking and behaving.

 The duress most families have always experienced and continue to do so is what prevents them from activating their children’s innate cognitive developmental potential.  The siege conditions perpetrated on educators since the beginning of recorded history similarly obstructs their task of activating the innate cognitive developmental potential of the children when they become students.

 There is nothing new nor recent about this.  This has been and continues to be the establishment’s desired status quo.  And we the people allow it to continue. 

 Well intentioned but inadequately conceptualized opinion pieces inadvertently contribute to perpetuating conditions that obstruct even the stirring of innate cognitive developmental potential let alone activating it.

 Improving conditions for families is essential for activating their children’s innate cognitive potential necessary for growing beyond tribalism. To improve conditions for families will require a multitude of “grown-ups”. We just do not have enough of them.  The Scandinavian countries however, are well on the way to producing such grown-ups through education and are already reaping the benefits of doing so.  The Hamilton Wentworth Board of Education slowly and steadily could introduce similar educational environmental conditions from grades one through twelve and reap the incremental benefits from each generation of growing up students.

 The good news therefore, imbedded in Pogo’s brilliant realization “… and he is us” is that since we the people are obstructing the activation of our children’s innate cognitive developmental potential and are allowing it to continue to be done we can also stop it.  It will not be easy.  It will not be fast.  It is, however, doable, measurable and the goal is crystal clear.  Reverse the proportion of real grown-ups with the cognitive developmentally stagnated who are taught to hate by their tribe.