Why would I want to talk about hate? Well mostly because 2020 was an interesting year. I started the year full of excitement and drive, this would be my oldest son’s senior year and there was a mix of emotions that came with that but mostly joy! I was in an amazing place mentally, physically, and spiritually. I was fully wrapped in the warmth of life and I was fully present. I had good friends, family, and I loved my job. I had been writing the blog for just over a year and in the space where all of these things aligned, I began to have questions. Deeper questions about the nature of humanity, the meaning of life, and the science of everything. I have been on a spiraling web of reading, one author trickling into the next, my mind and soul ravenous. By consuming so much information I suppose it was inevitable that it would leak out and manifest itself in some purposeful way.
I did not mention the coronavirus and for good reason. My job and life were not really impacted by the shutdown in any significant way. I had to end my trip to Nepal two days early and I didn’t get to travel abroad for the summer. Other than that, I did projects around the house, hiked, kayaked, cooked, watched shows, and just spent time with my boys. Not super exciting but also not a struggle, I was full in the knowledge that I have a great life and that this was simply what was happing right now. The shutdown and isolation did give me a lot more free time and one would think that time would be put to good use writing. One would be wrong. I don’t know how to describe it, but the shutdown had a negative impact on productivity. This was not just something I witnessed in myself but in most adults and children of all ages. The shutdown had reduced the drive to complete tasks and as such my writing stalled. While I wasn’t writing I was deeply entrenched in the aforementioned reading. Having the time to contemplate life while watching how the world (especially America) was responding to the virus was difficult. I was trying to grow my understanding of humanity at the exact moment when it appeared to be fracturing.
I really was big time chilling during the shutdown!
The virus, the run on stores, the police violence, the riots, the race-baiting, and on and on! It seemed to me that my desire to understand humanity was met with a full-on dump of social chaos for me to sift through. Searching for a logical starting point I chose hate. Hate seems to influence everything in the media and political world. People in the streets appeared to harbor deep and long-lived attachments to hate, passed from generation to generation silently lurking and waiting for an opportunity to have its day in the sunshine. The negativity of it all oozed through my pores and I began to come to the realization that hate has always been and will always be. I wanted to know the source of hate, was there someplace in our very DNA that directed human hatred? Are there chemicals that we naturally produce in our bodies that dictate that we separate into us vs them? Is this something that is simply taught? Looking around the world there are far too many tales of subjugation, genocide, and just pure hate. For this to be so universal I believed that there must be some common aspect of humanity that is the source. What could cause this to be common across so many nations, cultures, and peoples? I am on a perilous journey to understand the darkness that resides within us all, in an attempt to piece together its origins and understand why hate is such an integral part of humanity.
Please understand that this will be a long and arduous journey, I intend to take my time and share my findings, thoughts, doubts, and fears. Hopefully, in the process of chasing our path to the Darkside, we find ourselves in others and in that some form of light.
Deliberately dope 