Living in the midst of this hangover of watching the United States (and other countries) implode in a dizzying display of anger, violence, murder, suspician, xenophobia and more, I wonder at how this will affect my own country – Canada.

What I see south of the border is nothing short of civil war as society becomes increasingly divided, and not simply divided by a crack but a grand canyon-sized chasm that cannot be leapt.

How does one get to where things stand today? How do neighbours, family, friends, co-workers and more come to such a place of confrontation and ultimately hate?

The path to hate is quite simple actually, the real question is why hate in the first place?

We hate because we find it difficult to hurt the ones we are close to. We hate because we struggle to hurt the ones we love.

Hate is employed as a tool numbing and ultimately killing (because hate is an act of murder) the feelings that prevent us from lashing out and attacking the people we disagree with. We become so angry that dialogue and debate are not working, so angry at people for not coming to “our side” on the basis of our sound arguments that we wish to employ harsher measures – arrest, violence, censorship, etc.

But, we find that we struggle to attack the ones we love and act in ways that will no doubt hurt them and so, in the end, rather than digging deeper into relationship and reconcilation, we walk the path of hatred.

While hate is a choice, one does not simply hate a person overnight. You start by finding things about them that simply annoy you…things that get under your skin. Their liberal or conservative nature, their beliefs, the things they eat, the people the listen to or read. You dwell on these things and rationalize your growing dislike for them. You push them away, you stop talking to them.

Overtime this path leads you to dehumanize them. They are not a person, they are the ideas and things you do not like. Once this happens the step into full blown hatred is easy. You see them as a threat, as the other, as a thing to be eliminated at all costs.

The hard thing about hatred is it’s also the response of the hated. Hatred reinforces and creates hatred. If I hate you, you will likely come to hate me. You will start employing the same tactics in reverse.

Hatred makes us do horrible things. Hatred makes us feel horrible things. When we do and feel horrible things there is a very real danger that we, in the end, will become horrible things. Hatred never ends well for anyone, especially for the one who hates. Hatred transforms us into monsters.

The only antidotes for hatred are love and relationship. This is why hatred fights so strongly against them…love and relationship inocculate a person against hate. It is difficult to hate a person we are in relationship with, a person a see and talk to…it is impossible to hate a person we are in love with.

The question, of course, in our divided times, is who will leap across the divide first and seek to repair and restore broken relationship?