DAY 34 – KEY ASPECT: ANTI-THOUGHTS

I have come across an internet site where people complain to one another about other people. Their discussions center around how much they dislike people who are of a different nationality, religion, race and ethnicity or have a different sexual orientation. This forum is also a place where they vent their anger and hatred for their jobs, co-workers, employers, politicians, ex-partners and family dynamics.

So much of the animosity that people have for another human being or those who belong to a different group than they do stems from the thoughts that they have about someone or some group. They think about them as “others” and use language that is unflattering, disparaging and outright negative.

There is a great difference in how people interact with and treat someone when they use the words dislike, disapprove, bad and hate compared to using the words approve, like, good and love. No one can have the requisite respect and kindness for an individual person or members of a group along with wanting to associate with them when they internally describe others in the most demeaning of terms.

It is one thing to not like a particular action that a person has taken or to disagree with a point of view about a certain situation but it is something completely different to have outright disdain based upon a person holding a different ideology or belonging to a different group. Breathing hostility into the air can lead to unimaginable consequences with far reaching implications. Harboring anti-thoughts keeps human beings apart and an inability for everyone to live in harmony with one another.

People who have deep seated anti-thoughts can justify such sentiments without any sound reasons. They have thoughts in their minds that do not meet the criteria of accurate and factual which usually leads to actions that go beyond just words. Depicting certain individuals and entire groups of human beings as inferior, stupid and incapable to succeed is a characterization intended to keep the target of anti-thoughts downtrodden and without the everyday rights to a better life. Physical assaults that break bones, death and full scale war between entire groups has been part of human history for far too long.

Those who hold such negative thoughts often find the least possible provocation for finding fault. They see a few instances of poor behavior by a single individual and believe that person acts that way all the time. They see certain behaviors by a few people who belong to a particular group and generalize it towards most or all members of that group. Magnifying any negativity out of realistic proportion makes getting along with their fellow human beings more difficult if not next to impossible.

The world will not get to where humanity wants it to get to until anti-thoughts are no longer a part of human consciousness. Sure human beings are one percent off and will not always say or do things to one’s liking, but to harbor disdain based upon disparaging thoughts towards an individual person or an entire group creates an atmosphere that is completely antithetical to a better life and better world.

After browsing through this internet site and seeing such anger and hatred I now realize that excessive negative thoughts that go beyond a simple disagreement about an ideology, an individual person or a specific group represents anti-thoughts about the subject of such thoughts. With this type of thinking people labeled as the “other” can become so despised that they are then considered the “enemy” even if it is not on the field of battle.