It’s a semantic difference, essentially. But I think it’s possible to genuinely forgive someone, if they made a brutal mistake and are genuinely repentant. The magnitude of what they’ve done (both good and bad) weighs heavily into the equation, however – which is why someone like Charles Manson can never be forgiven for his actions, whereas a lesser criminal could conceivably be given a second chance.
Well…Hitler’s Hitler. Sure, there’ve been larger genocides throughout history, but nobody left as many open scars as Hitler.
But I think it’s a mistake for this thread to get derailed into hate, when it’s supposed to be about Universal Love. After all, love is the most powerful force in the universe (heh) – it’s the foundation of mercy, forgiveness, and sacrifice, among other things. It’s a pity that Love rarely gets its fifteen minutes of fame, however – Hate is destructive and dramatic, and therefore hogs all the screen time, but rarely does anyone get to see what Universal Love may have prevented.
Yes, it’s possible to forgive someone. But you don’t have to know someone to hate them.
That’s life I guess. It’s always difficult to quantify something that has been prevented or identify why it was prevented. It’s even more nebulous when you expand that to things that may have been prevented.
Eh…we’re kinda talking in circles here. Crimes against humanity bear few shades of grey (which is why I reject Christianity purely on the notion that Hitler, Pol Pot or Kim Jong-Il could receive eternal bliss merely by praying to Jesus Christ at the eleventh hour) but smaller issues, like personal vendettas or something based on mistaken identity, are within the realm of possibility to forgive…but only if you know the person, and can comprehend their motivations. If you don’t know the person, you can’t properly judge them.
Once again, it depends on whether or not you’re privy to the factual truth. Absent any verified data, it’s a mistake to pass judgment based on assumptions…because when you assume, you make a…well, you know the rest.
That’s probably true, but how does it stop you from hating them? You said “It’s impossible to genuinely hate any person you’ve never met (aside from prejudice, I suppose).” Are you saying it’s not really hate, or that it’s not possible? I don’t think either of those is correct.
I’m saying it’s not really hate, that’s correct. Or, at least, not genuine hatred.
You can’t know a person’s true motives until you understand how their mind operates – and you can’t get that kind of information from a history book. No person’s ever 100% Evil; Adolph Hitler was an artist and a dog lover, after all.
The History Channel loves Hitler; Republicans better thank God for Stalin every day for providing them with an enemy. But I guess neither of those is in the context of universal love.
We’re talking about universal love in either Christian or Buddhist contexts. Consider this bit from the link on metta:
That doesn’t sound easy. Assuming the OP is still a Christian in his current incarnation, even he would exclude Hitler and Stalin from universal love. A hardcore Buddhist apparently would not- not even if they were the victim.
Going back to my Buddhist ex gf, I can kind of see how this could be. She could remember a number of her past lives. Nothing far out like Cleopatra or what have you, but fairly ordinary stuff that would nonetheless make her a natural as a Buddhist. She had a perfectly fine grip on reality- valedictorian at a prestigious university, self-made financially independent person putting herself through grad school, and more besides. Having died plenty of times already, I don’t think being killed would be at the top of the list of bad things that could happen- only a slip-up on her part could really be considered a bad thing. And since such a slip-up could be a threat to what we could consider a multi-lifetime project, better to stick to lovingkindness No Matter What.
I struggle more that that though. Hmm, let’s see, I had a sort of religious experience of my own once. I ran a ~14 mile race years ago, which was darn near uphill the entire way. It was ~95 degrees out that day, and I probably wasn’t really trained enough for it. Talk about exhausted! But I was determined to finish, and anyway my ride was at the end, so even when I started getting delirious I didn’t quit. At the end I’d been delirious for a little while, and had what I call an experience of nonduality. That link is so confusing that I don’t even know if I am using the right word, but here is one good line from it:
Basically I lost my sense of identity. I don’t know if it shrank to zero or if it expanded to include everything, but for awhile I didn’t see myself as separate from anything or anyone around me. Instead, I was everything, and not ‘me’ at all, hence no identity. Not as a realization or a notion either, but as a direct experience. It was kind of hallucinatory and euphoric, and probably just a result of becoming unglued through exhaustion. The cause-effect seems pretty obvious so I never really took it as a genuine religious experience, but I can still take on that point of view if I want to- the perspective where there aren’t really any distinctions and I am everyone.
So when you’re everyone, why in that case you literally are Hitler. Hating Hitler is just hating yourself. So you wouldn’t do it- you want to love yourself, right? That’s a lot different than saying that Hitler wouldn’t be Hitler at all without the Treaty of Versailles, and that Stalin wouldn’t be Stalin without Hitler. There just aren’t any real distinctions. It is a case of the universal “I” screwing up with the Treaty of Versailles, it made that “I” sick, and the shit hit the fan. Whoops, “I” sure fucked up, better not do that again!
But it’s not that simple, and here is where I punt. Everyone has their bogeyman. For the OP it is Hitler and Stalin; to me those guys are long dead. I am not going on a rant about this, ok? but the bogeyman that makes me hate is BP. Even if BP is “I”, well it is kind of like an extraordinarily disgusting boil on “my” face which, if I love “me”, I ought to do away with, no?
Even Jesus said, “If your eye offends you, pluck it out.” But how do you do that in the spirit of universal love, if at all? Or, to repeat the OP’s question I suppose, should I even try? In the abstract, how does one quit hating their bogeyman, and love them instead?
Sorry for my late arrival to this conversation, but what event are you talking about? “30 to 50 million” doesn’t really match the numbers from any historical genocide (except the Black Plague, I guess) – it sounds more like the estimated casualties from something like a nuclear exchange between the U.S. & U.S.S.R., or a future asteroid strike.
Define love? It means so many things. It usually means an attachment of some sort, and desire for the well being of another. Ideally this should be the default, it’d motivate us to end so much suffering that we choose to allow. Love comes in varying strengths, love of human kind need not cheapen romantic love, nor love of family and friends, but compliment it by placing them in a better world.
Exactly. When you combine Hitler’s role in starting World War II (which makes him partly responsible for all the war deaths, at least in Europe), Stalin’s disastrous policies, and their respective genocides and mass murders, I think the estimates are about right.
Christians are supposed to love God. With all their heart, mind and soul, right?
Ephesians 4:6
But where is God again? Why, in heaven of course. But where is heaven? “The kingdom of heaven is in you”. Right?
So the kind of universal love Christians are getting at is actually a roundabout form of non-duality. God is everything -> God is in heaven -> heaven is in you -> you are everything. And you love it.
I don’t exactly love the OP though I try to wish him well and hope that he succeeds in life but he has to define what his individual success would be.
I don’t hate any of the dictators, mass murderers or just plain of bad guys mentioned in this thread because they never did anything to me.
There are two people from my past whom I hate, when I think of them, which is increasingly rarely as I age. I would cheerfully inflict long term agony, following by a terrible death on either or both. There is no way possible I would ever “love” either of them, no matter the definition of “love.”
Faithful Christian hopefully leading some people to Christ. Successful historian and writer. Ideally successful politician and helping form a world government for a lasting peace but that is low probability.
So you hate the persons in your past more than Adolf Hitler who murdered millions of people?
No, they should Love all including such people as Hitler or Stalin, as they were just children who were so badly hurt that they became puppets of evil.
Jesus said the words what you bind on earth you bind in Heaven and what you loose on earth you loose in heaven, these are the keys of the Kingdom of heaven (and these were said together as Jesus explained the use of the keys to Peter - but the keys were not only given to Peter alone IMHO), the ability to open or close doors for you to get blessings from above is what we release here on earth, which if we want Love we have to release it. If everyone gets Love from us, we can expect that blessing to us.
Late to the game here, but here’s my take on it- A person should strive to treat people as kindly & fairly as possible. With some people, like predatory murderous raping pedophilic criminals, that may be done by locking them away for life or even executing them, but feeding & sheltering them until death rather than starving or torturing them
