Psychological Aspects of Prejudice

Bahman Dadgostar, Ph.D., and Ann L. Hallock, L.C.S.W.
Hope Consulting Institute

Abstract

Introduction:  This paper will explore the role of internal discrimination in the expression of external prejudice and the development of hatred.  We will demonstrate that prejudice is not just what we see as an external reality: it is an internal pathology and bio-psycho-social immaturity.  It is an irrational obstacle to understanding, tolerating and respecting others.  We intend to show how this pathology can exist within any group of people, regardless of nationality, race or religion.

This paper will discuss:  The discussion will center on understanding these principles, what can be done to address the pathology and immaturity, and how to combat its development. We will follow with the steps needed to bring about the bio-psycho-social maturity, tolerance, respect and understanding that can foster communication between differing groups and communities.  Discussion will also focus on the fear individuals and groups often have of harming their precious beliefs or their own (already damaged) identity when they attempt to tolerate other people with different systems of thought and belief and diversity which are the beauty of human society.

Problem statement: Without addressing the barriers to dialogue brought about by prejudice and hatred it will be difficult for the post-modern world to move onto common ground.  The committed enemy of the peace and tranquility of humankind are those who wield the sword of prejudice.

Conclusion: Difference does not need to engender mistrust.  The need for a faith community to claim exclusive truth for their belief need not generate suspicion of others; they can bear witness to transcendental dimensions of experience, and they can become a source of wisdom and rationality, justice, forgiveness and choice for the betterment of human life and prosperity for the children of humankind.  Opening doors of understanding and hope by addressing mental health, humans can be freed to forge useful, helpful, respectful relationships that transcend diverse cultural and religious ideas and opinions and exemplify enduring hope for humanity.

I became water and I saw myself a mirage.

I became the ocean and I saw myself a drop,

 I became awake, and I saw myself asleep.

I became conscious and I saw my unawareness.

-  Farid al-Din Attar (1145-1221)

Our contribution to the topic of inter-cultural inter-religious dialogue is to examine the barriers to dialogue.  We chose this because we have found in our work and in our research that when people are having conflict, the conflict often arises not from clashes of interest but from mistaken judgments and unprocessed impulses.  We believe we can show how the rational side of human nature can be trained to overcome the world’s legacy of conflict and the evolutionary imperatives that often lead to hatred and violence.  To become conscious of our inner dialogue can be a primary opener of barriers to all dialogue.

Inner Hatred; the Root of Prejudice

The same formulations that account for violence in the individual and family can be applied also to collective violence.  We believe that hate and violence bring pain not only to the victims but also to the perpetrators of violence.  We find that prejudice stems from a defensive condition, a kind of blind, deaf and dumb feeling that springs from a distorted inner world based on conflict and filled with inner-hatred.  This inner distortion leads to a lack of self-esteem which shows itself as an ego-centric bias, which, when not balanced with love, empathy and altruism becomes a problem.  Individuals with this type of bias often use biased distorted thinking.  Biased distorted thinking can be addressed, not just in those individuals who allow distortions to rule their lives, but to groups and nations who may use the same limited thinking.  Biased distorted thinking can lead to bad habits like aggression and hostility.  The children learn it, “We are good – they are bad”, “We are the best – the others are no good, they are the worst”.  It is a learning process.  Prejudice becomes the action:  they do as they are shown, and what they say, when repeated often enough, becomes automatic. Initially it is painful for them because it goes against their natural tendencies to healthy love and justice but eventually as their prejudices get re-enforced these lovely natural characteristics go away and are replaced by prejudicial psychopathology.  This destructive disordered behavior replaces their natural feelings which they then cannot recognize in themselves, and they become confused; it is like an infection in their body. We hope to show that unhealthy habits like these along with hostility and rage do not need to be habitual but can be transformed by using the same human ability and wisdom, along with advanced understanding and conscious learning, into creative unity and peaceful pursuits.

We are now entering the twenty-first century and, while enormous gains and dazzling technological advances have been made, we can see that most nations are becoming armed and dangerous.  We see persecution, executions, violence and genocide.  Multiple levels of prejudice, discrimination and racism continue to divide pluralistic societies.  Some nations have tried to ban or eliminate religion and have found it unsatisfactorily replaced by religious fervor in politics, economics or other more destructive pursuits such as crime, alcohol and drug addictions.  Other nations have opted to enforce an ultra-religious stance on their citizens thus fueling prejudice against all those not of their persuasion.  There is enormous bloodshed occurring in many places in the world and most of it is due to inter-religious and inter-cultural conflict due indeed to prejudice and hatred.  Indoctrination whether through religious, political or social practices and through the media, has a marked effect on implanting prejudice.  This is why we have chosen to focus this paper on the psychological aspects of prejudice. 

Our hope is to address prejudice as a barrier to dialogue and to show that the roots of prejudice and hatred spring from internal pathologies which are destructive not only to the people who are suffering from these defects but to show how these pathologies are used to manipulate the people.  From understanding comes the hope of healing and transformation:  if we can address prejudice from an inter-cultural, inter-religious perspective in this global forum with wise people from many beliefs and ideologies, we may begin to help to focus the understanding needed to heal the pathology which may prevent some of the suffering of so many peoples of the world.

Groups such as Globalization for the Common Good exemplify the reality that difference does not need to engender mistrust.  People who choose to participate have already begun to open the doors of understanding and transcend differing cultural and religious backgrounds to become a hopeful source of wisdom and guidance and beginning dialogue between cultures.   With some of our research on prejudice and hatred we hope to share with you the scientific tools to help others move through similar steps.

Prejudice Is Projection of Intense Self-hatred

We believe that prejudice will one day be considered a form of mental/spiritual illness.  Already many people recognize that prejudice is a problem.  There is definitely widespread concern about hatred and the willingness to cause harm to others. Less than twenty-five years ago prejudice and prejudicial statements were commonplace and accepted, and in many places in the world this is still true. Similarly, in the not so distant past, all over the world, behaviors and practices that are now considered socially unacceptable and even mental health issues were once the accepted ways of coping.  For instance; in the countries of the Far East and Middle East, the abuse of the drug opium and addiction to alcohol was part of the status of kings and their courts, families of high standing, and high level authorities.  In countries of the West, alcohol was used as currency, alcohol addictions were prevalent and opium derivatives such as laudanum and heroin were used as patent medicines and health tonics.  These practices are no longer considered acceptable; and in fact, these substances are now known to be very unhealthy, the cause of addictions, and are regulated by authorities.  People with these addictions are diagnosed by physicians and mental health professionals, treated and often hospitalized.  Similarly, sexual profligates were considered to be strong leaders and very virile; now this behavior is considered a psychopathology, and an abuse of power. Someday prejudice will be recognized for the pathology that it is.

Our proposal is basically this:  that prejudice and the resulting hatreds are the external expressions of internal pathologies resulting from problems of normal attachment and perversions of normal development.  Distortions of thinking result from unprocessed impulses and mistaken judgments.  The process we have taken to recognize prejudice as an internal pathology has led us to re-examine studies on attachment and human development as well as studies on prejudice and hatred.  We have also focused on a kind of primal thinking and irrational thought process that frames other people as the enemy, stranger or “Other”.  The impetus for violent action comes from highly charged primitive thinking driven by imagined malevolent images projected onto victims and an internal belief that the violence being done is justified.

Definition of prejudice (from the New English Dictionary): a feeling, favorable or unfavorable, towards a person or thing, prior to, or not based on actual experience. [1993]⁴.  This is the dictionary definition.  We recognize that sometimes prejudice can be very much based on the direct experience various factions have with one another which re-enforces cross-cultural misunderstandings or misinformation.  This direct experience becomes difficult to change because of the re-enforcement of the very processes we are discussing in this paper

Biases may be pro or con but we will focus mainly on prejudices against certain groups or beliefs and will include feelings of scorn or dislike, fear and aversion, as well as various forms of anti-pathetic conduct such as talking against people, discriminating against them or attacking them with violence and without sufficient warrant.  A judgment is unwarranted when it lacks basis in fact (The Nature of Prejudice p. 7 [1979]) ¹. 

Of course some pre-judgment is normal for everyone.  As human beings we have to form judgments and we do so on the basis of generalizations and probabilities (Dalrymple [2007]) ⁵.  Over categorization is a common mind-trick.  Life is short and the demand for practical adjustment and understanding is great, so great that we often aren’t willing to let ignorance detain us; therefore, we may make misconceptions and errors of pre-judgment and prejudice. However, if a person is capable of correcting his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence, he is not a prejudiced person.  Pre-judgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge.  “A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would unseat it.” (The Nature of Prejudice p. 9 [1979]) ¹.

Prejudice as Psychopathology

Prejudice, as we are addressing it here, is an emotional feeling it is not rational.  It contaminates the person’s thinking.  In other words the person does not notice that negative emotional feelings have infiltrated his rational thinking. The internalized distressful feelings increase feelings of insecurity, inferiority, worry and anxiety which can lead the person to react to an individual member of a rejected group in an aversive, hostile, even aggressive way, simply because he or she belongs to that group and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to that group.

An example of the consequence of prejudice as a psychopathology is behavior we see among the disenchanted and disaffected youth of both the West and the Middle East.  This behavior expresses itself in a particular form of suicide.  In the West are the youth who kill large groups of peers, and then kill themselves.  This has been labeled “school shootings” and usually is done by a student who considers himself an outsider.  In this case the outsider is killing the in-group.  In the Middle East are the youth who use explosives to blow themselves up and in the process manage to kill a group of people.  In this case it is usually an insider (of a perceived oppressed group) killing the outsiders. This has been labeled “terrorism”. These sad events probably represent the alienation of these young people and the pathology of their prejudices, and represent the way in which these youth see themselves within their cultures.

Love-prejudice is far more common and basic to human life than is hate-prejudice, the reason being that one must first over-estimate the value of the things one loves before one can under-estimate their opposites (The Nature of Prejudice p. 25 [1979]) ¹.  Positive attachments are essential for human life and the lives of most mammals.  Young children cannot survive without dependence on a nurturing person. The child must love and identify with someone or something before the child can learn who or what to hate.  Young children must have family and friendship circles before they can define the “out groups” as a menace to them.

We tend to hear very little about love-prejudice because this type of prejudice creates no social problem.  However, it is when one is defining a value of one’s own that it may interfere with another person’s interests or safety – this is when we take note of hate-prejudice, not realizing it springs from reciprocal love-prejudice.  The root begins with self-love:  patriotism, pride of ancestry and culture representing the positive values by which one lives.  Disparaging outsiders, those of other cultures or religions, a person can feel more secure in his own beliefs.

Humans have a propensity to use prejudice as a normal and natural tendency to form generalizations, concepts, categories and so forth which will simplify experience.  By doing so one is spared having to learn everything first hand, however, from fantasy, emotional projection and hearsay the nucleus of truth may be lacking.  In-group loyalties come from rewards of membership in kinship groups, neighborhoods, religions and nationality.  We come to like and be loyal to the people we have grown up with:   the customs, morality, ethics, the style of life, and all those things that are familiar.

Few people know the real reason for their prejudice and dislike of minority groups, such as race, gender, religion, nationality and ethnicity.  The reasons they invent are both imaginary and rationalizations.  The person is not aware of the psychological function that prejudice serves in his or her life.  “The initial affiliative tendencies when threatened or frustrated give way to alarm and defense.  Thus the genesis of hatred is secondary, contingent and relatively late in the development process: it is always a matter of frustrated affiliative desire and the attendant humiliation to one’s self-esteem or to one’s values” (The Nature of Prejudice p. 352-365 [1979]) ¹.

There is a kind of economy in adopting an exclusional approach to human relations.  By taking a negative view of great groups of humankind we make life simpler.  The prejudicial pattern, involving various degrees and kinds of hatred and aggression takes its place in the individuals world view.   It has an economy about it that cannot be denied.  Still it falls short of the dream we have for unity and peace in the world. Humanity still longs for affiliation with life and peaceful and friendly relations with our fellow humans. 

Human beings can work out their economic insecurities, and their needs for self-esteem, but not when they don’t understand each other due to early deprivations and they are suffering from various nameless worries and apprehensions.  They then perceive the differences between people as menacing.  Feeling anxious for no consciously ascertainable reason, they seek to find a cause for their anxiety.  They decide that it lies in some difference that can be rationalized as a source of their fearful feeling.  When several similar people with similar anxieties and fears come together and agree on an imagined cause, a lot of hostility towards an out-group may result.

Importance of Attachment

This next part is from the scientific literature and we found it interesting and relevant to this paper.  In the latter part of the twentieth century, John Bowlby of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London, England, wrote numerous articles and books dealing with attachment issues.  He was a pioneer in the study of the nature of attachment and the pathological problems that can ensue when attachment is disturbed or lost in the early years of a child’s life.  Studies have shown that children who are securely attached in infancy are more likely than their insecurely attached counterparts at the age of five years to pass cognitive tests of understanding affective (feeling) states in others (Fonagy [2007]) ⁷.  The capacity to understand and interpret human behavior in terms of the corresponding mental states underpinning behavior comes from having been understood in the context of an attachment relationship. 

Attachment interview narratives of incarcerated violent males showed their family relationship patterns were characterized by a predominantly dismissing pattern, overtly denigrating or disavowing attachment relationships and a high prevalence of early unremitting trauma. This type of childhood treatment violates their human dignity.  These men often commit violent acts against women (and others) chiefly due to their inaccurate thoughts and feelings and their inability to represent mental states in themselves and others.  These difficulties end up emotionally handicapping them immensely.  Therefore, when they reach out for physical closeness but they continue to create mental distance, their attachment fails, which leads to frustration and often violence. When people want to stay away from other people, it is often because of a self esteem problem. For females with similarly troubled early attachment problems and maltreatment, there are different developmental paths that result in more destructive attitudes towards themselves.  The women may be more prone to suicide attempts and/or self-harm (Fonagy [2008]) ⁷.  It is not hard to understand that problems in the family contribute to similar problems within the social group and society as a whole.

Naturally the sequelae are complicated.  We have briefly outlined how this internal pathology originates and becomes a precursor to prejudice and hate.  The inability to understand and interpret human behavior in terms of the corresponding mental states underpinning that behavior is a bio-psycho-social immaturity which becomes an internal pathology leading to projection of denied hostility and hated parts of the self.  Rather than turning anger on the self, the anger is externalized and these men become the persecutors of others.  Out-groups become easy targets for this anger and hatred in their execution.  There are always a percentage of individuals in any population who have damaged or disorganized attachment problems and concomitant biased distorted thinking and these people are easily manipulated by power hungry and influential leaders.

Beliefs and Values

Relevant to the topic of this conference of inter-faith inter-cultural dialogue is what happens when people use human beliefs and values to justify pursuit of power, prestige, wealth and ethnic self-interest.  It is then that beliefs and prejudice merge.  It is easy to twist one’s conception of the teachings of a religion to fit one’s prejudice.  Frequently religious sanctions can be twisted to justify and sweeten ethnic prejudices.

Religion becomes the focus of prejudice primarily because religion usually stands for more than faith – it is the pivot of the cultural tradition of the group.  Religion, no matter how sublime its origins, can rapidly become secularized by taking over cultural functions.  For a religion to function without such cultural distinction it needs to have serious considerations for all cultures and, until recently, this has not usually been the case.  We all know of historical cases where religion has forced new converts to accept the dictates of the culture from which it sprang, dictates which had nothing to do with the spiritual teachings of the central figures such as Abraham, Jesus or Mohammad.  Religions have come to reflect ethnic and national divisions, even when there are large numbers of people of other faiths within their borders.  Most terrifying are the wars being fought where both sides are of the same religion but a different division of that religion and ethnic cousins to each other, locked in terrible conflict, praying fervently to the same God.

When religious distinctions are made to do double duty and include politics, the grounds for prejudice are laid.  Prejudice means that inept, over inclusive categories are used in place of differentiated thinking (The Nature of Prejudice p. 446 [1979]) ¹ and group ego-centric biases can come into play.

When religion is built around self-interest and self-justification, the door is opened to disordered and evil behavior.  The essence of religion needs to be humility, self-negation and love of neighbor which is part of the universal teaching of all religions and is the heart of the teachings that keep evil at bay and help with human inner awareness and consciousness.

The will to live and the wish to die:  the psychoanalysis of hate speaks of the death drive as a protest against the agony of existence (Lowen [1982]) ⁹.  The more painful the existence, the more attractive is the annihilation of death.  This drive, sometimes called Thanatos, is thought to be the origin of hatred, particularly hatred that leads to violence, hostility and aggression. (The Psychology of Hate, pg.238 [2005]) ¹⁰.  People may also fear being wholly alive.  When life is filled with fear and people have suffered a great deal they may resist being able to fully feel because the feelings of deep, deep pain and anguish also resurface.  It takes great faith and trust to be able to let go to life and to have hope for the future.

Virtues Corrupted

Human beings must have attachment or connection with others, a human can only fully realize himself or herself in a community of others.  Love is not universal, but attachment is.  Hatred can also create community: “Let them hate with a single heart. Much wrong in the world is thereby healed.” (As said by the Furies in Oresteia, the Greek play from 458 BC by Aeschylus).  Gangs, for instance, are a good example of a community of hatred.  As stated previously, attachment can be a bond of love or of hatred.  Shared hatreds are often the building blocks of the strongest coalitions.  It is important to understand how hatred infiltrates and corrupts virtues such as community, loyalty, tolerance, patriotism and citizenship.  If these virtues become the basis of mutual hatreds and exclusions then hatred of an “enemy” can become so confused with “love of belief or country” that it becomes nearly impossible to sort out.  Hatred can infiltrate all these virtues and hatred and prejudice hide within the values that people are willing to fight and die for without them even seeing the hatred that has found its way to corrupt the virtuous beliefs.

There is another dark secret, known to us in some dark way but denied and hidden, and that is that there is pleasure in hatred.  “Those who practice annihilation share a guilty secret:  the pleasure of destruction.  They likely feel a satisfying closeness with those who share their guilty secret.  Guilty secrets bind people more tightly than any passion except romantic love.” (The Psychology of Hate p. 250 [2005]) ¹⁰

Within all of us reside animalistic passions rooted in the distant past which allowed our ancestors to kill for survival.   Humans whose attachments are ambivalent, who may have suppressed the emotions and feelings of the body, are particularly prone to enjoying the excitement and pulsations of energy experienced during the righteous deprivations, beatings, torture and/or killing of another being.  Frequently they also fantasize that those outside their circle not only don’t care about the violence being done but that they also secretly agree and approve of what the perpetrators are doing (the U.S. Military guards at Abu Ghraib, for example).

The perpetrators of violence do harbor some fear of being observed (domestic violence perpetrators, child abusers, and corrupt prison guards, for examples).  The more blood that is shed, the more perpetrators become committed to their deeds.  The great failure in Argentina, for example, was that the world had tolerated torture and murder in South America for years.  When the Argentine Patriot Military began killing, it was genocide of shared ideological commitment done for their belief in “the future of Argentina”.  The Argentine Military believed what they were doing was acceptable because no one outside of Argentina objected (The Psychology of Hate p. 251 [2005]) ¹⁰.  In some other countries, the governmental authorities and those who can benefit from or support the government have convinced people to destroy those with different beliefs by creating fears that a different ideology will destroy the people’s faith.  This is a part of the indoctrination and distortion of belief by implanting and implementing prejudice.
 

Pernicious Depths of Hatred:  The Contamination of Reality with Hatred

Hatred binds communities and nations:  in hatred one transforms interpersonal bonds into bondage and relationships into prisons; it is a kind of imitation of love.  Except love accepts and allows; there is no prison or bondage in love, only empathy, altruism, patience, forgiveness and hope.  Hatred is a relationship on whatever scale it is conducted, but it is a destructive relationship.  Even when violence is aided by war machines and distance, the power of projective identification with the victim still gives the violence a quality of attachment.  Even when an attack of violence is turned on a person who the perpetrator does not know and the intimacy is only a product of the aggressor’s fantasy from a sick mind, the perpetrator inflicting violence is attached to the victim.  A strong example of this would be men and older adolescent males who sexually prey on younger boys in order to rid themselves of feelings of vulnerability by forcing the boy to be vulnerable to them.  This is a denial of sameness:  projecting onto the other what they cannot abide in themselves (their vulnerability).  The victim often begins a new generation of stress and vulnerability; without help and understanding, the victim risks becoming an angry resentful perpetrator and/or persecutor himself.  This type of crime is also one of envy.  Envy hates the innocent, the good, because it is separate, whole and beyond the hateful ones’ ability to possess.  Envy wants to take the good away from the person.  Envy is hatred of the good because it is good, filled with itself and life, something the envious one cannot bear because it makes him or her feel so empty and cold. Envy is hatreds’ most pernicious expression (Klein [1975]⁸. This type of crime is one which can bring new recruits (victims) into bondage of hatred where the focus of their frustrated aggression and rage is then shifted onto outsiders by the creation of hated “Others”.

“Hatred reflects a perverse desire to know otherness, fusing with it to become what otherness knows, or is.  In this regard, hatred comes frighteningly close to love and love intriguingly close to the pursuit of knowledge.  “Hatred wants to know, but only on its own terms, whose ground rules are total control.  Although hatred wants to know much, there is only one knowledge it cannot abide - that of its own dread” (The Psychology of Hate p. 238 [2005]) ¹⁰.  Hatred is like a shield that keeps the love from getting into the heart.  Human capacity is actually based on love; these destructive people do have the ability to constructively replace their hatred with love for humanity.  What this necessitates is the beginning dawn of consciousness:  the small voice inside the person asking “might I have made a mistake?”

Interrupting and Undoing Hate

 Given the potential of hate to influence attitudes and social behavior, it is important to identify factors capable of preventing, interrupting and undoing hate.  Most important among these factors is a sense of morality that remains unshakable, that clarifies obligations, responsibilities and behavior towards victims, perpetrators and bystanders with a scope of justice that extends past family and friends to include refugees and others who in the past may have been seen as dangerous outside “Others”.

By moral inclusion we mean that a person maintains close contact as a bystander and with other bystanders and points out to themselves and to others their power to make a difference and their responsibility to continue to observe and disapprove.  It also means contact with perpetrators is maintained, both to have an understanding of them and, in particular, to use the perpetrator’s needs, power and foibles as resources to protect others. It also means to use all the resources at ones disposal in the protection of others.  By maintaining one’s morality, identity and capability intact; one can look danger in the face, avoid denial, understand humanity in all its weakness, and consider one’s options and act.

The goal of the bystander, whether individual or nation is to increase doubt in the persecutors and perpetrators of hate by speaking to the secret:  the shared pleasure in hatred and destruction:

                        We see what is going on.

                        We know what is happening.

                        We are taking names and keeping records.

                        There will be consequences.

Bystander reaction must be made publicly and openly and be early and definitive.  The longer bloodshed goes on the more committed perpetrators become.  The power of the bystander comes from the perpetrator’s fear of being observed and also from the way observation has in intervening in the guilty secrets:  the pleasure of hatred and destruction and the pleasure of brotherhood among destroyers.  It stops the fantasy that the whole world secretly shares their delight in destruction (The Psychology of Hate p. 252-3 [2005]) ¹⁰.

The importance of combating the major barriers to dialogue of prejudice and hatred is crucial and ongoing.  Those not caught up in prejudice and hate can look at ways to establish effective dialogue allowing inter-faith, inter-cultural connection and involvement leading to co-operation and working together for a common purpose. This may be based on shared experience.  Believers whose metaphysical and metaphorical beliefs are shared in God have similar deep conceptions of true faith. Knowing there is a solid basis in shared beliefs from the holy writings of each religion can help lead to co-operation, relationship, transformation and change.  Perhaps also using the following eight principles from relational group psychotherapy (Erskin [2008]) ⁶, can assist in a quicker, more effective process:

1)      Compassion:  commitment to the welfare of the other person which includes an emotion and attitude of being with and for the other person.

2)      Curiosity:  being curious about the other person’s perspective and feelings and how uniquely different the other is.  Embrace the other person’s world view or frame of reference.  This may begin to change how we have structured our whole way of being in the world.

3)      Humility:  allowing the other person to influence us by listening with empathy to the others experience.

4)      Tolerance:  respecting another person’s form of choice and allowing the other person the opportunity to express their own self-definition.

5)      Conscientiousness:  making and keeping agreements that are bi-lateral and benefit each person while being reliable and following through with consistency to establish an environment of emotional stability.

6)      Creativity:  searching for new solutions, embracing the perspective of others.  Creativity leads to change.

7)      Optimism:  the anticipation of a positive outcome and a commitment to the idea that we are going to achieve something wonderful.

8)      Graciousness:  graciousness is built on respect; it provides a sense of security and an opening for others to express themselves. 

We tend to stay in old behaviors and attitudes because they provide predictability and give us an unfounded sense that we are in charge of the future.  We want life to be predictable and help us have a sense of identity.  If we change, who will we be?  Our focus needs to be on the change and growth that is possible with change; we can all learn and grow together in our relationships. (Erskin [2008])⁶.

Hope for the Future

Truth can be found in the clash of opinions (In Praise of Prejudice:  the Necessity of Preconceived Ideas p.47 [2007]) ⁵ however, if the participants’ thinking is clouded by biases and distortions, little truth will be found.  It is important to ascertain the oppositional groups’ perspective and to recognize that bias exists on both sides. This is where international organizations such as the United Nations and similar types of organizations can provide intervention programs to prevent and moderate conflicts. (Prisoners of Hate, p. 230 [1999])³.

There are four means to knowledge.  Scientists and philosophers attain knowledge through the senses.  Reality is limited to the perceptible things; all that is not perceptible is subject to doubt.  Ancient philosophers believed in the infallibility of logic for knowledge, everything was weighed on the scales of scholasticism.  For religious people the criteria are the sacred text:  “the word of God is truth”.  The fourth criterion is inspiration and insight.

Humans have sacred power beyond the confinement of the senses.  The power of the rational mind is the power of the soul over the senses.  Materially humans are the prisoners of nature; the least wind disturbs, the cold hurts, the mosquito irritates; but when we consider the intelligence of man, an elephant is powerless before him, a lion is his prisoner, and a boy of twelve can lead twelve hundred animals.  Man can dry up the sea, inundate the desert, circumnavigate the globe, ride upon the wind and create new sciences.  These are all signs of the crowning spiritual power of man.

It is a spiritual force that creates a bond between our hearts, an attraction and affection for one another, a power stronger than reason, a power which founds nations, creates human unity and makes us renounce the world to discover sciences and organize laws which work through all creatures.  Man, the victim of a mosquito, by his spiritual intelligence is conqueror, for by his spirit he is completed; he stands upright and gives well-being to humanity.  We will be able to love our enemy.

Hopefully, through some understanding of what is behind the need to create “the Other”, that instead, one can truly change this world by a deepened consciousness leading to an affiliation with all, and a love for all humanity that includes seeking to better the conditions for all.  Hopefully, inter-cultural, inter-religious dialogue can become a collective consultative process.  If we base this process on universal spiritual principles it can adapt to any culture.  The aim of this consultation will be to discover, through a spiritual process, optimal decisions for the global community.  If founded on respect for the creative power of diversity and a shared desire for peace and unity, in the clash of differing opinions perhaps the spark of truth will be ignited.

By appealing to that which is noble in people, a consultative process can foster co-operation, collaboration and the spirit of service, thus discouraging even subtle forms of intimidation.  Because the goal of this consultation is not to win but rather, to find the truth, opinions can be offered in the spirit of humility as contributions to a collective effort.  The result can be an improved understanding of differences, increased creativity, the maturation of humanity and a stronger world community.

In hopelessness there is hope, walk the road of hopefulness.

In darkness turn toward the light, for many suns are shining.

Rumi

 References

1.  Allport, Gordon. (1979). The Nature of Prejudice. New York: Basic Books; a member of the Perseus Books Group.

2.  Baird, Robert M., and Rosenbaum, Stuart E. (editors) (1999).  Hatred, Bigotry and Prejudice.  New York:  Prometheus Books.

3.  Beck, Aaron T. (1999).  Prisoners of Hate.  New York:  HarperCollins Publishers.

4.  Brown, Lesley (editor). (1993). New English Dictionary.  New York:  Oxford University Press.

5.  Dalrymple, Theodore.  (2007). In Praise of Prejudice:  the Necessity of Preconceived Ideas.  New York/London:  Brief Encounters div. of Encounter Books.

6. Erskin, Richard G.  (2008). Cooperation, Relationship and Change.  California:  Transactional Analysis Journal, pgs. 31-35.

7.  Fonagy, Peter.  (2008)  Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women:  An Attachment Theory Perspective.  Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology.

8.  Klein, Melanie.  (1975). (from the Collected Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume 3) Envy and Gratitude.  London:  Hogarth Press.

9.  Lowen, Alexander. (1982)  The Will to Live and the Wish to Die. Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis. New York.

10.  Sternberg, Robert J. (editor) (2005).  The Psychology of Hate.  Washington, DC:  American Psychological Association

About the Authors

 Bahman Dadgostar, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in stress, pain management and behavioral medicine, former professor of psychology and medicine at Esfahan University, Iran, visiting professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA and now the director of Hope Consulting Institute.

Ann Hallock, L.C.S.W. is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice, former professor of behavioral medicine at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, U.S.A.  and an associate of Hope Consulting Institute.

Both may be reached at HCI@hopeconsultinginstitute.org.