Philosophy of Hate / Fernando Dámaso

  1. A philosophy of hate has spread across the world like a pandemic which seems to cover everything, calling into question whether humans are thinking beings of superior intelligence. Love has been pushed to the side and must struggle fiercely to show itself, in public as well as private social relations. Intolerance and violent confrontation reign in modern life.
  2. The background of hate has different handholds, from the settling of scores for the discovery and colonization of the New World, to the Crusades to the Holy Land to spread Christianity. Without a doubt there were excesses and faults, but to go hundreds of years later clamoring for revenge is altogether absurd.
  3. The history of mankind and, within it, the formation of the nations, has known intense periods of violence where some ethnic groups and peoples imposed on others, fundamentally due to their greater level of development. Entire civilizations have appeared and disappeared this way, up through our times. Demands for material and moral compensation for events in the long course traveled since the Big Bang are, aside from irrational, also impossible to satisfy. It would be a never-ending story, and nobody could be left out of it, because the responsibility is shared.
  4. It is true that Spain colonized the Americas, but before that the Moors had colonized almost all of Spain. It is true that Europe colonized Asia and Africa, but before that the Ottoman Turks and the Huns, to cite just two examples, invaded Europe, the latter led by Attila even reaching the gates of Rome. It is true, getting back to America, that Spain subjugated the Aztecs and the Incas, but before that these same had subjugated all the surrounding peoples, turning them into vassals or slaves as they built their empires. We see that the culprits are those who prevail.
  5. To set out today, on the basis of these distant events, to fuel passions and hatred and call for political or religious crusades only serves to demonstrate, as Albert Einstein put it, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity”.

Translated by: Mark B.