Humans can overcome hate by turning away from negative, untrue thoughts.

Looking at the world as a place of hatred is an untrue thought. Thinking that you are in a position of moral and intellectual superiority and that it is your duty to attack and banish hate—that is also an untrue thought. By constantly judging your fellow humans to be hateful, ignorant, immoral, etc. you do nothing but perpetuate hatred. Stop thinking that kind of stuff and all that will be left is peace, serenity and love.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Great article. But no, at least not on a total, global scale. The human struggle continues, and will, until we're all extinct. That's the only certainty we can count on. There is no utopia, there is no perfect human condition, there is no path to righteousness that we can force each other down. Our thoughts and goals and drives are irreconcilable. We ought to have recognized that by now.

We only need be concerned with what we do with the time we're given. We each, as individuals, should figure out what brings us joy and then go do it - while doing our best to avoid anything that would stand in our way. That is all. And it's plenty good enough, as far as I can tell.

This statement, quoted below, is total bullshit. The article suggests there are no concerns about immigration anywhere on the planet than Trump's "incitements." Complete shit. This kind of crap makes it nearly impossible to have a conversation about what the real causes of "hate" violence are.

""The spikes stand out even in ethnically diverse, Democratic-majority counties, leaving Trump’s tweets as the only identifiable cause."""

The article makes other similarly stupid statements. """The last time anything like this happened was the 1930s, when the misery of the Great Depression allowed fascist regimes to take power in the diverse cultures of Italy, Germany, and Japan."""

Also crap. Spain, Soviet union, eastern europe, china, cambodia, pakistan, palestine....

No hate is an inherent human instinct and it must find an outlet. Someone once said that, if you could ever get the whole world to accept just one philosophy as true and to agree on it, then it would have to immediately split into the orthodox and the reformed movement, who would immediately start hating and fighting each other.

What you could do however is to change the nature of the combat, you could change the moral frame of the whole world to a point where physical violence is completely unacceptable, and hatred can only be expressed by perhaps say some form of token humiliation, that would theoretically be possible, I think.

However unless we take some form of active genetic managing of the human genome, then we are still subject to evolution, and at this time, since the technology of medicine etc. has, at least in the developed world, removed a lot of the cost and danger of violence without affecting the benefits, it seems likely that we will become increasingly violent with time and less socially functional. Also perhaps more sexually dimorphic, ( A big yob who repeatedly rapes his multiple girlfriends, and the passive girlfriends who put up with it, produce more babies. ) until perhaps we go extinct, because some perhaps small problem arises and we no longer have the intelligence or social cohesion to deal with it.

Sadly no...we are human, hate is part of our emotional makeup. What we can do is try to channel what is a negative emotion into something more positive, but we can only do that on an individual basis, and no person or organisation can do it on our behalf, only we can.

Overcoming hate is an individual journey.

I hope so! But us humans need to just relax and not take offense over everything said.

Very interesting article. I have to say I agree in principle with Norman’s cognitive-immunotherapy suggestion, but the application or intervention may be challenging to implement in the short term.

Neo-tribalism is probably one of the major challenges we face in society today as globalisation introduced new dimensions within which tribalism can be expressed. This is no longer a geographical tribal connection but ideological.

I have to challenge Dunbar’s 150 relationships that can be sustained. Using Facebook users as a sample doesn’t reflect sustainable objective relationships as there is not enough time in a day or even week to nurture that many ongoing and meaningful relationships other than superficial acquaintance.

With regard to the question, yes it can but no more so than any other ideology which is prepared to address the components that make up the emotion.

Not all humans are born with equal mental attributes. The "average" I.Q. is only 100. A person with a 100 I.Q. is dumb as a box of rocks. It takes some smarts to be a humanist...one must be smart enough to rationalize that, except for random chance, there go I. The haters generally somehow think that the people they hate are somehow less than they themselves are.

unfortunately no chance, there will always be hate and there will always humanism, coexisting in a fucked up world.

Possible but long road to go

Man's inhumanity to man, etc.

All the human people who hate other human people are humans. So no.

Empathy might help though.

"Can Humanism Overcome Hate?" . . . No.

No. I don't think so.
It's a nice thought, but humans are still humans.
We like to think we've "evolved", but we really haven't.
Hate is an intrinsic human trait. It is the opposite of love.
One of the only philosophies that I think holds any truth is
the Chinese concept of the yin and yang.

I'm not a humanist, and the only thing I have in common with most humanists
is my rejection of gods, religion, and dogma.
Maybe if humanity gets another 200,000 years.
Personally I don't think we're going to last that long.
I'm actually hoping we don't. We're vile creatures.

I hope and think it can.

It's in the realm of possibility.

Tribalism ("xenophobia" ) is genetic. And still very relevant. It is insane to demand we overcome our sense of REAL danger. Just plain idiotic.

For the most part no

Too many leftist spins.

I would answer, no. Hate just doesn't come from a misconception of others. It often comes from real issues as lack of resources (food, shelter, meaningful employment, health and on and on). When one is left out and sees other having what they don't one gets angry and often anger leads to hate. We continually forget there are only so many resources on this planet and with our huge numbers and the ultra-wealthy taking an oversized share lots of people will be left out and even more will be so in the future. Hate destroys and kills and humanism (and love) cannot exist in a vacuum. Perhaps we should ask this question to the Zionists of the world.

I have my doubts, but I don't think religion can either.