Make Hate Happen

“The paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity....The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.”

― Soren Kierkegaard

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Dear Kate,

What is the last genuine question you asked about life?  What's the last time you heard one?

What do I mean by "genuine"?  Let me give you an example.

If you ask your lover whether he would love you always, you are bound to ask him again.  Why?  Isn't one answer answered once good enough to settle the matter?  In fact if he needs to answer again it could only mean his previous answer wasn't good enough and neither will his next.

The problem is not his but yours, your questioning.  You didn't ask a genuine question.

A genuine question would open yourself up to the judgement that you claim to truthfully seek.  In this case, you would probably go further to question your own question, such as whether by "always" you mean "all ways" and, if yes, how is that humanly possible, if even humanly desirable.  Or if your lover is to give a kind of love that you would rather not receive, would it still count?  What is the true motive of your question anyway, do you even begin to know—that much about yourself, before seeking to know the "truth" about your lover and his love?

Philosophers are pests, I know.  They ask so many damn questions to stay evasive and noncommittal.  We would rather just go on and "make love" with a flower, a cake, a kiss, a plushie, a wedding, a baby; in a bed, over dinner, on a vacation.  Too many questions, can't answer them all, don't even want to hear more, let's just Make Love Happen.

And that's how we behave mostly.

In the morning we say we must end racism, and before sunset the racists are already properly identified and the beginning of the end of them ushered in by the sheer power and determination of our very tongues.  We say we act on facts, in fact have a thirst for facts, information picked and chosen to support our even stronger propensity towards action.  There is no time to philosophize when the matter on hand is urgent, no need to question when the truth is as clear as our conscience.

What genuine question(s) can a person ask on the matter of racism?  One would be about the origins and extent of evil in humankind: are we essentially and intractably evil, or is evil like a virus, runs on the surface and can be wiped clean with the proper tool and method?  What could happen if we are to affirm the goodness of humankind when we are actually fundamentally, persistently, incurably evil?  You might think as long as the good intention is there to assume and seek out the best in each other, we need not trouble ourselves to answer the inconvenient question.

Think again.

Consider racism, the horror of it, so much of it, and, honestly, the never-ending reality of it: how do we explain these if humans are fundamentally good?  We could hardly escape the conclusion that it must be because some of us are exceptions to the general, essential norm of human goodness, and if there is anything to be done about human evil, it is to root out the exceptions among us.  Call out the evildoers, evil-thinkers, evil-tolerant exceptions under broad daylight, hang them by night, a brighter morning we will have tomorrow.

Do you know how many human atrocities were carried out based on such well-intentioned, reasonable logic, "faith" in the goodness of humankind?  Your unquestioned "goodwill to men" has just turned murderous.

A genuine question would open ourselves up to the judgement that we claim to truthfully seek.  Learn to ask it.

Yours, Alex