Have you noticed that more and more people in this society habitually understand the world with hostility? When you express a different opinion, they label you as a lackey of someone; if you support the rights of a certain group, they brand you as a traitor; if you advocate for empathy, understanding, and dialogue, they see you as weak, naive, and brainwashed.
These individuals share a common characteristic: their cognitive abilities are extremely low. Most of them are concentrated in a specific time frame, like defective products produced on an assembly line. They get excited at the mention of patriotism, believing that the louder someone shouts, the deeper their love is, completely disregarding what true patriotism is; they climax at anti-American sentiments, thinking that the more exaggerated someone's performance is, the more impressive they are, without knowing what they are actually opposing. They generally have low education levels, limited life experiences, and lack independent thinking, as if they are single-celled organisms, perhaps unaware of the historical story of "the thief of hooks is executed, the thief of nations is appointed." They bully the weak and cower before the strong. They often shout about destroying the sun and annihilating America, yet they don't even dare to help an elderly person who falls on the street. They are eager to label those with differing opinions, yet when their own interests are harmed, they don't know how to defend their rights. They only care about their stance in doing things, never minding whether it aligns with logic. They never reflect on why they live at the bottom of society, nor do they consider why a lifetime of hard work results in lifelong poverty, unaware of how an invisible hand harvests their lifetime of wealth. They like to follow the crowd, holding onto psychological ties, feeling that only by living within a large collective do they have a sense of security. They believe they are justice itself, yet they do not realize they live their entire lives in a cycle of hate education, becoming fuel that a small group uses and discards, wasting their sad lives in ignorance.
Today's theme is "hate education"! For example, during a break, you hear a teacher say that they are just that kind of person, unreliable, and the children's expressions show no doubt, just silently nodding; or at a family banquet, you hear an elder say those people are inherently sinister, with no rebuttal at the table, only cold laughter in agreement. Then you may already be caught in the chain of hate education.
Hate education does not use fists to strike people, but rather draws lines with labels; it does not create conflict, but rather creates cognitive closed loops. It is a mechanism for systematically instilling hostility towards specific groups' ideologies or values. Its most terrifying aspect is not the spread of the word "hate," but its ability to be transmitted across generations, eroding minds, rewriting language and history. It is a malignant transformation under the guise of education, a chronic cognitive plague. In reality, hate is the easiest virus to spread.
Eric Hoffer pointed out in "The True Believer": hate is the most powerful adhesive for groups. When people love an object, they generally do not seek out their kind, as they are competitors; but when people hate an object, they always seek out their kind and merge into a glowing collective.
The irony of history lies in the fact that having passed today, what confronts us is "yesterday." Let's take the Soviet Union as an example. The Soviet Union deliberately peddled hate, with the aim that the more they emphasized hate, the more willing the people were to pay higher costs and cede more rights, which is the essence of hate education. The narratives of hate education in the Soviet Union mainly took two forms: one is the hatred of external threats, which is the hostility between value systems, targeting the West led by the UK and the US; the other is the hatred of internal enemies, which is the opposition between classes, initially targeting the wealthy class, and later the intellectual class.
In terms of external hate narratives, looking back at the speeches and articles of Soviet members before they seized power, they are filled with praise for America, but after the Soviet Union successfully seized power, their attitude made a 180-degree turn. From then on, anti-American literature flourished in the Soviet Union. For example, in Maxim Gorky's book "In America," the image of Americans is defined as foolish, arrogant, materialistic, and fond of colonialism. In contrast, the image of Soviets has always been hardworking, kind, simple, and peace-loving.
After World War II, the confrontation between the Soviet Union and Western values became even more pronounced, with America being portrayed by the Soviet Union as the planner and initiator of World War II, as well as the heir of the Nazis. Soviet leader Georgy Malenkov publicly stated that America's aggressive ambitions far exceeded those of Germany and Japan, and that the Soviet Union suffered greatly in World War II. This shared collective memory was fully exploited by the Soviet Union, and patriotism was shaped into a fervent narrative of hate. This narrative of hate is highly aggressive, like an extremely sensitive person with a fragile ego, where any criticism of foreigners is seen as patriotic, while any praise of foreigners may be viewed as treasonous.
Thus, how this narrative of hate expresses patriotism is not important; what matters is hating foreigners. However, this narrative of hate turns patriotism into a performance, where anyone with such poor acting skills can be deemed a patriot. This brings them fame, wealth, status, and even power. Conversely, if one refuses to display such a posture, they may be seen as a potential traitor and lose everything. This is the phenomenon of bad money driving out good.
If a nation remains trapped in hate education, interpreting any actions of other countries as a relentless desire to destroy them, and viewing any criticism from others as the voice of capitalists, then hate may become a black hole, devouring all that is good and continuously distorting people's values, ultimately rendering them unable to distinguish between civilization and barbarism.