We need to stop feeling fast and start thinking slow.
The madness of crowds is stoked by incitement—by generating fear and anger and hatred. People don’t think clearly when they are enraged and they tend to follow those who spark their fury against others.
Fury is a drug, an addictive one, and it’s the drug that explains the raging hatred we see in various aspects of our world today. But don’t mistake it for human nature. It’s a part of human nature, but a part that would burn out if those who fuel the flames simply stopped.
It’s Fox News, and religious extremists, Taliban both Christian and Islamic, who keep these fires burning. And their fury and violence sparks fear in those who weren’t like that, who were simply living their lives and, essentially loving their neighbors.
We could easily end up with civil war, with TWO insane sides in a cooperative orgy of blood.
But we won’t. And we won’t because we—including you—are better than that. We won’t be played. We have the sense to stop evil acts, not adopt the same tactics as the outraged fools who attack.
We defang their fear and violence by refusing to be hateful. Just as wise Czech’s put flowers in the barrels of Soviet tanks in 1968, perplexing the young Russian tools of Brezhnev’s aggression, we…
