| Editor's Note: 'Take a look around you, boy, It's bound to scare you boy'. If you're old enough to recognize those words, then you'll know that not much has changed since Barry McGuire recorded the P.F. Sloan song 'Eve of Destruction' in 1965. But every once in a while, a bright light starts to shine. One such bright light can be found in the words below. The words are the words of a 12 year-old and, to my mind, immediately bring into question 'what is wrong with all the adults?' I asked his mother for permission to publish this and she graciously agreed, knowing that Gabe will be pleased and will feel proud. And so he should. So, to you Gabriel, my heartfelt thanks for your words and your thoughts. Will all best wishes, Paul. PS. in the interest of full disclosure I should point out that Gabriel's mother, Lisa, is the daughter of my Axis of Logic partner, Les Blough. You can well imagine that Les is also very proud of Gabriel and he knows that Lisa is raising a fine young man. - prh, ed. What would the world be like without hate? Well, a lot better than it is now. Almost all the problems in the world come from hate. Hate is intolerance of people who are different and it connects to every single thing in our lives. In this paper, I am not going to focus on hate in general, but forms of hate, and how it affects the world. One of the main causes of hate is separation. Our world is divided into countries with people who are separated from each other and people seem to dislike people from other countries because they are different. In World War 2, the Nazis hated the Jews because they were different. Some Americans hate the Russians because they’re different. Here’s an example: A person born in Venezuela would be treated worse than a person born in America, just because they are different. In a world without hate, we wouldn't be separated, we wouldn’t need countries. People would not care if another person thought differently from them because they would all see each other as the same, human beings. Also, if there were no countries, everyone would share resources equally. We would share because there would be no one to compete against, we would all be part of the same place. Additionally, sharing with each other would result in less waste. We wouldn’t hoard perishable food because of greed. Everything would get eaten. We also could get rid of money because if one person had something I wanted or needed, and I had something they wanted or needed, we could exchange and not worry about scamming or stealing. If someone was sick, others would share medicine because we would all care about each other’s health. In a world without hate, everyone would have equal opportunities for education. No one would need money to learn. People who are too poor to go to college today might have some great ideas about how to make the world better but they don’t have the opportunity to share them. No one listens to someone who doesn’t have a college degree. Maybe one of those people knows how to make factories without pollution. Also, with equal education, everyone can be what they want to be. The rich would not have more opportunities than the poor, because a part of hate is greed, wanting to have more than others. In a world without hate there would be no reason to kill others, or have wars. The people who died in wars might have had some pretty good ideas too. Imagine if just a quarter of the casualties of wars were alive to share their good ideas today. The lives of soldiers were wasted in petty disagreements. They never got to do things they wanted to do with their lives, grow old, maybe go to college, get married. Their families wouldn’t have to grieve their death and might see the world in a different way. Stopping all wars would also combat pollution, because we wouldn’t have wasted materials in wars; people’s lives and beautiful lands wouldn’t be destroyed. I can imagine a day without hate. I would wake up to the sound of happiness, which I think would be people laughing and having fun. I would walk outside, and everyone would have a home. The air would smell fresh, trees would grow everywhere, and people would do things for other people out of the goodness of their hearts, not money. Endangered animals would walk the earth, because we would not have killed them off if we were all on the same side. Everywhere, life would grow, and the ocean would be clean, because there wouldn't be pollution. There wouldn’t be polluting factories on the landscape, and no one would want to hurt each other. Sure, you might have a bad day, but I think it would be pretty impossible if you lived in a world like that. Is it possible? It’s hard to imagine it today. But I think we could find the answer if we put aside all our differences, helped the environment, helped others. Just try. It may take us a long time, but these are just a few of the ways I think we could start. |