Our human ancestors lived and evolved together in small hunter-gatherer bands for about 300,000 years, and their toolmaking hominid ancestors lived in similar small bands for another two million years or so before that. Individuals and bands that were better at cooperating, better at compassion and empathy, teamwork and cooperation, were more able to survive and pass on their genes. As a result, today we have remarkable social inclinations woven into our DNA, hardwired into the human brain. But that’s only part of the story.
The other part is that these hunter-gatherer bands also competed with other bands, often violently, for scarce food and resources. Individuals and bands that were better at fearing and fighting outsiders, better at aggression and prejudice and disrespect, even terrible violence, were more able to survive too, just a little bit more able, and pass on their genes. The results today are woven into our innate human capabilities and inclinations toward prejudice, disrespect, dehumanization, aggression, and war. As the parable puts it, there are two wolves in each of our hearts, one of love and one of hate, and everything depends on which one we feed, and how they’re fed, each day.
Much of that feeding comes from the outside in, through our parents and caregivers, our peers, politics, economics, cultural forces, and leaders who prey on fears of others to gain power for themselves. But much of the feeding happens inside us, in the ways we choose, routinely, many times a day, whether to dwell in compassion or resentment. Whether to try to understand the grievances of others, even if we don’t agree with every bit of them, or just dismiss them out of hand. The choice, every day, whether to do the right thing even when it’s hard, or to cut corners and justify the exploitation of others. The choice whether to hold people in our hearts, even people who don’t seem like us in every way, or to just cast them out, toss them out of the mind, and regard them as if they don’t matter.
We make these choices every day. We’re responsible for them. These choices define us, and what we choose again and again becomes what we are. Some of the qualities of the wolf of hate are indeed useful in certain situations, when we need to stand up to aggression that’s actually coming at us. But any look at history, or even just the day’s headlines, reveals the destructive power of that wolf once it’s unleashed, and the terrible consequences that follow.
So what can we do? If we hate the wolf of hate, we just feed the wolf of hate. What we can do is stop feeding it so much privately, inside our own minds, building up our case against other people, or making no effort at all to understand what life is actually like for them. And, most important, we can feed the wolf of love.
One of the most powerful ways to feed the wolf of love is very simple: regard others as us, rather than them. Many studies have shown that as soon as we start to regard someone as not like me, it’s a short, slippery slope to looking at them with disdain, mistrust, or simply dismissing them, and moving into mistreating them in some way.
It can be very simple to widen that circle of us. Imagining people next to you on the highway, like me, you’re driving a car. People getting groceries alongside you, like me, you need to get food. Something as fundamental as, like me, you need air to breathe. Like me, you enjoy taking your tight shoes off at the end of a long day. Again and again, getting a sense of common humanity, shared commonalities, common ground, even with people you wouldn’t normally think of that way.
You can widen the circle further, to include people who are genuinely difficult for you, people you disagree with, people you’ve had real conflicts with. Without waiving your rights, without giving up one bit of your own needs, you can still look for the ways you’re actually alike. Like me, you like to be right. Like me, you get mad sometimes. Like me, you don’t like other people telling you what to do. Like me, you make mistakes. Recognizing this doesn’t weaken you. You’re not giving anything up. You’re just recognizing, factually, what you have in common with people you might oppose.
We may still disagree with people in our circle of us. We may still compete with them, and sometimes we may need to be fiery or forceful. But we can still regard them, in terms of our common humanity, as like me in some basic way. Like me, you want to be happy and to live. Like me, you feel pain, and will face death someday. Just that regard, holding someone within even a broad circle of some kind of us, helps you feel better, and it increases the odds you’ll be more effective with them if you ever have to work through a problem together.
If the wolf of hate keeps getting fed by the same old triggers, no matter how much you understand where they come from, that’s usually a sign the reaction is coming from somewhere older than the situation in front of you. That’s exactly what I built The Healing Link to address, a six-week course on reaching the layer where old reactions actually live, so the change finally holds. I’d love to have you join us. Use code substack10 for 10% off at checkout.
The content in this article has been adapted from my spoken word.