Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy. -Thomas Merton, writer (1915-1968) Perhaps he wouldn’t care about you because you are so weak that you feel it necessary to love others. Being incapable of love himself, he sees those who love as weaker than himself. Each of these statements makes sense, but each seems strange nonetheless. We don’t talk much about people as enemies these days. Countries have enemies, and always have, but people know others who are mean, thoughtless, uncaring, brutal, stupid or bullies. In other words, we have improved our supply of adjectives since Merton’s day. Our ancestors used to think of the native peoples of the Americas and of Africa as savages, even to the extent of capturing them and shipping them abroad as slaves. Now we understand that their views of ecology, of spirituality and of community deserve our study and respect because they are (or were before we tried to “civilize them) more advanced than our own. A savage was automatically an enemy. Mostly because our ancestors didn’t understand anything about people whose ways they didn’t understand. We tend to fear what we don’t understand. We have people who fear others they don’t understand today. Those among them who are leaders want to make war on the “enemies” of their people. War is an easier concept to grasp than trying to get to know and understand strangers. They go to the extent of teaching their people to fear the “others” rather than trying to get to know them. Americans in particular are susceptible to this. American citizens who travel abroad treat “foreigners” (despite the fact that they are within their own countries) as inferior, expecting to be able to buy whatever they want and to pay off anyone who takes offence at their ways. Following the teachings of their leader, they make no attempt to learn the ways of the people in countries they visit because they have been taught the others are inferior. For this they are hated, reviled, despised. Mostly behind their backs. The good Americans who travel abroad are overlooked, forgotten, while the mean, thoughtless and socially ugly ones are remembered as stereotypes. Fear itself is something that may be feared, as Merton said. Fearful people may be dangerous because you can never be certain what someone may do when they are afraid. Anyone who is or who may be dangerous at any time can be considered an enemy. It’s easier to treat a fearful person as an enemy than it is to understand them and to calm their fears. I wonder, for example, how afraid of everyone else Adolf Hitler was. He was short, lacked a pleasing personality and had little to offer the world. He covered his fear by treating others as inferior. It was easier to gain their respect by conquering them and subjecting them to brutal treatment through military force that it would have been to earn their respect. As a fearful person (albeit with sociopathic tendencies), it was easier to treat Hitler as an enemy in his early days than it was to befriend him and make him part of a social group. Merton believed that if people knew we were capable of loving them they might not see us as enemies. While this thought is charming, it is not likely true. People who are capable of loving treat others as if they are also capable of loving. Many people today lack that ability or skill. They don’t understand or appreciate love because it has never been taught to them. They don’t know what love is because they have never experienced it. Too many people fit into this category, though we would like to believe otherwise. If they believe we are capable of loving them, they may treat us as enemies. Worse, they may abuse us. What’s to be gained there? An adult who has never experienced real love will have difficulty understanding love offered to them, will have problems receiving it and appreciating it. And most certainly will have great trouble returning it. But the wall can be scaled, the problem overcome. Someone who experiences love for the first time as an adult will always have difficulty returning it consistently. Like a recovering addict, the recovering loveless will try and fail repeatedly, but will always be a recovering loveless. If we believe that an addict deserves to be given a chance to recover, then a person who has not experienced love should be given a chance to love and to be loved. As with any kind of addiction, the recovering loveless needs consistent support from someone who understands. Someone who knows that he or she will “fall off the wagon,” like any addict, but will try to get back on again if given the opportunity. You, as someone who knows love, can give that opportunity. We already have too many people in the world who do not know and have never known love. We need those who know love to share theirs before the loveless ones multiply. And they will. Just look at how many people believe that war is the only way to achieve peace. They don’t know any other way. You can show them. Bill Allin Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to avoid loveless and brutal adults by teaching children what they need before they grow up. Learn more at http://billallin.com