Is There A Vaccine for Viral Hate?

The Pandemic That's Consuming Us All

It’s been two weeks since my last post, partly the result of the burnout that accompanies deep connections to the Middle East these days.  The Palestinian-Israeli conflict may seem now to be the most important, all-consuming event on the face of the earth.  And for some, it is. But for most, it’s a media and technology-induced distortion of perspective.  

Zooming out, Israel-Hamas/Gaza/etc. is one node (albeit a volatile one) in a network of deeply connected regional conflicts, which have claimed more than a million lives over the last two years alone. All are facilitated by nameless, faceless forces which instrumentalize blind rage to create yet more conflict.  I’m not talking about the Deep State here, or unhinged conspiracy theories. I’m talking about the corrupted state of the modern mind.

What we’ve seen in Israel-Gaza, Russia-Ukraine, Sudan, January 6, Benghazi, Brexit, Yemen, and elsewhere, is collective evidence of a billowing human sickness.  Societies are increasingly at mercy of groups that claim their trust, while blatantly acting against their interests; the agendas of the countries and organizations backing those groups are either indifferent to mass suffering, economic deprivation, and death or seek them out as effective propaganda tools.

The same mechanisms that produced gut-churning armies of vapid “influencers,” are producing not just mass self-loathing, but hot wars.  And to make matters worse, multitudes join in, to one side or another, projecting their struggles onto others whose experiences are largely alien to them, in the process eschewing the greater investment of thought and empathy.

The human instinct is to focus what’s immediately in front of one’s face, even if there is every benefit to be gained, and large losses to be avoided, from projecting forward the likely effects of present acts.  If done properly, that action will always reveal that the best outcome is the one that diffuses the immediate conflict, while reserving resources to fight the larger threats.  

Technology has created a new world in which new hatreds are transmitted far more quickly than ever before; in part because the infected have been primed by repeated exposure to other obscenities.  

So much for the level playing field promised in the early 1990s, by Internet pioneers. If there is a solution (and there must be), part of the cure must be made from the poison.   

Looking for new perspectives and potential sources of policy innovation, I spoke with United Religions Initiative Director Dr. Jerry White, who shared in the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize as a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. I had several illuminating discussions with White while I was working on a humanitarian project in Revolutionary Libya from 2011-2012, and he was Deputy Assistant Secretary at the State Department’s Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO).

Then-Secretary of State Clinton stood up CSO to encourage creative thinking in an under-funded arm of government. (Highly skeptical of the ability of under-funded bureaucracies to do self-directed, innovative policy, White frequently complimented Clinton on her preparation and willingness to try).

Decades of experience in government, the NGO world, the private sector, and his interfaith work, give him a rare perspective on a range of organizational and psychological failures — and the etiology of hate.  

I was stuck by the metaphors White used to describe the new hate super-highway: Infection. Metastasis. Pandemic.  All useful because they usefully describe the shape and contours of the threat humanity is facing. White insists the solution involves finding the means to interrupt these mindless transmissions at their source; as they form, and before they can be weaponized and aerosolized.

Further, the phenomenon has vastly outpaced the efficacy of traditional forms of activism. “Peace" doesn’t have the same visceral pull of death and humiliation. Certainly not in the day and age in which companies make profits, and governments control people by appealing to their vulnerabilities rather than their strengths.

To be contained, the growing infection requires a massive, coordinated human effort, far more sophisticated than the mRNA vaccines that helped tame Covid.  

Those who plan and fight wars (i.e., military personnel) are needed, perhaps much more than peace activists, whose audience is increasingly weak and fractured, to step up and help redefine or at least expand the definition of war and enemy; to prioritize war on the“darkness inside” (to borrow the title of journalist Tam Hussein’s novel about the spillover of jihadist vendettas to contemporary London), over the darkness across the border, or across the aisle.  

Vast sums are already being spent on AI-enhanced tools of war - when we still don’t know precisely why AI works as it does. Frightening. And yet how much work is being done with the same technology preemptively to protect humans from these new forms of violence and distortion?   Whatever it is, it’s not enough, and our institutions -- analogous to our bodily defenses --are increasingly resistant, after having been attenuated and gutted by years of political pressures.

Perhaps the cure involves reconfiguration and redeployment of technology, to untrain our addictions, and replace them with urges that are satisfied when the collective benefits. A global “vaccine” would incentivize us to look at maximizing social and environmental welfare, rather than indulging our worst fears and instincts; and would change the definition of “profit” from “things that addict, but never satisfy” to “demonstrable growth.” Technology isn’t the problem, per se, it’s how it’s being used, that’s helping kill us. 

In matters of life and death, there is no choice but to be an optimist: To be effective, you must start from the assumption that there is a solution, and work backwards to find it.  Because, if you start with a half-hearted hope, you will almost invariably be frozen by the weight of the odds against you. 

As the obscenity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to plays out, odds are it will cross more borders, into Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, as they combine with wars and tensions in Ethiopia, Ukraine, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, The United States, Europe, etc.

No extra-terrestrial race is coming to save us. And if Stephen Hawking was right, they’re carrying the hate virus too.  We’re on our own, and our best hope is for groups of enlightened leaders to band together with technologists and scientists to create vigilance, and cocktail of technological and policy innovations capable of re-wiring our brains to value long-term strategy over short term ‘plug ins’; truth over lies; and quality of life over longevity.

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