Category: Attitude

Our Finger On The Hate Button

The other day, I was in the grocery store wearing my hat (the hat pictured above), and a young employee in their thirties gave me the finger. So, I walked over to him, who was about 20 feet away, and said, “Either you can’t read or you’re very lucky I believe in what this hat represents.” He then apologized and explained that he assumed it represented something else.

That incident made me realize how quickly our “hate button” can be pushed. Instead of instantly hating something, we should question why we feel that way. It’s astonishing to think that people and families now hate each other because of their political beliefs. When you read it, it sounds crazy, but it’s happening. We can attribute this divisiveness to politicians on both sides who perpetuate hate in order to gain support. They encourage us to hate the other side and vote for them. It has become an industry.

The truth is, 80% of Americans, regardless of party affiliation, want to be moderate. However, they allow the extreme left and right to dictate the agenda because they are either misinformed or afraid to speak up. As a Conservative Democrat, I believe our party is particularly guilty of fostering hatred. Abraham Lincoln once said, “I hate that guy, I need to get to know him better,” recognizing the destructive nature of hate. This is especially true for politicians. After all, wars have been waged due to hatred, and no war is ever good. Just look at the mess we’ve created around the world. While World Wars I and II may have had some justification, I am grateful to all the patriots who fought and died in all our wars. I believe their sacrifices will not be in vain because we have given the world a taste of freedom and democracy, which will benefit future generations in those countries. Above all else, I am proud of our military. Without them, we would not be the country that everyone, especially our own politicians, wants to destroy, even though I am a Democrat.

If you only watch news media that aligns with your own views and makes you comfortable, you are not truly watching the news. Instead, you are consuming politically correct commentary that tells you what you want to hear. A significant 72% of people in this country believe that political correctness is a problem. It’s important to express your own thoughts respectfully and gain the respect of others. Also, try watching the news from other channels occasionally. You might actually learn something and realize how similar we are. Most importantly, practice tolerance, as it goes a long way in preventing hatred.

Let’s lighten up and think before we resort to hate. At No Hate No Violence, we know that practicing this will lead to greater happiness and create a better world.

Sincerely,

Pat Lockhart
CEO & Founder

Americans Need to Pay Attention to What Unites Us, and Finally Resolve What Divides Us

­Everything in the United States has become polarized – politics, religion, gender, race, identity. We’re segregated geographically, economically and ideologically among too many lines to count.

This is nothing new, and the tension, anger, and resentment that it causes (and that to various degrees has always been there), simmer and sometimes resurface, despite the best efforts by some to keep it under control. Often those least affected by it pretend the problem isn’t as bad as others make it out to be, and when it can’t be denied, those “others” always receive the blame. Too often though, those differences between us are not discussed or addressed rationally, but with a view of dehumanizing those who are different to a point of caricature. All sides do it to some extent or another, some more vocally or cruelly, but nobody wants to accept responsibility for their part in the cycle.

Politically, the sides seem to be formed into unbreakable battle lines. Democrats can’t work with Republicans, conservatives can’t be around liberals, those who don’t fall within those sides aren’t even worthy of a say. Various other groups pick sides, sometimes out of convenience and alliance more so than true belief. The sides vilify each other and reduce them to crude stereotypes – it is easier to criticize if those on the other side aren’t even seen as real people. It’s the poor versus the rich; racial and religious minorities against vocal subsets of the mainstream and majorities; gun owners opposed to any restrictions and those who seek reasonable limits; the LGBT community seeking rights and equality and those who demand traditional gender roles; those seeking more government involvement and support versus those seeking a small government that stays out of their lives (but can intervene in the lives of others as much as it wants). Every issue, ranging from those that define us to those that are merely a passing interest, are used as barriers to divide us, and the personal quickly becomes political. Largely, people want to surround themselves with those that make them comfortable, those who are the same, and not those that challenge their ideas. With these divisions, is it unsurprising that outside forces have been able to so easily penetrate and control our system? They have exploited existing prejudices and resentments to manipulate our beliefs further, stoking fear and hatred to more vocal and visible levels.

And through it all, nobody wants to accept fault for their own actions. It is always “other people” or “the other side” that is to blame. “They” are what is wrong with the country. And, it turns out, you’re right – “they” are what is wrong with the country… just like YOU are what is wrong! Because “they” think the same about “you” as you think about “them.” As long as that mentality continues on all sides, what chance do we have to figure out what is right about the country? Have you ever tried to get to know “them”? Sure, we all sort of have. There’s always “that one relative…” or “that one co-worker…” and “that friend from high school who according to social media has really changed…” and maybe even “that guy I sat next to on an airplane that one time.” But aside from passing pleasantries, or avoiding the complicated discussions for the sake of getting through a necessary dinner peacefully, do people really try to know each other?

You may notice there are plenty of similarities – these can include basic level things like interest in the same movies or sports teams, to bigger issues like the fact that we all want what’s best for our kids and our country, even if we just have different ideas of how to achieve that. Perhaps the biggest necessity if we want to turn “that person I met” into “that person who is truly important despite our differences,” is understanding and respect, not to mention communication. Understanding that asking for tolerance from others means respecting their dissenting opinion and giving them tolerance and understanding in return. Within most faiths (excepting extremist or fanatical groups, of which, sadly, all faiths have their own to deal with), most political ideologies, every ethnicity and each gender, each perspective and person has something that makes it worthy of being heard. This country is built on political rivalries and disagreements resulting in compromise, going back to the Founding Fathers – if they had agreed on everything then, we would have a much different, and possibly much weaker country than what we have. This system of debate and compromise shouldn’t need to be different now. Our similarities bring us together, but if we don’t let them tear us apart, embracing our differences could make us strong.

Shifting Our Attitude To Shift The World

The longer I live, the more I realize how much impact attitude has on people’s lives. A person’s attitude is more important than education. It’s more important than money, circumstances, failures, successes, appearance or skill. It’s especially more important than what others think, say or do. The attitude of everyone involved will make or break a company, a church, a home – or a country.

The change starts by shifting our focus. Once others start focusing on the issues instead of gossip and their own special interests, and listen the attitudes of the people will start to change. The silent majority will wake up, become proud of their actions and get involved in working to help everyone, not just themselves. In turn, our ’ attitudes will continue to shift, and they’ll start working harder to agree instead of disagree, at least debate ate a civil level. This cycle will continue, moving us and our country closer to actually fixing our problems, with workable solutions. We don’t need to agree, we need to listen and tolerate the opinions of others.

The remarkable thing is that this change, is something we, control as individuals, and can do every day. Everyday we have a choice regarding the attitude we embrace. We cannot change the past, nor the fact that other people will act or believe in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. But we can change our attitude. And we’re the only ones who can change it.

We at “NO HATE NO VIOLENCE” are convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we react to it. So change how you react to all the things in this world we can, and you might just change the world itself. Hopefully, our leaders and influential people will lead us in this effort.

CHANGING HOW WE LOOK AT THINGS WE THINK WE HATE WILL MAKE US HAPPIER

This article was first run in 2019, but we feel it’s even more relevant today. We’re sharing it again as a reminder of the power of positivity.

People who have hate and violence in their thinking are, by definition, unhappy.

By taking 5 minutes a day to think about how Shifting Our Attitude to Shift the World can change our lives forever allowing us to become happier no matter what our situation is.

SOME SIMPLE THINGS WE CAN DO FOR TODAY THAT WILL MAKE US HAPPIER

Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once.  

Just for today I will be happy.  This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”  Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals.

Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is and not try to adjust everything to my own desires.  I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come and fit myself to them.

Just for today I will take care of my body.  I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse it nor neglect it, so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding.

Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways; I will do somebody a good term and not get found out.  I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests, just for exercise.

Just for today I will look at what I hate and ask why and how that helps me be happier.

Just for today I will be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me.

Stop Spending Time on Things You Hate

With thanks to Arthur C. Brooks/The Atlantic

Brook’s article is thought provoking. Why do we waste our free time doing things that we don’t like or even hate? Four hours watching TV a day? Hours scrolling on social media? These are all choices we make, everyday.

Try to think more about your precious free time and do things that you enjoy or make you happy. Choose to spend your time doing things that make you happy. Remember our attitude article: life is 10% of what happens to us, and 90% how we handle it.

Be happy. Do things you like. Free time is not free—its precious.

Who is No Hate No Violence?

A letter from our founder on the importance of free speech and debate theory:

I am 71 years old and I have experienced and have seen a lot in my lifetime. I’ve watched our world evolve in so many ways.  Because of this I know that we are fully capable of changing from a bad attitude to a good increasing our happiness. And I know we will continue to make this world a better place for future generations.

This is why I started the No Hate No Violence blog.  I started it because I truly believe there is no place in the world for hate or violence.  I believe we CAN make our world a better place.  And I want to help do this.  So, I began by writing posts trying to encourage others to embrace this ideology.  This is my pay it forward.

Our team here created NO HATE NO VIOLENCE signs and took them to the streets to be carried at the different marches and protests.  All in the hopes of reducing the tensions and encourage peaceful demonstrations and dialog.  I’m not going to lie.  It was intimidating for us to do this.  But it was successful.  We found that it didn’t make a difference what position a person stood on in the matter. Most were receptive and wanted to hold our signs.  This gave us hope.

But, in my process of learning how to be a blogger (and yes, I am still learning how all of this works), I have spent many hours researching various topics.  And as does everyone, I too have my own personal beliefs.  But above all I believe in free speech.  So, when I came across debate teams and the rules of debate I thought AHA!  This is what we need.  This can help!

No Hate No Violence believes in free speech with open and respectful dialog.  So, we began developing the No Hate No Violence Debate Forums.

If we could promote free speech and reduce today’s angry rhetoric using facts we could encourage people to actually listen to each other.

We could get people to really hear different points of views objectively. What better way to start than to encourage healthy respectful debates.  Especially in our youth.

In today’s world when we follow our politicians and media we become more and more exposed to so much negativity, mistruths, and corruption.  Sadly, we are teaching our youth how to be corrupt, how to lie, how to be self-absorbed and how to be closed off to differing points of view.  Much of our society claims to be enlightened and open-minded in today’s age, but in reality, many have become more intolerant.

I think that our issues with bullying alone, is an indicator of what our society and social media is teaching our youth.  Our political leaders and their rhetoric spread all across the media spectrum just screams intolerance and is the epitome of bullying.

We want to change that.  We want to bring the fine art of debating back to the forefront of American society.  We want to re-open the dialogue.

Let’s encourage and support the benefits of debating.  Debating promotes open dialogue and respect and tolerance for others.  It teaches people how to think objectively and quickly.  After all, to be objective you must be able to hear both sides of an issue.

The more we thought about debating the more we realized that we need to expand and promote these programs nationwide from grade school through university.  Especially to those schools needing assistance.  We want to get these debates recorded and publicized to provide ongoing education and awareness to the general public.

There are so many benefits that debating can offer.

Teaching our children to debate at the grade school level will develop their cognitive skills giving them greater confidence and self-esteem.  It will improve their study habits and encourage them to take more interest in subjects they may otherwise shy away from. Click on this link to check out 3rd graders debating!

Debating at both the grade school and high school levels gives the teachers fun opportunities to engage their students in some of the more challenging or “boring” topics.  It’s also a great avenue of redirection for kids lacking in social skills.  The child identified as a “bully” could redirect their aggressive behavior in a more productive way.  And the “shy” kid can find their voice.

These skills carried through high school and college will provide far better opportunities for success in life.  High school debaters will improve their future college and scholarship opportunities.  And those who choose not to go to college have gained invaluable skills to promote themselves in the workforce and their future careers.

Benefiting our youth with these skills benefits our society.

As you can probably tell, we are very passionate about this.  But we are small and have been self-funding everything.  We need your help.  To fully make this a reality we need volunteers and donations to enable us to develop and distribute our systems, market the program, provide outreach and training, and to fundraise and secure sponsors.  We hope you will join us on this journey to pay it forward.

There is no debate…debating can make the world a better place!

 

We Can Do Better

I think the Democrats and Republicans could help us get back on track and away from all the negativity and hate if they would just lower their rhetoric.  We can do better.

They need to reach across the aisle and work with each other. Have face to face conversations or debates away from the media. They need to focus on getting the right things done rather than what kind of exposure they can get for their own re-election.  The more respected politicians don’t go to the press all the time.  They’re too busy making things happen by actually listening and doing the work.

I get that the Democratic party isn’t always conspiring with the mainstream media. But they are definitely in cahoots with each other.

Their constant same rhetoric is teaching our children how to lie, deceive, never answer a real question, or give any real facts.

They don’t report the facts because it might not fit their narrative and it’s teaching our children how to do the same which creates hate. All of this anxiety is a source of depression, and bullying.  A lot of these issues I blame on the politicians in general–parents who really aren’t doing the right job of parenting.

We need to teach our children to be curious about everything.

Not how to think.  We are all responsible for raising our kids with good morals and as they say, it takes a village. Especially when it comes to single parents and at-risk youth.  They need our help.

We as parents should demand from ourselves and our leaders, media, and teachers that we be better role models and examples.  The way we’re acting right now needs to stop.  Think about the future we are creating.  What can we do to improve it?

Let’s stop talking and do the right thing.

D-Day—What We Can Learn From History

Recently we celebrated the 75th anniversary of D-Day with most of the world watching the coverage showing the sacrifices the people of Europe and the United States made.

It is absolutely incredible, and we should be teaching this more to our kids, really driving home the price of freedom. The price of freedom is huge, and we are very blessed to have it.  We need to continue to celebrate it and for me, there’s a big lesson for all of us that can be learned from history.

We all know that history can repeat itself both in a positive way and a negative way.  But let’s think about the positive.  Look at what happened between Europe and the United States.  I think it’s a great historic reminder for what the possibilities are for us to do in the Middle East, Iran and Korea. Sometimes there has to be intimidation and sometimes there has to be conflict to defend those who cannot defend themselves and that’s what we are doing or trying to do.  We have not always done the right thing, but we have tried.  I believe the intentions have been good.  We’ve had bad intelligence in some cases.  And in some cases, we just flat out made bad decisions.

Again though, look at our history.  Europe was our adversary.

We fought a war to get away from them.  We lost a lot of young American lives and we are a country that is extremely young relative to Europe.  For the naysayers to see the United States be the greatest in the world when you consider Europe is thousands of years older than us, how did that happen?

Well, let’s go back to the wars, and where we fought Britain mainly, some France, and then some of them came to our aid so we could become a free country.  In World War I, we fought for freedom again but World War II for me is another one who are now our allies.  Who ever thought in 1944, that Germany would be one of our greatest allies and one of the best countries in the world after we disseminated them and got rid of the Nazi’s?

It’s unfathomable what the Holocaust did.

It was one of the most horrible times is world history (and now we have the Middle East and ISIS).  Yet, in Germany, once we won the war, we helped rebuild the country.  Look at it today.  It’s one of the strongest, best countries in the world.  We did the same with Japan who attacked us first at Pearl Harbor.

But more importantly, all of Europe and Japan are our allies now, when they were once our enemy. Germany is one of our best allies and they were once our enemy. We need to learn from that.  We can do the same in all of the Middle East.  Yes, we have to get rid of the bad actors. But we can do it without war now because the United States is the strongest economic power in the world.  China is coming at us, but China also can be our ally because we can do it with economics.  We don’t need to do it with wars or hate and violence.

I’d like to believe that most people don’t hate the Middle East.

You might hate their governments and the wrong things they do and a few of their leaders but I don’t think most people hate the people themselves.  I dislike the leaders that lead their people into the wrong direction or into the wrong economic model that only can hurt them in the long run, and I am

talking about communism and socialism.

Those are just covers for wanting to control the people for some groups own benefit.  Look at what some countries do.  They starve their people while they build military weapons and nuclear weapons.  They actually starve them.  Those aren’t things we can sit back and watch but we can negotiate them to a peaceful level. 1940’s Germany was a great example of a bad leader. But look at them now.

They wanted to have a peaceful nation.

So, if you have some pride and a job and are able to support yourself and/or your family, you’re more than likely not going to want to go to war.  You’re not going to want to kill your neighbor to get some food.  You’re not going to listen to people who are trying to get you to load a bomb on yourself and go blow yourself up because they’re going to take care of your family.  Those are things that wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for the way they’ve been manipulated into economic peril.

A lot of the leaders of these countries are keeping their people in economic peril for a reason, so they can control them.  We can help with all of that.  We don’t need to do it with guns and war. We can do it with economics. Make it tougher on them to do things and then help them once they agree not to be terrorists or nuclear threats or things of that type.

Let’s make our worst enemies our greatest allies.  What a concept.  Wishful thinking?  I don’t think so.  Just look at what our great D-Day heroes did for us in 1944.

For all who served and sacrificed for this great nation and the world, we salute you.

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