My New Blog Spot - For the Produsage Project - My Response to my Question Posed

So, to share with the class on our Produsage Assignments we only gave a brief description of what we were doing.  I'm going to use this opportunity to post my response to my Produsage assignment response to my own question:  “Relationships are defined as the way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other. Based on the definition, your life experiences, background, and worldview, which is more powerful: Love or Hate? Please vote for an option and then, in the comment section, please explain why?”

I would say, probably hate and extensions of it (jealousy, resentment, envy, greed, judgement, ego, selfishness, competition) ...all those feed into hate...and they fuel it. All we have to do is look around and pay attention to the dynamics and interactions of people. If love were more powerful than hate we would be a much kinder, fairer and equitable nation and world, not just in words, but in practice too.

There are strong pockets of Love, but people tend to get complacent in loving relationships and are more motivated to respond unkindly when they are hurt coming from one or more of the extensions of hate, and that hate is powerful just turn on the news, or even in here in the box, piss somebody off and see how quickly it goes left and the venom gets fueled one person at a time. If people can be that way with each other, many times they are worse with some of the people closest to them when they are not careful or cognizant of it.

Love is powerful and should be the greater of the two in theory, but human beings tend to practice hate much more effectively than we consistently practice and apply love and it's extensions (kindness, grace, empathy, compassion, support, etc.).

So instead of me thinking about it from the normal (well, what should be normal and functional relationship construct) I decided to apply it more critically from a realistic application not an ideological r utopian construct of how it should be applied but how it is (or at least how it appears to be projected to be).

What happens when we are all in love? And that love isn't nurtured, reciprocated, valued, and appreciated? Eventually we feel unappreciated, disrespected, unvalued, unloved, unwanted, so forth and so on, and we become hurt. In our hurt, which was once love then turns into hate, retaliation, the “get back” so to speak, and now that hate drives all kinds of negative energies and behaviors because it's a toxic catalyst for pain, despair, dehumanization, cognitive dissonance, and HATE.

I went beyond just a romantic relationship context and I started thinking about all kinds of relationships, relationships between friends, family, church folk, employees, etc. And then when I thought more...I thought about our nation. I thought about all the hate fueled at Obama, I thought about the hate plaguing our communities from other groups and ethnicities, I thought about how we hate on each other.

I started thinking about all the things that drive it (greed, money, power, popularity, etc) what type of programming on the television gets picked up. What type of music gets in the rotation on the radio? What kind of reality TV is popular (people being loving and supportive of each other or the ratchet hateful less spewed from person to person)?

The positive artists don't get covered, the images of love and harmonious relationships don't get air time, or the level of support the hate does.

Those are just a few examples... even how we come at each other many times in a tangibly negative way instead of loving.

So I was just pondering the realities of what I'm seeing everyday (seeing the pockets of the goodness and love...) but still recognizing that power that unfortunately exists in the hate, because we fighting against in everyday but we haven't won .....YET!!

This was my initial response to this question, but in less than 24-hours by simply posing this question, soliciting participation and honest dialogue, I am more incline now to recognize the realities and truths of my initial position, but grab hold and embrace the belief that Love is in fact, stronger and more powerful than the wickedness that is hate and even though it doesn't look like it based on what is projected through the media, I had to remember the devil is in the details and just because we cannot see it with our eyes, there are smoke and mirrors at each vantage point perpetuating the hate that is all-consuming when we allow it.  

In this fight, both spiritually and of the flesh, I'm going to fight for the greater good which is Love.

Thanks Web 2.0 that learning collaboration supporting my informal learning teaches the teacher too!