Resentment spreads everywhere, but it is not a natural condition. It is rather an illness, one that we can and must heal through openness of mind and heart.
Hatred, in fact, sadly begets hatred. The assassination of young American politician Charlie Kirk by the very young student Tyler Robinson seems to confirm the biblical saying: “They sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). Yet it can also happen that one has not sown the wind and still reaps the storm: Gandhi, the two Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Aldo Moro — tragic examples all.

Hatred thus appears as a destructive passion that has always pervaded history: Cain kills Abel, Romulus kills Remus, Socrates is put to death by the democrats, Jesus by the theocrats; endless wars, primitive impulses of revenge; and the twentieth century, called “the century of genocides,” repeats itself bloodily in our own time…

What role, then, does hatred play in the structure of the world? Is it structural, natural? Or is it something alien, pathological? What is its relationship to the logic of life itself? My answer, perhaps against the current, is that hatred is not natural but pathological — and therefore, overcoming it means returning to health.

Of what, then, is hatred the pathology? Of that structural condition that Heraclitus called polemos, when he wrote, “Conflict (polemos) is the father of all things and the king of all.” Yet alongside this famous claim, he placed another, complementary truth: “From discordant elements comes the most beautiful harmony.” Heraclitus (together with Empedocles) was the first in the West to emphasize that conflict lies at the heart of being, and far from leading to nothingness, it produces harmony, life, intelligence, and culture.

Why, then, does hatred prevail so strongly in today’s political and social life? Because most of us are spiritually ill, and our societies are too — having lost all ethical and moral reference points capable of guiding human action.

Heraclitus saw clearly what modern science now confirms: conflict exists already within matter itself; astrophysicists speak of “cannibal galaxies” and voracious black holes. In biology, things become even more troubling, for blood appears the element of both life and death.
Yet note this: in the stars, the quasars, the black holes, or in animals that survive by devouring other life, there is no hatred. The lion does not hate the gazelle, nor does the gazelle hate the grass. In the natural world there is no hatred, for hatred is a disease of the evolved mind — more precisely, of the human mind, unable to master the conflict intrinsic to existence and thus falling victim to it.

The mind that masters conflict fights the opponent without hatred; the mind dominated by conflict hates. In the first case, one seeks to defeat the adversary, not to annihilate them, because one senses that the adversary is, in truth, part of oneself: the left would not exist without the right, atheists without believers, Juventus without Inter. Hatred, on the other hand, wants annihilation. In its blind rage, it fails to see that destroying the enemy would mean also losing itself, since without an opposite, one’s own identity would dissolve.

Hatred is a disease, a pathology of the spirit. It is no coincidence that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all teach that Satan (Iblis in the Qur’an) is a fallen angel — and angels are pure spirit. When freedom becomes sick, it turns awareness and creativity away from responsibility and toward destruction. Thus arises malice: the deliberate will to do evil. This malicious will may be directed at a person, a group, a people, an institution, or even at the world itself, for the sheer perverse pleasure of inflicting suffering and death.

We rarely think of hatred as a disease; we often present it as the equal and opposite of love. Some even claim that hatred provides a clearer understanding than love, due to its supposed lucidity. I do not underestimate the power of hatred, but I deny that it is truly intelligent. Hatred sees only itself. Even when it looks at the other, it perceives merely its own prejudice, unable to recognize the other’s goodness. It sees, but through a gaze distorted by negative energy and a thirst for destruction.

True understanding, however, requires upright vision — what the Buddha called “right view,” the first step of the Eightfold Path. From it arises openness of mind and heart — empathy. Hatred, therefore, is not intelligent; it is foolishly self-contained.

One last question remains: is hatred strong? Yes, sometimes very strong. But so is cancer — its cells are hungry, aggressive, violent. Yet what is the outcome? The death of the organism, and thus their own. The being is governed by the logic of system and harmony: what conforms to that logic nourishes life; what does not brings death.
Rejecting hatred is therefore not merely a moral act, but an intelligent one: to understand the logic that gave us life and to align ourselves with it, like a sailor who sets his sails according to the winds.

Eliminating hatred within ourselves — keeping conflict but removing the will to annihilate — means staying healthy. Even before it is an act of benevolence toward others, it is an act of care toward oneself.
To free oneself from hatred, to preserve conflict while abolishing the desire for destruction — this is what our minds and societies need to recover, a politics that truly serves the common good. And how urgently our world needs such a rebirth hardly needs to be said.

See, Vito Mancuso: L’odio dilaga ovunque