It is the way the white cop sat, looking calmly into the camera, that grabs the emotional entrails within. Churning up old hurts, like old wine, in a new bottle? His expression was like, “So, what are you going to do?”

They say this is a fight, between liberals and rightwing ideology. Between the haves and have-nots. A battle as old as the hills. Every country and culture have an underdog to malign. I have tried very hard to decipher, why in the 21st century, after the enlightenment age of two world wars and the holocaust, after worldwide literacy at an all time high, and unprecedented global communication, we can still hate and hurt like barbaric cavemen.

What will dent the exclusionist, ‘you deserve to suffer’ mentality? I know for sure education has failed. Religion failed a long time ago. Many people – black, brown, and white – may feel a shudder of revulsion at the smug white-cop highhanded privileged strength he displayed. But ask yourself in your hearts – have you never encountered injustice in much smaller landscapes in your own lives? In classrooms, offices, and homes?

So what are we going to do? Continue hating each other? The latest new hobby are slanging, shouting matches on the social media. I’ve turned all my social media feeds off of people I know, with my background, nationality, gender, educational background and religion, shouting down a whole community with one single brush. Social media has confirmed one point to me – the exclusionist conservatives can’t change the liberal’s opinion, and the liberals can’t change their opinion.

We are born with these orientations: to include or to exclude. It’s programmed into the very DNA. Are you the person to harp for the gated-community of privilege holders, while the underclass are locked out? Or are you the liberal, shouting righteous anger into the face of privileged-position holders? When will this stop? Maybe never. How many Abraham Lincolns, Gandhis and Nelson Mandelas do we need to change this world?

Will it really ever change? Or just keep coming and going under the carpet, with seasonal laws enacted. While hearts’ fume? The same tune over and over: the holocaust, Palestine, Rwanda, Uighurs, Yazidis, black vs white, lower caster vs upper caste. Never ending.

I researched this behaviour, the perpetrator and victim, both feel fear. The victim feels a significant existential fear. Fear of losing a life, of not getting a job or position, of being booted out. The perpetrator feels an even greater, though intangible, fear. The fear of being wiped out, of having a life as they know it, gone for ever. A deep fear of the unknown. While the former’s fear is more physically tangible, the latter’s fear is more subconscious.

So the true enemy is the fear within. No law, no legendary leader will stay around to bind people together. Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King have come and gone. We are still here. This is a task each one of us has to take up, by ourselves. Not by shouting at each other, or hating each other. It defeats the very purpose. If you feel deeply existentially threatened, then you need to lash out at others to feel safer. But this is self-defeating behaviour. Did Hitler, in his whole exterminating career, ever feel safe? I think in the end, he felt unsafe, more than he ever did to begin with.

Fear feeds fear. Fear leads to a dead-end. Root out the fear within. Introspect. Observe how society and nature have supported our lives until this very moment, wherever we are. Feel gratitude: to humanity, to divinity. We can share a world; we have shared a world. I can’t fix the world, but I can fix myself. Let each of us be just and honourable to the people around us. Even those we fear.

If you feel compelled to make a harsh act against someone. Just pause. Pretend you are that person. Would you like to be a given a chance? Would you give yourself another chance? If yes, make a list of all the people you hate, fear and those that have hurt you. Then instead – just think of something to give them, or yourself (in their shoes) a break.

Break the vicious cycle – within.