How Does Enmity Arise?

I’ve been thinking about enmity now and then for the last couple of years. The burning question for me has become: how does enmity arise? Finally, I decided to learn what others have opined on this subject. I started with Dictionary.com:

enmity |ˈenmitē|

noun ( pl. -ties)

the state or feeling of being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something : enmity between Protestants and Catholics | family feuds and enmities.

Next I found Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Part Four, Friendship and Enmity. He had a lot to say about friendship, but skimped on enmity. He didn’t speculate on how it arises. He lingered on the difference between anger and hatred. He said that anger can be cured by time, but hatred cannot. Whether both anger and hatred are enmity or lead to enmity, he does not say.

A couple of centuries later, in Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy blamed enmity on the stars – opposing astrological signs of the parties involved. I’m sorry, that’s not helpful.

Thinking of the enmity between Muslims and Muslims, Jews and Muslims, Christians and Jews, and so forth, I decided to discover what those religions have to say on the subject. I guess they’re all too busy quarreling and killing each other to ask how enmity arises, because my quest turned up nothing.

Confucius wrote, somewhat enigmatically, that one should respond to enmity with excellence. What does that mean?

At the end of an afternoon of on-line research, I’m no closer to an answer than when I began. I just hate not understanding how enmity arises.

I did, however, learn afresh something I've always known. Aristotle wrote “… we can prove people to be friends or enemies; if they are not, we can make them out to be so; if they claim to be so, we can refute their claim; and if it is disputed whether an action was due to anger or to hatred, we can attribute it to whichever of these we prefer.”

This thought resonates with me because I believe that once we have set ourselves against another (or others) we can perceive them only from that point of view. In other words, enmity sustains itself through mind set.

Although I'm no closer to understanding how enmity arises, Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice,” describes its tremendous power precisely.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer