Love must be a hard thing to define, but here is what I believe to be the beginning of truth. If we take the opposite of love, hate, and try to define that, we surely find that murder is the greatest attribute of hate. If someone truly hates something, or another person, don't they try to put it out of existence? So, if we define murder as the destruction of life, then love must be the opposite, which is the creation of life. Of course there are in betweens, but for me the greatest act of love is to create life, however this is done. But as I said this is only the beginning of the question. For example we need to find an absolute: to take a life means that a life must already be in existence, or in other words the greatest act of hate works against an act of love. But does an act of love work against hate when the being created will die? I'm finding it hard to clarify what I'm trying to say, but I hope you can see my problem. Any thoughts anyone?
my thought is that hate is not the opposite of love but fear is the opposite of love. fear is likely to be at the root of any hateful act. please tell me if you think otherwise. i think this because you cannot take the feeling of love any further than itself, it is the base of the positive emotions. similarly fear is at the base of negative emotions it can not be reduced to any other feeling. this may just be my interpretation though.
Bottom to top: first, love can't be lead anywhere. Love is Love no matter what. Second, people also murder because of love so that takes away your theory. Or at least the beginning of your theory! The question that needs to be asked is - "What was here first?" Or in other words "What was created first?" LOVE or HATE". To create does not need an emotion. A particular creation can happen with emotion but not necessarily because of an emotion alone. The world began with chaos. The world continues to live in chaos with love and hate together. Perhaps creation began with a mixture of both. I believe you truly can't have one without the other. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Recently decided on "a harmony of personalities" as love between people, but there is more to the term than it application in that context. I remember a long and very interesting discussion from my early days here in a thread I called "love and hate". You might find it an interesting read, IMO, this thread is great stuff: Love and Hate How very weird that someone (I'd guess porf?) has used URL redirect for "styleforums" to "sciforums". Funky.
Hello, Darkman, Sorry, but your basic premis is flawed. Hate is not the opposite of love - selfishness is. While there are many definitions of love, the clearest and best is simply : "Putting someone else's wants and needs ahead of your own." Selfishness will not allow that attitude since it only allows self-serving actions. Once you realize that you'll understand that the rest of your presentation is not accurate.
That's not true either. Givingness is the opposite of selfishness or at least one of the opposites of selfishness.
Once again, sorry. You fail to grasp that 'putting someone ahead of yourself' implies 'givingness' as a requirement. I somehow get the feeling that there are people here who never studied psycology and social interactions.
Then it's probably not "real" love. I don't think the kind of love which is between a male and a female is "true love". It's just attraction. Attraction can also be called love, but it's like two magnets which want to unite because they, in their ignorance, believe that they lack their complementary half. Without this emotion, two "lovers" would, at most, be just good friends. They're mostly in love with the emotion. The law of the spirit is to give, the law of matter is to take.
Love is not a feeling, it is a relation (Martin Buber). There are feelings that we often associate with that relation when on the interpersonal romantic level, but those feelings are not love. The relation is love. Those who commit acts of passion - such as the aforementioned murder - are not doing it because of love, but because of the feelings that they have confused with the relation of love. This reminds me of the difference between "good" and "evil." Mary Parker Follett (1918) suggested that "evil is non-relation." One might argue that an abusive relationship is a form of relation, and that is not good; however, that isn't relation through-and-through; it's a relation between a person and another person who has become an object. Thus, their true relation - the relation between subject and subject - is broken. Now, compare this with Elie Wiesel's statement that "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." In'difference = "makes no difference to me" = "establishes no relation for me." So love/good is about what creates relation; evil (or whatever the opposite of love is) is about destruction of relation. And this can be applied on a cosmic scale. It also applies to the ongoing emergence of new relation via transformations of existing structures. Through experience, through living and learning, we (and all complex systems) are subject to differentiation, which is a way of opening new doors for relation. So there we have it.
Onefinity, please take a look at that thread I mentioned if you don't mind. I'd be interested on your take on it.
Interesting. Well, I'm not sure about the intention of mapping love and hate as polar coordinates. I don't believe in poles. Have you ever seen those accordion-like things that when you look at them from one angle, you see one image, then when you look at it from the other angle, you see another image? Yet they are both on the same continuum. I think opposites are like that. On further reflection, I don't think that love has an opposite at all. Since, to me, love is relation (not just a relation, but relation itself), then it is interwoven in all and "recapitulates" everything. Even a temporary sense of non-relation (and all the bad stuff that goes along with it) is only a prelude to the revelation of relation. I further conclude from this that good (relation) will always swallow evil (non-relation); after all, the very act of recognizing something as "evil" is the sign of a transformation, toward relation, taking place in the observer.
I modified that intention as the thread progressed to be conditional to context x, which is I now see a specific case of the more appropriate model you describe below. Actually so do I. I started thinking more that way however, after that thread. The most interesting content in that thread had to do with epiphanies on my part regarding the function of emotion, and an interesting clickiness I had with Allah's Mathematics. I thought Xev and Zenu also had good input. It's funny I just remembered that this afternoon when I read your response I was thinking of how your name represents the idea you describe above, and of things I generally contemplate in that context. Free-will and consequence is one that occurs to me now. [start] Oh and uhm... yes but there are actually two images... so while I agree with you about the continuum thing, it doesn't preclude further resolution. Sure the two images are part of the same material. [goto start] I presume you mean it does so to the extent of its context, and could possibly bleed over. Don't you think relations can have opposite relationships? Positive and negative pressure? Love is a "positive" relation to a interpersonal interaction and hate the negative of it. Any particular conceptual intersection related to the context of the interpersonal interaction in question could have either or both relations, in some subjective amount. Perhaps I've misunderstood your use of the term relation. It seems like you switched meanings there. *thinks* So you think the water can't flow both ways at the same time? I suppose that depends on how much time we're talking about. If we speak of "an experience", it could have flowed either way during it. If you're speaking "instantaneously", then perhaps you're riight. It is possible however, that this isn't really the case and in fact technically in separate but related conceptual intersections, each active in mind during a particular instance - both have the flow you imply, flowing through relations in opposition. They could change directions during thought as well, and even merge in polarity. Do you follow that?
YOu've obviously never met a person you'd kill for. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
love is a cruch used by the ppl in this world who cannot live on there own so they bring another into there life as support to keep living not realizing that they are just causing more pain in the world that heeling...and if there was not love we could not exist and there for it is a never ending problem and cannot be solved by any one on earth...even ppl who want to be cloned are just waisting there time eventually ppl are going to die out so by love we are dooming our selves to exist for a more menevilent end!
It may cause more pain that healing, but it is a very powerful emotion, and believe me, there is no greater nor a more painful feeling than love. It is the best of the best and the worst of the worst.
Mmm, can't say as I do. But yes, my use of the term "relation" is in a universal sense rather than the interpersonal (but it includes that as well).
Yes, maybe. I made up the term Onefinity to represent the "number" 1 raised to the power of infinity. To a mathematician that means just 1, so it's nonsense. But the idea is that even though it is eternally 1, there is a qualitative diversity within that oneness. I'm sure you know what I mean.
I agree with WesMorris, because I see things in the same way; i.e.emotions tend to be mutually exclusive (if this is correct word), or at opposite ends of the same scale. Of course what we must question, and what Onefinity has already pointed pointed out, ishow we group some emotions together, and other emotions apart! This must simply be taught, so it cannot be instinctive. Exactly! This was my question. Now, I believe the following to be an answer. If we take love and hate as opposites on a scale; a scale of life, we can see that one end (hate) wishes to destroy it, and love, at the other end wishes to create life. Now, it is impossible to destroy (and therefore hate!) something that hasn't been created, but it it possible create (and love) something that hasn't previously existed! So love must always come before hate: perhaops this explains the psychology.
How come no one has made mention of "love" turning into "hate"? Or, for that matter, "hate" turning into "love"? If this really happens, and I believe it does, then how does all of your comments and thoughts change? And change it must from what I've been reading of the posts. Baron Max
