Thomas Campbell

[poliphilo]

I've been spending much of the past 36 hours watching videos on the site I highlighted yesterday. I'm particularly taken with Thomas Campbell- physicist and shaman (shaman isn't a word he uses himself but what else do you call a teacher and healer who travels between the worlds?) "The opposite of Love" he says, "isn't hate but fear". Yes. To which I'd add that it's a lot easier to conquer hate than it is to conquer fear. If the object of our existence is to become Love, then that's one hell of a mountain we have to climb.

And of course we're not going to do it in a single lifetime.

Or in ten

Or in fifty.

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I thought the opposite of love was indifference? Machiavelli also had something to say on the subject, as I recall.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "love".

Could one argue that indifference is born out of fear- the fear of what might happen if one extended one's sympathies too far?

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Good question and am not exactly wedded to my suggestion, either.

I think if we define love as attraction, on whatever plane, and fear as simply repulsion or aversion, then I think that they are indeed opposites, as this fellow suggests. I also think Chuang Tzu would agree.

I don't necessarily agree that indifference is born of fear, since for example I am rather indifferent to the clarinet. I cannot say that I fear being attracted to clarinets or the sounds they make. I simply don't have much feeling toward them at all, one way or another. I might also note that indifference seems like a functional or practical opposite of love, rather than a conceptual opposite. It is behaviorally useful, sometimes, to cultivate indifference in place of our loves and hates.

However, it is possible to both love something -- or someone, certainly -- and fear it simultaneously. Machiavelli famously suggested that this is the ideal, with respect to the prince. Is it possible to hold two opposing emotions simultaneously? Does that do injury to what we mean by opposition?

To complicate matters further still, usually true opposites define one another, such as high and low, hot and cold, beautiful and ugly. That being the case, love and hate seem like opposites, while love and fear seem less so, perhaps. I have also seen it claimed that, rather like gravity, love has no opposite or perhaps even love is its own opposite.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

My physician, who is also a family friend, says that he believes that all emotions are fundamentally either expressions of either love or fear. In my mind, I just dump 'em into Greek, 'cause it sounds cooler, and say that every emotion is an expression of either philos or phobos, or, if I'm feeling REALLY pretentious, "φίλος" and "φόβος".

But, yeah. "Philos" is the state of wanting to draw near to something, and "phobos" is the state of wanting to get away from something. Somewhere at the very, very base of every emotional response we have is a tiny amoeba reacting to a stimulus by either moving toward or away from it. Everything else we do has that very simple "toward" or "away" dichotomy at its base.

And "indifference?" Yeah, that IS even more fundamentally different from love than hate is. Because even before that little amoeba decides whether to move toward or away from the stimulus, it decides whether to even react to it at all. The FIRST split is between "relevant stuff" and "irrelevant stuff." The SECOND split is between "go toward" and "go away."

And "hate" is such an interesting feeling. Because some forms of it really do feel like ways of going toward something. If someone is obsessed over a thing they hate -- is that "philos" or "phobos"? They're spending so much energy getting close to it -- there are forms of hate which are actually forms of love.

But fear? You get away from the things you fear -- you leave, or you destroy them, or you actively pretend they don't exist so that you have removed them from your consciousness. "Fear" is the desire to separate a thing from one's existence -- "love" is the desire to incorporate it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hate is strange. And very different from fear- though the two things often get mixed up in practice. There's a reason why people get hate and love tattooed on their knuckles. They're twins.

If I hate someone- a politician say- I find I can't get enough of them. It's a twisted attraction.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I think "hate" is what you get when you feel both love and fear simultaneously. If someone is attacking something you love, you can't feel indifferent, and you're STILL feeling the love for the thing, plus the fear for the thing attacking, and I think that might end up with hate. Maybe.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes.

And it is also possible- and often happens- that love flips over into hate- and vice versa.

Actually one could write a book on the subject- and people have :)

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I think "hate" is what you get when you feel both love and fear simultaneously.

I disagree. I can think of more than one woman that I have loved and feared simultaneously, without the palest flicker of hate.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

"I think 'hate' is one possible thing you might be able to get when you feel both love and fear simultaneously." Better?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Other things you can feel when you simultaneously feel love and fear include "respect", and even "awe".

[sovay]

"The opposite of Love" he says, "isn't hate but fear".

"She pressed him no further, but kept her hand on his and watched him go to sleep. She knew what she felt, and what therefore he must feel. She was confident of it: there is only one emotion, or state of being, that can thus wholly reverse itself, polarize, within one moment. In Great Hainish indeed there is one word, ontá, for love and for hate. She was not in love with Osden, of course, that was another kettle of fish. What she felt for him was ontá, polarized hate. She held his hand and the current flowed between them, the tremendous electricity of touch, which he had always dreaded. As he slept the ring of anatomy-chart muscles around his mouth relaxed, and Tomiko saw on his face what none of them had ever seen, very faint, a smile. It aded. He slept on."
—Ursula K. Le Guin, "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" (1971)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't read that one.

To have the one word for love and hate- interesting. Also confusing.

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

I have always felt that love and hate are essentially the same substance, and the same essence -- the key difference lies in the absence, or presence of a critical level of fear. Love, once it reaches that fear-saturation point, becomes hatred. Hatred, once enough fear leaches out of it, becomes understanding, reconciliation, compassion, and even love.

They are so very similar, I cannot think of them as opposites, but as conjoined twins. After all, when you have loved someone but can love them no longer, isn't it most often hate, or something like it, that follows next, unless you put effort into resisting it?

I think I have to go with indifference being the true opposite there. Possibly disdain as the 'opposite' flavor of hatred, just for symmetry's sake -- again, judged by the presence or absence of even a trace amount of fear.

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When you're freeing yourself from the influence of someone you once loved it's normal to hate them for a time. Then, when the separation is complete you can go back to loving them in different way. That's been my experience, anyway.

I think Love and Hate are very imprecise terms.