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.