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

[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".