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

[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.