Hate: An Apology

[Dedbeet]

i think love and hate are both very needed emotions that you can chose to keep private within yourself or not

What are they needed for?

Silly question on the surface. A little deeper -- of what use is hate? What need does it serve?

It keeps us (seemingly) separate, so I can have myself.

Of what use is love? What need does it serve?

It brings us (seemingly) together, so I can have you.

Suppose we turned it around?

I get to have myself, but it's gotta be you.

Then what?

Peace...

 

[sssssssssss]

well yeah, if u want to experience excitement, you have to experience fear..
if not u would just be at point zero on the spectrum and be completely satisfied.

but you have been excited before
so something tells u that thats where u want to be always.

 

[skillz~4~thrillz]

the opposite of love is not hate...it is apathy. how better to express the absence of love than to not care. it is a hard concept to master but I have found it to be true.

on another note...
"Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself." ~Cherie Carter-Scott

just my opinion. A couple of statements that I have struggled to accept and now that I have those angry,hateful feelings fall into the right category-apathy. It is never easy but with work I have managed to keep those truths(what I conciser my truth) alive and have made the last 5 or so years much easier in all aspects of life.

 

[Dedbeet]

the opposite of love is not hate...it is apathy. how better to express the absence of love than to not care. it is a hard concept to master but I have found it to be true.

I'm not sure love has an opposite. Used to think the opposite of love was fear, but it became clear that the opposite of fear is desire (move toward/move away), not love.

Love is one of the most hard-to-pin-down concepts in existence. Which kind of love is "the" love?

Whichever kind one is currently looking for, or feeling?

I'm not sure anyone knows what love really is, the real reason being that it seems to mean different things to different people at different times.

Everyone agrees that it's very, very meaningful.

The most meaningful catch-all idea? Shrug.

P.S. I like what you're suggesting above, by saying "the opposite of love is to not care".
To me, unconditional love is to care deeply about everything equally.
But then you can't tell the difference any more between caring and not caring. And probably don't care .

 

[JJ-180]

Perhaps love and hate are not opposites, but two manifestations of the same attraction. The real opposite of love is loathing.

 

[Paul Muad Dib]

I dunno. I believe there is too much mysticism surrounding notions like love and hatred. I don't recognise any fixed states in my own phenomenal sfere. I do, however, experience varyied degrees of contemtness and incontemntness. I don't think I really hate anything or anybody in the romantic sense, but I really despise a lot of stuff. I don't think that you have to "hate to love". It just seems like we aren't that organized and I don't see why there should be such a necessary relationship between feelings. I mean, I can easily think of a creature that lives in bliss and never experiences sadness or anything else than bliss.

 

[Vader]

^What does that creature love? Also, try not to fall into the trap of "if I can imagine it, then it's possible, and if I can't, then it's impossible". Popular position in philosophy, but an arrogant one.

 

[awkwardapple]

Hate is a broad, vague term. Emotions are complex but yeah it's pretty obvious it is the flip side of love...in a sense they make the yin and yang of passion. If you're morally sound and grounded I reckon hate can be justified as a positive emotion for a precursor to action

 

[Paul Muad Dib]

^What does that creature love? Also, try not to fall into the trap of "if I can imagine it, then it's possible, and if I can't, then it's impossible". Popular position in philosophy, but an arrogant one.

I said think of, not imagine, and I believe that if something is concieveable, then it is possible (though I haven't got a very sophisticated notion of possibility, but whatever), but the converse is not the case. So that is my position, and if you think that is deeply flawed, then please provide a guideline for deciding what to believe

To give an example of such a creature:

If we accept a lockean conception of personal identity (which might be false, but few would claim that it is inconcievable that it could be the case), then imagine a chunk of person, P2, that is feeling love for someone or bliss (say after dropping some acid or MDMA). Now suppose that P2 has no recollection of life prior to this experience while the experience is going on, and suppose that when the experience ends P2 is killed (or the next chunk of person has no recollection of that prior state of being).

Now that would be a distinct person that never experienced anything but varying degrees of love/bliss. No prior feeling of hatred was needed.

Of course it is begging the question to use this as a proof that there is no necessary dual relationship between love/hate, all I wanted to establish is that it is not that far out to believe that there isn't. So it takes more than simply claiming that it is obvious that there is such a relationship, otherwise that too is begging the question.

(Okay, my example is a bit thin. For instance one could easily doubt that it is likely for a subject with no recollection of prior life to just "zoom into existence" and feel love for another person. But we could turn it the other way around and assume that the P2 is terrified or feels anger or hatred - perhaps after realizing something (say, that the setting is experimental and that the person residing the body prior to P2 zooming in had donated the body to science and condemned P2 to zoom into this setting)

Anyways, I think that love and other emotions might depend on various things, but none of them are other "feelings", but perhaps combinations of brainstates and cognitive abilities. I dunno, it just feels weird to claim that one has to feel both sides of an emotionspectrum to feel any of the two emotions. It even sounds inconsistent.

kind regards, PMD

 

[Vader]

So that is my position, and if you think that is deeply flawed, then please provide a guideline for deciding what to believe

I'm better at tearing down than building up tbh. The default skeptical position would be that it is down to you to prove that the conceivable is necessarily possible. I think we'd all like a guideline for what to believe! I think that the danger is in thinking that we can conceive of a thing, when in fact that conception is incomplete. For example, I could say "I can conceive of the Bible being literally true, and therefore it's possible". However, I haven't actually fully considered the case; if I had, I would realise that there are many contradictions and incompatible statements- imo, it is not possible that the Bible is literally true.

Now, with regards to your person; does he not hate the idea of the person he loves being destroyed? I think that you have failed to consider this. Now, of course, he might not think of this idea, and thus not feel hate, but I think that the possibility of hatred, at least, is a necessary concomitant of his love.

Finally, I think that (naive) Lockean identity is inconceivable. Are you aware of the old man, who remembers being a gallant officer, but not being young boy? Under the Lockean view, the old man is identical with the officer, and the officer identical with the young boy, but the old man is not identical with the young boy! (I think this was argued by Reid)

 

[Dedbeet]

I said think of, not imagine, and I believe that if something is concieveable, then it is possible (though I haven't got a very sophisticated notion of possibility, but whatever), but the converse is not the case. So that is my position, and if you think that is deeply flawed, then please provide a guideline for deciding what to believe

All positions are deeply flawed -- mine are just as deeply flawed as anyone else's.

The way "actuality" operates makes holding onto a position impossible, and the attempt to do so deeply flawed.

My position on the above is going to disappear the moment I turn the computer off, unless I keep thinking about it over and over.

Reality disallows the mind's pretense of clinging, holding on -- and only the mind's blindness to its own essential failure at the effort to stay positioned keeps the pretense going.

Peace....