Don't Forget How to Hate

chanbengchin · March 26, 2004, 4:40am

You assumed wrong. I do not mean what you assumed. I mean what I said.

Bob · March 26, 2004, 8:04pm

Hi chanbengchin,

To hate is more a case of closing one’s eyes than to question one’s perception and to attempt to gain an objective approach. I still believe that most of the reasons why people hate are based upon prejudice and emotion rather than the rational.

Come on chan, what are you doing here?

??? It is first of all only my perception and it is not necessarily reality. We are told not to judge, lest we be judged in the same way. Secondly, why should it always be fault of the person I am “judging”?

Where you tired when you wrote this? Of course there is a difference between the erotic love of man (eros) and the selfless love of God (agape), not to mention the love of knowledge, language etc. (philos) But what are you actually trying to say?

You are using evil as though it is an entity, which I dispute. Evil is essentially an adjective that can be used as a noun in certain circumstances. There is enough in the world that is contra life and loving that can be called “evil” - of course. But I don’t believe that hatred is the only response available to us.

Shalom
Bob

chanbengchin · March 27, 2004, 3:49am

Please justify. As it is your statement is very presumptuous.

chanbengchin · March 27, 2004, 3:53am

You dont understand beauty do you?

chanbengchin · March 27, 2004, 3:55am

I agree.

Bob · March 27, 2004, 8:33am

If hatred is a strong aversion, an intense dislike or an affection of the mind awakened by something regarded as evil, then it would be a moral duty to ascertain whether what I regard as “evil” is intrinsically so, or whether there are understandable factors which, unbeknown to me, motivates that which I regard evil.

In the past, the British Empire suppressed the natives of the lands they colonised and in reaction to their militancy described them as “barbaric savages.” Evil was then more the language of the church. The fact was, that the “savages” were no more barbaric than the officers and soldiers of the Empire - and were, after all, fighting for their freedom.

Please justify. As it is your statement is very presumptuous.

Shalom
Bob

The_Underground_Man · March 27, 2004, 7:58pm

Evil can only exist in a system of absolute morality where we know what is good and what is bad. Pre meditated murder in such a system can be deemed bad and evil. To hate this sin, this evil is a proper response. Therefore again we are differenciating between hating the sin and the sinner.

Personally I am in aggreement with Chan, I think he said it best.

Bob · March 27, 2004, 9:58pm

I believe what we most dislike is our own badness that we see mirrored in other people. I find it very difficult, even though hate and abhorrence, detest and abomination are not foreign to me, to forget that I am myself not always obedient to my moral and religious sentiments. You know Romans 7:

“… we have known that the law is spiritual, and I am fleshly, sold by the sin; for that which I work, I do not acknowledge; for I practise not what I want, but what I hate.
And if I do what I do not want, I consent to the law that it is good, and it is not so much myself that is active, but sin dwelling in me… for the good that I want, I do not; but the evil that I want not, this I practise…
A wretched man I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?”

How can I know this but regard my own feelings of hate “just” as the instinctive and appropriate response to evil? I am just as likely to hate what is good by this measure. That is why I am not in favour of giving a blank cheque to negative emotions.

Shalom
Bob

Marshall_McDaniel · March 27, 2004, 10:15pm

Hate the sin, love the sinner perhaps. Maybe the opposite of love is fear and not hatred. I can fight against ignorance, hegemony, and evil, that does not mean i have to hate other people, many have tried my patience though.

chanbengchin · March 28, 2004, 4:31am

True. But that does not in anyway detract from the true meaning of hate, does it?

The hate that I am talking about is the pure meaning of the word: the hate with which God hates.

That you cannot hate justly and purely is beside the point. And the reason for this is the corruption in us. And therefore all the more we, and in this instance, our hate, cannot be the reference by which we know what is or what is not hate. That your hate is corrupted does not mean hate per se in its pure form - God’s hate - is corrupted too, does it?

And also until and unless you know what is a reference - after making sure that the reference is true and sure - can you then see yourself and know whether or not you have deviated and if so how far.

Sure before you hate, or hold other “negative emotions”, you surely have to examine yourself, but against what are you examining and measuring yourself, to know whether what you felt is justified, righteous and morally good?

[size=84]PS: My earlier “presumptuous” point about beauty. Surely there is more in beauty than just that which appeal to the eros. To me E=mc2 is beautiful and so are the Maxwell’s equations fully describing electromagnetic propagation, and so is Jerusalem, the perfection of beauty [Lam 2:15].[/size]

chanbengchin · March 28, 2004, 4:42am

But the wise are those that love and fear God, and certainly not hate God …

The_Underground_Man · March 28, 2004, 6:06am

I think the closest opposite of love is selfishness. I personally see love as more then just the feeling and constant imagination of its beauty and rapture but in ones acts of selflessness and duty to someone other then oneself.
In ones dedication to someone other then oneself is where and how I see love, where as hatred and fear I feel niether of which can really be used as an antonym.

INoNothing · March 31, 2004, 4:03am

Opposite of love is selfishness

Isnâ€™t love selfish? If you love someone and want to care for them you will be filling your own selfish desires when you do care for them. It just doesnâ€™t seem as selfish.

The_Underground_Man · April 1, 2004, 12:04am

No love is not selfish. Love makes you do things you wouldn’t dream of doing if not for love. Love is the cause not the self. The focus is on the other person. Heres an example I like: If someone tells you to go into a room and give some kid a toy and in return you’ll recieve some type of reward that act has a selfish cause. But if you go into a room and you see a kid sitting by himself without a toy and you don’t want him to feel unhappy but rather want to make him happy for his sake not yours and give him a toy that is an action without a selfish intent. The same goes for love you act for the sake of the other person. They are the primary concern and rarely if ever do you stop yourself and think well if I do this I will suffer some monetary pain in order to reap a deeper inner reward later. That is flawd reasoning. Your own happness as Viktor Frankl said it well, is a side effect of giving of oneself to someone other then oneself. It is really a by-product of loves actions.

Bob · April 3, 2004, 6:30am

Can we know what God does? We assume that he hates because he is given human attributes in the Bible, but would not a personality that is all-knowing also penetrate the hate that grows in Mankind? We think in polarites, good and bad, up and down, north and south, love and hate, but could it be that a permeating intelligence is devoid of such contrasts?

Micah 6:8 He hath declared to thee, O man, what is good; Yea, what is JHVH requiring of thee, exceptâ€”to do judgment, and love kindness, and lowly to walk with thy God?

Shalom
Bob

Marshall_McDaniel · April 4, 2004, 12:03am

Love is naturally selfish. Even if we give a toy to a child we still do it for the feeling we get or to improve our environment. Notice how much selfishness there is in even purely selfless acts. A man may give his life for his family, his ideals, or even his country, but he gains honor as a result.

chanbengchin · April 4, 2004, 12:37am

But if a man gives his life for a stranger? Selfish or Selfless? Death is unnatural.

The_Underground_Man · April 4, 2004, 7:38pm

In response to Marshall

it may appear that, as a matter of fact, our own experiences are all we really do care aboutâ€”at least most of us. I’m going to argue that this isn’t so. Most of us do in fact care about more than just what experiences we end up having.

There’s a widely-held picture of human motivation that makes it difficult to see this. That picture goes like this. Ultimately, it says, everyone always acts for selfish motives. Whenever we do something on purpose, it’s our own purpose that we’re trying to achieve. We’re always pursuing our own ends, and trying to satisfy our own desires. All that any of us are really after in life is getting more pleasant experiences for himself, and avoiding painful ones. Sometimes it may seem that we’re doing things for other people’s sake. For instance, we give money to charity, we buy presents for our children, we make sacrifices to please our spouses. But if you look closer, you’ll see that even in cases like these, we’re still always acting for selfish motives. We only do such things because it makes us feel good and noble to do them, and we like feeling noble. Or we do them because when people we care about are happy, that makes us happy too, and ultimately what we’re after is that happiness for ourselves. Hence, since the only aim we have in life is just to have pleasant experiences, Nozick’s experience machine gives us everything we want, and it would be foolish not to plug into it.

Now, I grant that some people may be as selfish as this picture says. But I doubt that many people are. The picture rests on two confusions, and once we clear those confusions up, I think there’s no longer reason to believe that the only thing that any of us ever aims for in life is to have pleasant experiences.

The first confusion is to equate “pursuing our own ends, and trying to satisfy our own desires” with “acting for a selfish motive.” To call a motive or aim “selfish” isn’t just to say that it’s a motive or aim that I have. It says more than that. It says something about the kind of motive it is. If my motive is to make me better off, then my motive is a selfish one. If my motive is to make you better off, then my motive is not selfish. From the mere fact that I’m pursuing one of my motives, it doesn’t follow that my motive is of the first sort, rather than the second.

Ah, you’ll say, but if my aim is to make you better off, then when I achieve that aim, I’ll feel good. And this good feeling is really what I’ll have been trying to obtain all along.

This is the second confusion. It’s true that often when we get what we want (though sadly not always), we feel good. It’s easy to make the mistake of thinking that what we really wanted was that good feeling. But let’s think about this a bit harder. Why should making someone else better off give me a good feeling? And how do I know that it will have that effect?

Consider two stories. In story A, you go to visit the Oracle, and in her waiting room you see a boy bending spoons and a girl levitating blocks. You feel this inexplicable and unpleasant itch. Someone suggests as a hypothesis that the itch would go away if you gave the girl a spoon too. So you do so, and your itch goes away.

In story B, you walk into the same room, and you don’t like the fact that the girl has no spoon. You would like her to have a spoon too. So you take a spoon and give it to the girl, and you feel pleased with the result.

In story A, your aim was to make yourself feel better, and giving the spoon to the girl was just a means to that end. It took experience and guesswork to figure out what would make you feel better in that way. In story B, on the other hand, no guesswork or experience seemed to be necessary. Here you were in a position to straightforwardly predict what would bring you pleasure. You could predict that because you had an aim other than making yourself feel better, you knew what that aim was, and usually you feel pleased when you get what you want. Your aim was to give a spoon to the girl. Your feeling of pleasure was a consequence or side-effect of achieving that aim. The pleasure is not what you were primarily aiming at; rather, it came about because you achieved what you were primarily aiming at. Don’t mistake what you’re aiming at with what happens as a result of your getting what you’re aiming at.

Most often, when we do things to make other people better off, we’re in a situation like the one in story B. Our pleasure isn’t some unexplained effect of our actions, and what we’re primarily trying to achieve. Our pleasure comes about because we got what we were primarily trying to achieve; and this makes it understandable why it should come about when it does.

Once we’re straight about this, I think there’s no argument left that the only thing anyone ever aims for in life is to have pleasant experiences. Some people do aim for that, some of the time. But many cases of giving to charity, making sacrifices for one’s spouse, and so on, are not done for the pleasure they bring to oneself. There’s something else that one is after, and pleasure is just a pleasant side-effect that sometimes comes along with getting the other things one is after. -James Pryor

Is his argument flawed? Or do you now see how not all acts are selfish.

Marshall_McDaniel · April 10, 2004, 10:42am

TheUndergroundMan:
Very good thesis.

What i fail to see and perhaps you can enlighten me on is how

equates to

The_Underground_Man · April 10, 2004, 7:05pm

Marshall:
When you wrote “Love is naturally selfish” I might of perhaps made the false assumption that you meant every act of love is formed from a selfish motive. If you did not mean this I give my apologies for misinterpeting you.