What is the opposite of love?

[seriously disabled]

I think that the opposite of love is rejection. But you don't necessarily hate the person you reject.

Edited November 27, 2011 by seriously disabled

[michel123456]

The opposite of love is evol.

[tar]

Immortal,

 

It is hard for me to "defend" an insight. Probably, my definition is not as true as I think it is. If it was true, then people would just "see it".

 

It makes sense to me, and it folds in nicely with the other muses on consciousness, self, and what we include and exclude in our feeling of self. But that's just me, attempting to arrive at a consistent worldview that is scientifically and logically correct and explains stuff that is normally thought of as not scientifically approachable.

 

Me thinking such, does not make me feel any better when I lose someone who is part of me.

 

One can know exactly why they get hungry, every chemical and neuron firing involved. They would still feel hunger, and it wouldn't take anything away from the feeling.

 

But I won't defend my definition. Either it makes sense, or it doesn't. Your choice.

 

Regards, TAR2

[indios_markus]

The absolute opposite of Love is Fear.. - in the moment Fear existed, Love could exist as a thing that could be experience.. Hate is just an sponsoring thought, the controlling thought of everything that Love is not, what is now called Fear..

[Moontanman]

The absolute opposite of Love is Fear.. - in the moment Fear existed, Love could exist as a thing that could be experience.. Hate is just an sponsoring thought, the controlling thought of everything that Love is not, what is now called Fear..

 

 

I would have to say the opposite of Love is Disinterest...

[John Cuthber]

 

John,

....

Its the way we think.

...

No.

It's the way you think.

[Robittybob1]

The opposite of love is evol.

I was going to write just that but would have added some more letters just for fun. Joking of course. Does there have to be an opposite for love? Detest comes close.

[tar]

"People most hate what deprives them of what they most need, and since the beloved becomes the focus of enormous emotional needs, the failings of the beloved to meet those emotional needs are naturally closely tied to great hatred."

 

Marat,

 

Was thinking this morning, about love and hate. Interesting that this thread should open back up, now.

 

When I read the Koran, after 9/11 to try and understand, why I was hated by someone who felt my sins were so great that my towers should be brought down, I was touched, by Mohammed's arguments that there can be but one Allah. There really is no other way. We are all connected, in and of the same waking world. Figuratively or literally, there can be but one objective reality. One objective judge of us. One reality from which we emerged, and one reality to which we are responsible. Yet the narrative and Mohammed's argument morphs to an association of the prophet to the will of Allah, like if you are against the prophet(pbuh) you are against Allah. This might work very well for you, if you are a believer, and walk around the stone at some point in your life, and strive, until all the world is for Allah, but does not work out too well if you are a disbeliever, or one who gives Allah associates, or one that charges interest, or worships graven images, or a woman that cheats on her husband, or a person that commits sodomy, etc.

 

Love is when you include another in your feeling of self. This gets complicated, when you imagine that your heart is open to including every living thing in your feeling of self.

 

It turns out, not to be workable, in that some other people, invariably wind up doing it the wrong way, and you have to push them out of your feeling of self, so that you can continue to be right, in the eyes of god (so to speak).

 

Republicans should not hate Democrats, as in the U.S. we are all Americans, and equally hated by people that hate America.

 

Christians should not hate Muslims, as that would cause a world war, and everybody would die.

 

We should all listen to Moses. We should all listen to Mohammed. We should all listen to the Buddha and to Siddhartha. And give each other the benefit of the doubt.

 

Being right about loving the world is good. Loving the world, by excluding part of it, by definition, makes you wrong about loving the world.

 

Personally I think it very OK to protect my way of life from those who would take it away. I understand the arguments against America, that we are greedy, and foul the Earth, and disbelieve in the teachings of Muhammed(pbuh) by being Christian and Jew, and gay, and chargers of interest and purveyors of filth and hedonism and such, but these things are sins against Mohammed's rules, and as such, the only people we have to please, is each other.

 

So how can I justify hating ISIS? Because they are not for me, they are not for you, they are for themselves, with no redeeming social value.

 

I exclude them, from my feeling of self.

 

Republicans on the other hand, I embrace, because I am married to one, I live among them, they have paid my salary in the past, and have fed the poor and built great hospitals and institutions of higher learning through their unsolicited contributions...etc.

 

The KKK I can hate. They have no redeeming social value. I exclude them, from my feeling of self. As I do, mass murderers, and drug lords.

 

Here the opposite of love, is hate.

 

Those I embrace and include in my feeling of self, I love, or like, or support, or emulate.

 

The opposite of this, is those I hate, and actively exclude from my feeling of self.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited February 15, 2016 by tar

[Ten oz]

What is the opposite of Thursday?

What is the opposite of wall?

Why do you suppose that love has an opposite?

Great point! What is positive or negative, love or hate, opposite or not is all completely subjective. Philosophically the existence love as anything more than a individually unique experience can be challanged. As such conceptual opposites can vary greatly.

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

But there are physically real things that happen when we are rewarded for being good. Endorphins flow, dopamine is realeased. There is a real difference between being good and being rewarded, and being bad, and being punished.

 

A neg rep hurts. A plus feels good.

 

You might be wrong in considering it all relative. It may very well be subjectively experienced, but qualia are not, by definition, imaginary. They are actual.

 

When I get stoned in the square, it is because I actually did something I was not supposed to do.

 

If love is a human emotion, it may indeed be a very objectively real thing that is going on.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited February 15, 2016 by tar

[Robittybob1]

@Tar - Feeling better?

[Ten oz]

Ten Oz,

 

But there are physically real things that happen when we are rewarded for being good. Endorphins flow, dopamine is realeased. There is a real difference between being good and being rewarded, and being bad, and being punished.

 

A neg rep hurts. A plus feels good.

 

You might be wrong in considering it all relative. It may very well be subjectively experienced, but qualia are not, by definition, imaginary. They are actual.

 

When I get stoned in the square, it is because I actually did something I was not supposed to do.

 

If love is a human emotion, it may indeed be a very objectively real thing that is going on.

 

Regards, TAR

It is impossible to quantify the degree. Is love ones child different than love of chocolate or a sunrise? Both have a chemical reward in your brain.

[tar]

Robbitybob1,

 

Yes thank you. A smile and a hug is better than a kick in the teeth.

 

Ten Oz,

 

I have not completely thought through the reward complexes that are engaged with really big stuff, where you win on many many important levels. I am thinking in terms of the levels of need fulfillment and satisfaction that various partnerships and friendships and arrangements wind up satisfying.

 

For instance, if you eat an apple, that gives a certain reward. However if you can a couple bushels of apples, you know you will be having applesauce all winter. Both victories, and survival rewards that could easily have been selected for in evolution. That is, if my theory is correct, feeling good, is a reward for doing something right, that will serve to keep you alive and keep your children alive and keep the tribe alive.

 

Having sex feels good, and also serves to get a woman pregnant...historically and evolutionarily. The rpeward for doing it right is multi-layered. Its good in many ways. There is more chemically going on however, than just the endorphins. There are pheromones that make you feel good, where just sitting next to your lover, feels good. As it feels good to hold a child in your arms.

 

So its a different kind of love, when you are talking chocolate, or children...and I can not extend my definition of love "love is when you include an other entity, in your feeling of self" unquestionably to include the love of chocolate, but I suppose to a certain extent, you include a piece of chocolate in your feeling of self, when you take it off the shelf, and put it in your cart.

 

Even drugs, addictive drugs, can be considered part of a person's identity. A heroin addict does not feel herself, until she gets the drug into her body. So much so, that she will steal from her family, hurt her neighbor, maybe even kill someone, for that feeling of victory, that feeling of winning, that chemical reward.

 

I have often said that a drug addict can feel on top of the world, victorious and unbeatable...while lying in their own vomit, penniless and friendless. Speaks to the power of the chemical reward, built into us, for survival purposes, being so powerful and real, that when it is present, even if the actual victory is not, the qualia tells the person that they ARE winning.

 

So with love, there may be reasons for it. Chemical rewards, pheromones and reactions to things, that make you feel good, that have real survival reasons to be the case. And these things, very well could be species wide. The feeling of love, when a baby is in your arms, does not depend on your race, creed, religion, nationality, or the language you speak, or the political party you belong to.

 

Regards, TAR

just remembered something my dad and stepmom, both psychologists, told me a few weeks ago, when we were talking about drug abuse (I am a volunteer for citizens against drug abuse, in my town) A drug addict gets a rush (dopamine) just scoring the drug, and going though the motions of injecting it. Even if its not really the drug. The victory to a small extent, is still achieved.

Edited February 16, 2016 by tar

[Ten oz]

@ TAR, now try to expand that (evolutionary reward response) to this topics question about what the oppoiste of love is; can really only be done subjectively. If we mix biology into the dicussion thoroughly than anixiety becomes a possible opposite. Anxiety would be is logical opposite to a dopamine reward sensation in the brain. It is all just perspective.

Edited February 16, 2016 by Ten oz

[tar]

ten oz,

 

But its is not an arbitrary association I am making between the chemicals, the hormones, the pheromones and endorphins, that all together cause you to fall in love, or to have the emotion that you would call love, toward an other individual, or in the case of chocolate, or oxycodone, toward another entity.

 

There are many other real factors involved as well, things we know and things we are still figuring out. Do you like your mates mother, what kind of job does the mate have, is the thing going to work or does he/she live too far away? Does the mate like your family, etc.

 

The beauty of my definition, is that it does not mention pheromones at all. It just is talking about your feeling of self, which is completely subjective, and therefore complete allowable. Like asking for a pain level between one and ten. You eliminate the problem of someone elses pain tolerance. Whether you include, or exclude another in your feeling of self, is completely up to you. I have no input one way or the other. You do not need my permission, or have to subject yourself to my judgement. You either can or cannot live without the other entity. Your heart is either broken or it is not, when the other is lost and unavailable to you.

 

Whether its mirror neurons firing or not, if you hurt, when the other hurts, you are, at least to that extent, including the other person in your feeling of self. If you behave in a manner that is just as concerned with what chemicals are being engaged in the other, as those engaged in your own head, then it is somewhat obvious, that you include that other person in your existence, in your life, in your feeling of self.

 

It is not a particular recipe of chemicals, that we know about that gets this job done. But we know, for instance, that someone else, even someone we do not love, can imagine what me mean when we say for instance, "my tooth hurts". We have enough similar chemicals, released in our similar brains, for similar evolutionary reasons, that we have a basis for comparison, and a basis for communication.

 

If I talk about a feeling of self, you know exactly what I am talking about, even though you are not me.

 

Regards, TAR

you don't have to know even a little, what it feels like, to be TAR

TAR does not need to know even a little what it feels like to be Ten Oz

 

But it is obvious that TAR considers himself a self...its in the word himself.

 

Whatever it is that causes you to have a feeling of self, it is that exact thing I am using as a feeling of self. Those other entities, that you include in that feeling...your house, your job, your town, your mate, your children, your country...whatever, has nothing what so ever to do with me, it all on you.

 

But, since I am a human being, and you are a human being, we can communicate certain states of mind to each other, through a common language.

 

Enough, for you to have a general idea of what I might be talking about, when a say any of the words, in the definition. If there is a way you could take a word that would make the definition make no sense, then that is not the way I intend the definition to read. The way I intend it to read, is the way that would make you say " well, I can sort of see that" " that sort of works."

 

Regards, TAR

Edited February 16, 2016 by tar

[Ten oz]

@ TAR, as you pointed out addicts get rushes of dopimane just preparing to use. What triggers our chemical responses are unique to each of us. As such what love is and how it impacts our brains is different as well. The thread asks what the opposite of love is. The question treats love as a singular thing and it isn't. Love is an emotion and emotions can be overlapping, chemically induced, manifested by mental disorders, repressed, fleeting, and etc. Love is not singular and does not have a linear opposing end that serves as it opposite.

[tar]

That is why I made up the definition. So that all the details could parse out in a variety of ways, and the end result would be, is the entity a part of you, or is it second person in nature.

 

 

In this way, you could ask, what is the opposite of I.

 

And the answers would be the same as we got in this thread.

 

I equals Love equals 1 equals positive equals good

You equals indifference equals 0 equals neutral equals ambivolent

They equals Hate equals -1 equals negative equals bad

Edited February 16, 2016 by tar

[Ten oz]

That is why I made up the definition. So that all the details could parse out in a variety of ways, and the end result would be, is the entity a part of you, or is it second person in nature.

 

 

In this way, you could ask, what is the opposite of I.

 

And the answers would be the same as we got in this thread.

 

I equals Love equals 1 equals positive

You equals indifference equals 0 equals neutral

They equals Hate equals -1 equals negative

Which is why I said it is all subjective in my first post on the matter. You are creating your own definitions to support individual points of view.

[tar]

so my simplification of the world would go like this

 

Think of every and each entity you can, and ask yourself if you think of that entity in the first person, as in I an we, or the second person, as in you, or the third person, as in he,she,it,they.

 

in terms of love, there is reward, pleasure

in terms of other emotions, there are other analogies

in terms of no love, there is punishment, pain (hatred, fear, loneliness, isolation, despair, or whatever conditions you can get into, when you do not have other entities included in you feeling of self)

Ten Oz,

 

I make up a lot of things. Doesn't make them wrong.

 

When I was young, I was playing with some string, putting a loop in a loop. My mom said, "hey, you invented crocheting.

 

Just cause I made it up, does not mean it is subjective. I made it up from words you know the meaning of.

 

Regards, TAR

[Ten oz]

so my simplification of the world would go like this

 

Think of every and each entity you can, and ask yourself if you think of that entity in the first person, as in I an we, or the second person, as in you, or the third person, as in he,she,it,they.

 

in terms of love, there is reward, pleasure

in terms of other emotions, there are other analogies

in terms of no love, there is punishment, pain (hatred, fear, loneliness, isolation, despair, or whatever conditions you can get into, when you do not have other entities included in you feeling of self)

Ten Oz,

 

I make up a lot of things. Doesn't make them wrong.

 

When I was young, I was playing with some string, putting a loop in a loop. My mom said, "hey, you invented crocheting.

 

Just cause I made it up, does not mean it is subjective. I made it up from words you know the meaning of.

 

Regards, TAR

Crocheting creates tangible things that share reality equally with everyone. Anyone that performs it in the same manner will get identical results. And more to the point of this thread; what is the opposite of crocheting?

[DanTrentfield]

Semantics, the fact remains that indifference is simply the lack of love and hate. It's absolutely true that you can both love and hate someone, but it is impossible to be both indifferent and loving/hateful towards a person because you can't have both something and nothing. Indifference is the neutral ground between love and hate, it's the state where you can either begin loving someone or start hating them; but it is not the opposite of either of them anymore than a neutron is the chargewise-opposite of an electron or a proton.

 

Love is a positive emotion, indifference is a neutral emotion, and hate is a negative emotion.

Wow (Going out of my usual prowls) so we have two different coins here, one being the Hot versus Cold emotion coin as stated by lemur, and the other being the positive versus negative emotion coin as stated by Hypercube..... The question is are they the same side of a bigger coin or opposite sides of that bigger coin (Meaning without coin-speak can we find a middle ground that makes sense?)

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

The opposite of crocheting is ripping it out.

 

Regards, TAR

as the opposite of loving someone would be ripping their heart out

[Ten oz]

Hypercube,

 

While I would agree that hate is the obvious opposite of love in many regards, I fully understand the opposite nature of indifference to love.

 

 

Regards, TAR

 

 

 

 

So all in all, I would have to say that the opposite of love, is hate.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

If you go one way or the other, and the way you go is love, then the other way is hate. If you go the hate route, then the other way is love.

 

Indifference may be the opposite of love in that with indifference you don't do anything and with love you are doing something. But if you are considering love a way to go, the opposite way would be hate.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

 

 

Here the opposite of love, is hate.

 

Those I embrace and include in my feeling of self, I love, or like, or support, or emulate.

 

The opposite of this, is those I hate, and actively exclude from my feeling of self.

 

Regards, TAR

 

 

Ten Oz,

 

The opposite of crocheting is ripping it out.

 

Regards, TAR

as the opposite of loving someone would be ripping their heart out

You have repeated many times over that hate is the opposite of love yet you don't feel hating is the opposite of loving? Rather you say hurting is the opposite of loving . To rip someones heart out would be to hurt them. That can be done for many difference reasons. It can done out of greed, selfishness,hatefully, or even accidently. Nuanced differences to a subjective concept.

 

If hurting rather than hating can serve as the opposite of loving why can hurt serve as the opposite emotion to love? After all doesn't hurt better describe the feeling we have when love is gone or not existent? If a spouse leaves for another, a child rejects a parent, that ripping out of the heart you described is hurt; not hate. Lets replace opposite with direction bearings; if love you had for your daughters went 180 degrees would that be hate, hurt, or both?

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

I see your point, but I am parsing this, FROM my definition, of love being when you include another in your feeling of self. In that, if I would for some reason, cease to include my daughter in my feeling of self, and instead reject her and say she is not my daughter any more, that would be a 180 degree turn. I would have gone from including her, in my feeling of self, to excluding her from my feeling of self.

 

But I see your complication factor. I could actively hate her and stew over the separation, and repeatedly tell myself how she was wrong and I was right, and withdraw her name from bank accounts and such, WHILE actually very much still considering her part of me. Like an abscessed tooth.

 

So my definition is not ideal, not foolproof, and might need some work. But the idea is that psychologically, I think we include and exclude entities from our feeling of self, and those things we include, we frame as positive things, and those things we exclude, we frame as negative things.

 

The people we have psychologically banished to the netherreaches of our brains, are the ones we demonize, that we think are evil, enemies. Hate comes to mind. Like I hate the KKK or ISIS or a Black Separatist Group that wants to kill police.

 

While there are people on my team, that I include in my feeling of self. People that might not even know it. Like Hilary saying she is for the young women, even if they are not for her. Love and compassion and looking out for somebody, happens when you consider them part of you. Like you would be hurt if they were hurt. Like you would be proud, when they succeed. Like you would weep should they die...there are also people who I would rather left the planet, like ISIS leaders, and KKK Nazis and Black Panthers that hate White Christians and Jews.

 

Here I think my definition works just fine. Those you include in your feeling of self are on your side, friends and lovers. Lovers of life, lovers of America, lovers of freedom, lovers of whatever it is you consider good and proper and part of your being. While those you exclude from your being, the germs that kill, the ideas that destroy, the people that want to kill you, or destroy beauty, or peace or wish to destroy your way of life, are enemies, and banished from your embrace.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited February 17, 2016 by tar

[Ten oz]

I agree with the first half of your post. You are using your pown definitions; thus your own subjective view. I think the second half comes off the tracks. Their are any number of disorders involved with persons being aggressive like ISIS and the KKK. Sexual, physical, or mental abuse of children can drive them to stunted levels of mental development. It is possible that such peoples emotional states are too different from our own for comparison. I can only speculate as to what emotions one must have to lynch or behead someone based on skin color, gender, or religion. I can not empathize with that emotion. Everyone doesn't seem to have all the same emotions to the same degree. So your our team vs their team fails in my eyes because it doesn't address the circumstances.