What is the opposite of love?

[Strange]

14 hours ago, mikeco said:

Lol...I was wondering if anyone would. First, I would be interested as to what you think it might be. Any ideas?

Or, here's an idea, why not just tell us what you are talking about.

Being evasive and slightly dishonest is not something to "lol" about.

Edited September 12, 2017 by Strange

[Area54]

14 hours ago, mikeco said:

Lol...I was wondering if anyone would. First, I would be interested as to what you think it might be. Any ideas?

I don't think there is a "basic thing" out of which all attitudes develop, not unless you play high and fast with logic, rhetoric and evidence. (Which I won't) So, what do you assert it to be?

[mikeco]

8 hours ago, Strange said:

Or, here's an idea, why not just tell us what you are talking about.

Being evasive and slightly dishonest is not something to "lol" about.

Most people simply want easy answers without putting any thought into something and thus they tend not to value that which they receive. You would seem to fall into that category. I could have just given the answer but then it would have been too late for me to receive any feedback from Area54 as to his opinion of what it might be...and his response is important to me for reasons of my own, or I would not have asked. Hence, there is no evasiveness or dishonesty, but you're welcome to think so. My laughter was simply due to the fact that I didn't expect anyone to reply and I was glad someone did.

7 hours ago, Area54 said:

I don't think there is a "basic thing" out of which all attitudes develop, not unless you play high and fast with logic, rhetoric and evidence. (Which I won't) So, what do you assert it to be?

Thank you for your courteous response. If I ask questions, you certainly don't have to respond but I appreciate it, for I do have a specific reason for asking.

The thing out of which attitudes such as arrogance, conceit, indifference, and unforgiveness and emotions such as anger develop, I believe, is pride.

Edited September 12, 2017 by mikeco

[dylrovertson]

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

[DrKrettin]

3 minutes ago, dylrovertson said:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

Surely indifference is merely the absence of love, which is not the opposite.

[Itoero]

52 minutes ago, DrKrettin said:

Surely indifference is merely the absence of love, which is not the opposite.

I think the opposite of loving a person is not knowing of a person's existence.

[Strange]

On 12/09/2017 at 9:55 PM, mikeco said:

The thing out of which attitudes such as arrogance, conceit, indifference, and unforgiveness and emotions such as anger develop, I believe, is pride.

So you could say that the opposite of loving someone else is loving yourself ...

[Itoero]

I love myself

[mikeco]

On 9/20/2017 at 4:06 PM, Strange said:

So you could say that the opposite of loving someone else is loving yourself ...

 

 

I've never considered that and it may be accurate if self-love begins to conflict with loving someone else. I've always thought of it in the negative traditional sense such as exaggerated self-esteem, arrogance, conceit, and indifference. But as time passed, pride began to take on a positive connotation, such as a healthy self-esteem. The question would then seem to be, if pride can be a good thing and a bad thing, where exactly does one draw the line between a healthy and exaggerated self-esteem? Hence, it's hard to understand how pride can be the opposite of love, unless one understands God's definition of pride, rather than our own. But his definition cannot be found in the Bible and I'm not sure why.

 

However, the best way to see it is to look at what may be the epitome of a prideful situation...road rage. Driver A purposely cuts off driver B. Driver B feels a tinge of disrespect but continues driving peacefully down the road. Driver A then cuts off driver C and driver C also feels disrespected but instead of continuing on peacefully, he decides to cut off driver A. Why? Because driver A cut him off? No. Because of pride.

 

Immediately after driver C felt disrespected, he had a desire; a desire to command the respect, that he felt he had not been given, and that desire is what led him to cut off driver A. “PRIDE IS THE DESIRE TO COMMAND RESPECT.” That's not my definition. And those are not my words...those are God's. He literally spoke the words...clearly, and to the best of my knowledge, that definition of pride cannot be found anywhere else. Why did he tell me? I don't have a clue. I asked and maybe no one else ever did.

 

You will notice that pride is not an attitude such as arrogance, exaggerated self-esteem, conceit, indifference, hate, or unforgiveness. Pride is a DESIRE, and those attitudes develop in a person's life, after the desire to command respect has begun to take complete control of the person. We are all born with that desire...it's part of our sinful natures. We cannot escape it. Two year old children do not even know what the word respect means, but they certainly know how to attempt to command it. And that desire explains how perfectly created beings such as Satan and Adam and Eve could fall. They didn't fall from arrogance...they didn't have have it. But when they were confronted with that desire, they allowed it to rule. That desire explains two year old children and it explains adults.

 

However, most people, although they exhibit pride, and have that desire, are mature enough not to exhibit the ATTITUDES of pride on a consistent basis. Some do but most don't. At least not at this point. Driver B did not react with pride, although he was confronted with it. He had the desire also, just as driver C did, but he chose to humble himself and subdue it, rather than allowing his pride to control him. Humility isn't lowliness, or a low view of one's own importance as the dictionary implies. Humility is simply an attitude of willingness to subdue one's pride. Christ didn't have a low view of his importance. He knew very well how important he was to the people of this world but he was completely humble and totally without pride.

 

All negative attitudes stem from that desire and that is why, although there are many opposites of love, pride is the primary opposite of love. You can have pride without having those attitudes, but you cannot have those attitudes with out first having the desire to command respect. Because that's what those attitudes are all about. Pride is just expressed in different ways. Pride is expressed through indifference, through hate, through arrogance, through apathy, through conceit and on it goes. Even unforgiveness, the most basic negative attitude of all, stems from pride, the desire to command respect. And in the eyes of God, pride is never a good thing, it is always evil. Regardless of whether one believes in Satan, it appears that the world has been deceived into believing that the very thing that he fell from can actually be a good thing. It isn't.

 

It's interesting that the Bible mentions pride and arrogance as being two different things. That's because they are. It also points out that every argument since the beginning of time has happened only because of pride. No other reason. Disagreements are fine, but not pride. If we want better relationships with our spouses and children and friends, then we must learn to recognize and subdue that desire. Because when the desire to command respect grows, it becomes horribly destructive. And it grows very subtly.

 

The world is saturated with pride. The way we walk, the way we talk, the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the schools we attend, the houses we build, the jobs we seek, can all be a source of pride, of that desire to command respect. Advertising caters to it, and status symbols wouldn't exist without it. And when pride becomes the most important thing on Earth, even more so than following society's laws, you begin to see things like the horrific cruelty that is rapidly growing in America. And prisons begin to overflow. In prison, it's all about the desire to command respect and most don't see anything wrong with that. O J Simpson spent years in prison because of his pride. John Gotti, the mafia “Dapper Don” knew all about that desire. Pride is everywhere. Our President knows about that desire. North Korea's leader certainly does. And so do all the rest of us.

 

The animal kingdom is filled with pride...that's how they exist. It's all about commanding respect. However animals, and two year old children don't know any better. But even parents who don't believe in God, try to help their children to mature beyond their desire to command respect. And adults who learn how to subdue that desire are thought of as mature and referred to as wise. Adults who do not learn how to subdue their pride are thought of as immature and quite often referred to as prisoners. Because to them, that desire became the most important thing on Earth. How can we help prisoners to rehabilitate? By helping them to recognize and overcome their pride.

 

No one talks about humility anymore. Not even churches, because it's all about pride and how we should embrace it, not realizing that it's a simple little desire, that has brought down people, nations...and even angels. “Addicted To Love”? ...no...we're addicted to pride.

 

Sorry about the long post....hard to explain in a few words. But this is why I see pride as the opposite of love. Pride destroys. Love builds.

 

 

Edited September 24, 2017 by mikeco

[Area54]

.evol

[BanterinBoson]

The opposite of love is hate because love has no meaning without the contrasting backdrop of hate and in order to love, we must hate what threatens what we love.  One cannot exist without the other.

Neither love nor hate requires the existence of indifference to give meaning and if indifference is the opposite of love, it must also be the opposite of hate and that's nonsense since something can't have 2 opposites.

Graphically:  

Love..... Indifference.... Hate.  It's clear that the poles are love/hate and the midpoint is indifference.

Positive..... No charge.... Negative.  The midpoint = the summation of and consequent cancellation of the poles.

The opposite of indifference is difference, obviously, since "in" = negation.  So, it's care/not-care.  If you hate, you care.  If you love, you care.  If you neither, then you don't care.

Therefore, I would describe indifference as the absence of the love/hate duality or the summation or unification of the duality which is a cancellation.

4 hours ago, mikeco said:

Sorry about the long post....hard to explain in a few words. But this is why I see pride as the opposite of love. Pride destroys. Love builds.

You are definitely on the trail of something right with your observations on pride, but the opposite of pride is humility, and humility is the beginning of wisdom while pride precedes a fall.

Love doesn't always build because what about he who loves destruction?  Does not the devil love the devilish?

But I wholeheartedly resonate with your assessment on the profoundness of pride and I feel that the pre-adulterated purpose of christianity, buddhism and hinduism shared the common goal of attaining humility; now they're mostly yet another form of one-upmanship; subtly or not.

[mikeco]

11 hours ago, BanterinBoson said:

 the opposite of pride is humility,

Love doesn't always build because what about he who loves destruction?  Does not the devil love the devilish?

 

I suspect that the opposite of humility is arrogance, because they are both attitudes, and thus you have one attitude as the opposite of another attitude, rather than an attitude (humility) as the opposite of a desire (pride). For God's definition of pride (pride is the desire to command respect) states that pride is a desire, not an attitude. And that desire is the thing from which all negative attitudes develop, including hate. You can have pride without hate but you generally cannot have hate without first having pride. Hence, it would appear that hate, indifference, arrogance etc are PRIDEFUL ATTITUDES that are opposite the LOVING ATTITUDES...of kindness, concern, humility, helpfulness, patience, compassion, and so on. But what is the opposite of love itself? I suspect it is pride.

Does love always build? I meant that generally it does.

Edited September 25, 2017 by mikeco

[dimreepr]

How is there an antipode of emotion? It doesn't make sense unless the answer is something that has never lived.

[Area54]

@Hypercube - which love are you talking about? Agápe, éros, philía, or storgē? One would imagine four distinct opposites are required.

[BanterinBoson]

12 hours ago, mikeco said:

I suspect that the opposite of humility is arrogance, because they are both attitudes, and thus you have one attitude as the opposite of another attitude, rather than an attitude (humility) as the opposite of a desire (pride). For God's definition of pride (pride is the desire to command respect) states that pride is a desire, not an attitude. And that desire is the thing from which all negative attitudes develop, including hate. You can have pride without hate but you generally cannot have hate without first having pride. Hence, it would appear that hate, indifference, arrogance etc are PRIDEFUL ATTITUDES that are opposite the LOVING ATTITUDES...of kindness, concern, humility, helpfulness, patience, compassion, and so on. But what is the opposite of love itself? I suspect it is pride.

Does love always build? I meant that generally it does.

Love builds, but it may build destructive things.  It depends on perspective.  If you love your garden and seek to build it, then you're going to hate the pests and seek to destroy them because they threaten what you love.  If you love your pet and seek to build a healthy animal, you will have to hate the parasites because they threaten the health of your pet.  Do you have to be proud of your pet in order to hate the parasites?  I'll leave it for you to decide.

How do you define humility?

We should carefully define terms before determining opposites since words only mean what you want them to mean.  So before beginning any discussion we have to sort out what means what in order to communicate because what we are actually comparing are concepts where the words are merely labels for convenient conveyance of the concepts we have in mind.  Often, disputes arise because folks are unable to agree on definitions to words, so determining agreeable definitions should be the first step to all conversation.

Arrogance defined by dictionary.com is an offensive display of superiority or self-importance.  By that definition (which is not the ultimate authority), arrogance is one of many possible results of pride (defined as the desire to command respect).

There are 7 definitions for pride as a noun and 1 as a verb, and none capture the meaning I have in mind, but only aspects of it because pride is much deeper than a high or inordinate opinion of one's own importance, merit, or superiority.  In fact, one can be proud of their humility and that concept is central to the idea of trading chains of iron for chains of gold where once we were proud of our sins which we boasted before the guys and now we're proud of our virtues and boast before the lord.  It's the same trap made from different chains and therefore the potential for boasting is integral to pride.

Paul said, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast."  That one verse does away with the practice of religion entirely because if there exists ANY work that can be done to improve our condition, then that accomplishment will be a reason to brag and pride comes back in.  The whole point is to realize that there is nothing we can do and therefore no reason to boast about anything and that faith releases us from the grip of pride and that is what saves us while the ego is the aspect of us that dies.

I like this short story:

The Sly Man and the Devil

Gurdjieff said that in order to be born, we must first die and in order to die, we must first be awake.

I think you're on the right track and even if you are wrong here or there, you will eventually become right as long as you continue sniffing in the direction you are heading.  I've gone as far as wondering if the whole and singular purpose of life (if life were to have a purpose) is to learn to overcome pride since no proud entity could ever be trusted in a situation of power and if there is a graduation to a higher existence, one cannot move up while lugging an ego; hence, why the meek inherit the earth and only the pure in heart can see god.

[tar]

Thread,

The four Greek types of love, all refer to the same "thing" they just differ in who or what is the recipient or focus of the thing.  Whether it is had by God toward his children, or a parent toward her children or a  significant other toward a significant other, or a friend toward a friend,  or a brother toward a brother, or  even outside the four Greek types, when it is had by a person toward themselves, it is, in my estimation the same thing.   Earlier in the thread I suggested that "love is when you include another entity in your feeling of self".   I am still thinking this is a good starting place from which to define all types of love, in all it various usages.

However, some of the recent posts decry pride and self loving, and this does not follow from my definition.   I don't think my definition is wrong.  I think it is wrong to equate humility to self denial because it defeats my thesis.  It is important, if my definition is to work, to consider the self the main driver of the situation.  That is, you love your garden, because you consider it part of you.  The bugs eating it, is a direct assault on you and what you are including in your feeling of self. 

Following this idea, the opposite of including something in your feeling of self, would be not including something in your feeling of self, which could be indifference or simply ignorance.

Or it could be actively excluding something from your feeling of self, which could be hate, or enmity, or disgust, or shunning, or repulsion.

Regards, TAR

[DrP]

12 minutes ago, tar said:

The four Greek types of love, all refer to the same "thing" they just differ in who or what is the recipient or focus of the thing.

Not really...  Agape is an unconditional love for all beings, whereas eros is sexual love, so totally different. The family/brotherly love of philia is also very different to the other 2. It isn't just the recipient that is different - it is a different 'feeling' or emotion that is experienced - thus the different words, which have their own definitions.  

[dimreepr]

30 minutes ago, DrP said:

Not really...  Agape is an unconditional love for all beings, whereas eros is sexual love, so totally different. The family/brotherly love of philia is also very different to the other 2. It isn't just the recipient that is different - it is a different 'feeling' or emotion that is experienced - thus the different words, which have their own definitions.  

 

Indeed +1, Different words maybe, but fundamentally, emotions are the same. 

[tar]

DrP,

Granted the emotions are different when considering your garden or your lover or ideas or your brother.  Different things, certainly.  Each of the Greek words have different definitions because they refer to different levels of emotion, and different recipients, but they all are about love.  So what, is consistently present, across all definitions?

Regards, TAR

[DrP]

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed +1, Different words maybe, but fundamentally, emotions are the same. 

Thanks.  I will have to disagree about the emotions being the same though - that's the whole point  -  emotionally I would argue a difference between the love of your child to that of your mistress. This is why they have different words.

 

2 minutes ago, tar said:

  So what, is consistently present, across all definitions?

Caring maybe? Concern for wellbeing..?  I do not entirely know, but I would argue their difference...  I do not think they are the same, even though we use only the one word to describe the different types of love.

[DrKrettin]

40 minutes ago, DrP said:

Not really...  Agape is an unconditional love for all beings, whereas eros is sexual love, so totally different. The family/brotherly love of philia is also very different to the other 2. It isn't just the recipient that is different - it is a different 'feeling' or emotion that is experienced - thus the different words, which have their own definitions.  

I am inclined to agree with this. It seems to be a christian habit of lumping all similar sensations into one concept, and love is an umbrella name for various different emotions. This is a parallel to the christian habit of lumping all gods together into one god. It makes it simple, and christians seem to like simple.

[tar]

 DrP,

I perhaps did not fully state what I meant by "being the same thing".     Let's take concern for wellbeing rather than including in one's feeling of self, then.  In either case, one's attention and focus is on the other entity, as if it matters how that other entity fares.  Whether this concern is driven by hormones or pheromones or rational, or whether it is directed toward a football team, a country or a philosophy, or a planet, the concern is present.  The concern is the love.

Regards, TAR

[dimreepr]

5 minutes ago, DrP said:

Thanks.  I will have to disagree about the emotions being the same though - that's the whole point  -  emotionally I would argue a difference between the love of your child to that of your mistress. This is why they have different words..

2

But that's my point, any emotional response is emotional. A different word makes no difference. 

[Tub]

All the negative qualities mentioned in the thread - hate, arrogance, anger etc. - are all attributes of selfishness but real Love is totally selfless so , as darkness is the privation of light, i think we could add that selfishness is the privation of Love.

[tar]

3 minutes ago, Tub said:

All the negative qualities mentioned in the thread - hate, arrogance, anger etc. - are all attributes of selfishness but real Love is totally selfless so , as darkness is the privation of light, i think we could add that selfishness is the privation of Love.

Except you are claiming hate, arrogance, anger etc. are attributes of selfishness and therefore claiming selfishness is a negative emotion.   I do not think that is correct.

Perhaps we are taught certain humility and subservience to the king, is useful to society, but the jury is still out on this, as socialist countries and capitalist countries both work.  The chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and it takes a rich person to give to the poor, and you put on your own oxygen mask before you help your loved ones get their's on, etc.

Selfishness is not automatically a bad thing.  In fact, in my worldview it is the central motivating factor for all life. Only religion, and idealistic notions like being a humanist, claim that selfishness is evil.

So I did not "get" the parable before of the devil and the sly guy or whatever it was.  It seems contrived to make it good to trick the devil or something...I did not follow the allegories, as they seemed to be teaching a religious message, not directly addressing love or the lack of it, or dealing with the human condition, emotions and motivations, that I have been musing about and investigating.

Regards, TAR