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That's like saying that the opposite of bringing a life into this world is NOT taking a life away,
but its actually both "not bringing a life into this world and not taking a life away." (apathy = not hating and not loving = not caring.)
however, here one can see that IT'S opposite should then be "bringing a life into this world"
yet its opposite is "bringing a life into this world and taking a life away".
If the opposite of love is "lack of love", then blue is the opposite of love, and so are hatred and apathy.
the opposite of apathy (having no emotion) would be an oxymoron: pathy (having all emotions), meaning having BOTH love and hate.
however, we know that the opposite of apathy is having ANY emotion.
This is because apathy is also the opposite of hatred.
Thus, apathy is the opposite of caring, and love is the opposite of hatred.
let's not get the words "caring" and the words "love" confused.
I know nothing of levels...but I do know that compassion, and love are the easiest of emotions to give..... and the return is a content and joyful soul.
I believe the primary cause of hatred is ignorance people tend to fear what they don't understand and this fear manifests itself as hatred.
However there is a concept of justified hatred that runs counter to this rule, in which the more a person knows the more justified the hatred is.
Things such as child Molestation, Greed, Abuse, Prejudice.
Are there really things we are justified in hating or is it simply our inability to understand it? Does our hatred lessen with knowledge? Are there things and people we Really should hate?
Hello Woodrow LI
I think the problem with people in general with these feelings is not justifying hatred but justifying forgiveness.
Forgiveness is and will ever be the greatest asset one can have in life. It is the most under utilized of all human emotion because we see no examples put forth by anybody we hold dear in life now. Love is easy in justifying so is hatred but forgiveness is just a matter of the individual and that takes a lifetime of knowledge to understand and put into proper use.
If there is something you should really hate it is not knowing forgiveness in this life you have because death is forever.
I know nothing of levels...but I do know that compassion, and love are the easiest of emotions to give..... and the return is a content and joyful soul.
I don't believe that children are born with the emotion of hate, it is something that is taught, just like racism, its a learned trait. People do allot of things out of hate, but this hate is directed at things they most likely don't understand. A person may hate the sight of spiders and will kill all that they come across, this hate may have been a direct experience in their youth with spiders, or it may have been passed down from their parents. The latter is the most commom type of hate that is exposed to young children, and it can come from allot of scorces, partents, teachers, clergy, ministers, clarics and their peers. As we get older most of us outgrow the need for hatred, because we use our mental skill to break down the issue and see if it is indeed worthy of all the energy that it takes to hate.
My self I don't hate, hate is a waste of my time and it normally goes nowhere.
I don't believe that children are born with the emotion of hate, it is something that is taught, just like racism, its a learned trait. People do allot of things out of hate, but this hate is directed at things they most likely don't understand. A person may hate the sight of spiders and will kill all that they come across, this hate may have been a direct experience in their youth with spiders, or it may have been passed down from their parents. The latter is the most commom type of hate that is exposed to young children, and it can come from allot of scorces, partents, teachers, clergy, ministers, clarics and their peers. As we get older most of us outgrow the need for hatred, because we use our mental skill to break down the issue and see if it is indeed worthy of all the energy that it takes to hate.
My self I don't hate, hate is a waste of my time and it normally goes nowhere.
hate is probably a part of the reptilian mind, which maintains itself with ritual, survival, hierarchy, and probably hate.
I believe the primary cause of hatred is ignorance people tend to fear what they don't understand and this fear manifests itself as hatred.
However there is a concept of justified hatred that runs counter to this rule, in which the more a person knows the more justified the hatred is.
Things such as child Molestation, Greed, Abuse, Prejudice.
Are there really things we are justified in hating or is it simply our inability to understand it? Does our hatred lessen with knowledge? Are there things and people we Really should hate?
I take a somewhat different view of hatred than your first para presents, but I agree that in many cases hatred can reflect ignorance--lack of understanding.
The way I work it out, there is anger and there is hatred. Anger is the active version; a case where you feel it rise up within you, quicken your pulse, make you want to react right now. Hate, to me, is a consignment to a sort of moral outer darkness (no, I'm not LDS, but I'll borrow any useful concept from any belief system). There is enough evil in the world that I had to make this distinction in order to keep surviving. If I walked around angry at everything that deserves my anger, I'd have died of a heart attack by now. It just isn't healthy and needs to be rationed.
When someone is unkind to my wife, it makes me angry. Do it often enough, and it makes me hate. The difference is that I might reverse anger, backtrack from it; from hatred, I neither will backtrack nor do I consider that a virtue. Hatred is a status of permanent enemyhood, one in which I no longer view the hated individual or group as having any rights at all, nor able to regain them. It's over. By ceasing to wish or hope for them to improve, I trade away the anger for the hatred they have earned. One of the most toxic views hammered into me growing up is that, no matter what, I mustn't hate. I didn't get past it until I'd been gone from Christianity for twenty years. Another was that forgiveness always is valuable; I believe forgiveness is often toxic and undeserved. Forgiveness should be earned. How the wrongdoer earns forgiveness is the wrongdoer's problem; if the wrongdoer can't figure out how to earn it, perhaps the wrongdoer should think of that before doing wrong.
We all decide who and what our enemies are (if we have any), but I have come to the belief that anyone who can't hate anything or anyone is missing a key component of a moral outlook. Let's take child molestation. So far as I'm concerned, morally, that deserves to be hated without qualification. I do not consider those who do it to retain moral human rights. (Legal rights are not moral rights.) I do not understand a moral outlook that can't hate child molestation, because in my view it deserves consignment to an outer darkness of no return. I cannot fathom forgiveness for it. How can one make atonement that will restore a molested child to wholeness pre-molestation? That isn't possible.
I may not agree with a given moral outlook, but I do believe that there is more than sufficient pure evil in humanity that anyone who insists on shades of grey in everything is excusing some pure evil and seeking flaws in some pure good, an outlook I cannot understand. A home invader who bludgeons to death an elderly woman--that's pure evil and it deserves hatred all day long. Someone who has enough of a moral compass to have absolute good and absolute evil, and to identify them, I can understand even if we don't have the same identification of those.
How this is determined is up to the individual. In many cases it comes with religious belief. It does in mine, but I don't think it requires a religious belief. At most, a religion may inform it. This is why I, a non-Christian, have more in common with Christians than with atheists. I recognize atheist moral philosophy as perfectly valid (anyone who can feel pain or pleasure can develop a basic moral philosophy based upon both), but it doesn't emanate from a spiritual belief, whereas mine and that of Christians do in some part.
Well here's something none of you have considered. Both hate and anger are spirits that display their natures through the souls of men. One is the root (spirit), one is the fruit (action). If you're a Christian, You might recognize them better as the positive expression of faith and works. Same principle, different source. Peace
Hate and anger may be appropriate in terms of actions done. How we deal with appropriate emotions when it comes to dealling with the people who perform them determines where we stand in actualizing the love of God. In the case of a perpetrator, the thing to consider about his well-being is how to show that such actions hurt him as well as the victim. Perpetrators simply have a wrong idea of how to meet their needs and this can be seriously deep seated, but ALWAYS a case of "they know not what they do." Reaching them is a serious problem, but often the overriding problem is to keep them from continuing their actions for the good of everyone involved.
Hate and anger may be appropriate in terms of actions done. How we deal with appropriate emotions when it comes to dealling with the people who perform them determines where we stand in actualizing the love of God. In the case of a perpetrator, the thing to consider about his well-being is how to show that such actions hurt him as well as the victim. Perpetrators simply have a wrong idea of how to meet their needs and this can be seriously deep seated, but ALWAYS a case of "they know not what they do." Reaching them is a serious problem, but often the overriding problem is to keep them from continuing their actions for the good of everyone involved.
A perpetrator's actions don't always hurt them, and aren't always as ignorant as one might think. Some consequences of their actions might later hurt them anyway, but also not always. Then again, a perpetrator's actions always changes them and become a part of them (their past), which ties in with consequences; but again, considering memory and other things, it isn't 100% either. Teaching the selfish merits of goodness might be a bad idea, although it is what religion (including Humanism) does and most people rely on. The mind does create priorities, and if selfishness (self-care) is one priority (because of wanting to selfishly live forever in Heaven or because of YOLO), then it would be hard to convince someone that something that seems "good and self-wise" to them is actually ignorant of the unquantified gambles of life down the road. To many unmeasurable variables to really make it self evident.
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Death is unforgiving. Learn forgiveness.
