Mainly for non-believers- origins of love and hate

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Just want to make one comment to keep in mind before you guys get going on this thread.

The opposite of love is not hate…it’s selfishness.
 
MichaelHowling said:
Just want to make one comment to keep in mind before you guys get going on this thread.

The opposite of love is not hate…it’s selfishness.
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one more comment: selfishness implies a love of oneself. I’ve heard that the spirits in hell do not love even themselves. Another thing to consider is that love is not synonymous with selflessness (the true opposite of selfishness), since we can, and should, love ourselves.
 
ejp123 said:
what are the origins of love and hate? thx
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I suppose I would say that love served a survival purpose, just as the communal instincts in general have. You love those who are part of your community, your tribe, your family. Those with whom, by sticking together, you can weather adversity or face any enemy.

Hate, on the other hand, serves a survival purpose in that you are reacting strongly against those whom you perceive as a threat. Speaking seriously, the analogy of food (love) versus excrement (hatred, aversion) comes to mind. Hatred of the enemy served a survival purpose, at one time – those who are trying to harm you, trying to hurt you. People also hate and resent their oppressors.

Of course, Sigmund Freud made the perceptive comment that there is no such thing as pure love or pure hatred. In fact, he felt (rightly or wrongly) that the only human relationship he was aware of, not marked by ambivalence, was the love of a mother for a male child.

I had once written, “in so far as none of us is perfectly loving, we are confined to ambivalence.”

You see it all the time – bickering between family members of siblings; fights and disagreements; hurts and resentments. You love them, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when you want to kill them, they say.

Likewise, hate can draw you to someone, because even hating someone draws you into a relationship with them. Perhaps, literally, you “hate them with a passion.” So love and hate are not so opposite after all, so much as the opposite of both love and hate is true indifference.
 
davidv said:
Another, and I think more accurate, opposite of love is indifference.
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I thought about it before, Brothers sisters, but I think my writings not make sense, and can not make it clear out.
Is “Apathy” bad?
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Believe me, Brothers sisters, I understand that Apathy should not exist in human emotions.
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Do not think that “Hate” is the opposite of “Love”.
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Apathy is the opposite of love.
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Imagine a circle starting from deeply love to much love to some love to a little love to a bit hate to lots of hate to not hate to a bit hate and then back to love and etc. etc.
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Look at the “Love, Hate, Apathy” ! Imagine if white was a color. Love is white color, hate is black color, apathy is a empty translucent hole that no matter what colour you pour inside, it will never change. And Love itself, which if you put a drop of black color in it, it becomes clear to see the changes in color, and for black you put a drop of white it merely retains most of the same black colour. You need to put lots of white in black to change it’s color to white. This means that hate needs lots of love to change to love. But Apathy is colorless. Consider what our religion be which enjoins on us love even for our enemies, purifies our souls from hatred, and only love.
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1John 4:19 "We love because he first loved us."
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forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=647466
 
MichaelHowling said:
Just want to make one comment to keep in mind before you guys get going on this thread.

The opposite of love is not hate…it’s selfishness.
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MichaelHowling, what are you doing? you completely took the thread and made it something else. I don’t appreciate it.
 
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