The Violent Spirit of Love

[kjones]

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A philosopher is ordered by the Love of Wisdom, alone. A philosopher has no other master.




Love is Genius, because the Genius understands universal truths. Love gives to the philosopher everything, in its purity.




Love sees all things are one's real self. By definition, egotism is not in a philosopher.




Love is single, so it cannot love a single thing.




A true lover must decide not to linger by the bedside of the dead.




What is the kiss of God, but the suckling at the true mother's breast? This milk is clear as space, fatal to the false heart.




Love has never moved. It is I that must decide whether to keep running and lusting, or to be true.




A philosopher is at God's side, the willing servant. He goes anywhere, freely, with a universal passport.




Only the biggest net can hold all the squirming fish. Men are like the beast, that when caught, will morph into a hundred monsters, each worse than the last. Only one with a strong grip on the ALL, and unfrightened by his shapes, will see him subside. For this, an Infinite heart is needed.




A word is an appearance, so it has no substance. Speak without words. This is to speak with love.




If you give up the girl, you console yourself with your love of her, and love her more because of your purity and loyalty. Then, the image of your beloved becomes ever more beautiful, and your love soars. As the months pass, this girl becomes "my love", a profound abstraction, so that you might never meet her again, and yet see her everywhere. Love becomes everything, and this girl, a simple catalyst, has become the true mother. If you met her again, you'd like to introduce her to herself.





Even if there is no sex, and no man-woman reproduction, the seeker of wisdom would still apotheosise things, because the ordinary is ground of the Eternal. The abstract takes on all things. Thus, a human being's complex psychology can appear glorious, because it mirrors babyhood's tiny wonder, dreams, and imaginations. This is larval, a tiny tissue that needs to be outgrown. Glorious is the everlasting mirror.





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[Creative Fossil]

what you smoking?

[Get Real]

If I had to guess I'd say the author is female.

?amiright?

[Creative Fossil]

If I had to guess I'd say the author is female.

?amiright?

you may speculate

[propellerbeanie]

what you smoking?

What are you not smoking? Try some horseshit ground up with lemon peals to improve your attitude and nature. There is nothing about love that is violent except its defense. Since I love you cresil, come out and play.

[David Quinn]

On the contrary, there is nothing about love which isn't violent. It is 100% violence through and through.

Even the premise from which it springs is violent - that of the division between "self" and "other". For love to emerge into being in the first place, there needs to be this yawning chasm in Reality, this violent conceptual contrivance which expresses a hatred of truth.

So even before lovers begin to do anything at all, they are already behind the eight ball. They are already participating in a violent act against Nature. It should come as no surprise, then, that lovers are continually violent towards one another.

Thus, an essential part of growing up and becoming a wise human being is abandoning love altogether (together with its attendent hatreds and violence). The fully-enlightened sage is someone who no longer recognizes the division between "self" and "other". He no longer has any need to heal the yawning chasm via the emotional contrivances of love, as the chasm is no longer there.

In effect, he has become too pure for love.

-

[propellerbeanie]

On the contrary, there is nothing about love which isn't violent. It is 100% violence through and through.

Even the premise from which it springs is violent - that of the division between "self" and "other". For love to emerge into being in the first place, there needs to be this yawning chasm in Reality, this violent conceptual contrivance which expresses a hatred of truth.

So even before lovers begin to do anything at all, they are already behind the eight ball. They are already participating in a violent act against Nature. It should come as no surprise, then, that lovers are continually violent towards one another.

You take the cake. All that making nice is really violence? All that joy and pleasure of love is violence, and birth, and rebirth of new life, are all violence? Get it checked before you drive on it, cause it won't support much weight.
Of all the myths that men manufacture, the self and the other are the most outre. With love is a coming together, and a loss of self, and a loss of other, so that two sexual halves can do what the common microbe can do as soon as it has the energy: breed.
Consider, my friend, that the self is imposed upon us by nature and society, and that many examples may be found where the self in society is more or less of a virtue. Consider that the only times a man might be whole is in his mother and in his wife. Consider that love is the one relentless and undeniable force in our lives, and that the individual will quakes before it, and bends its knees.

[David Quinn]

propellerbeanie wrote:

You take the cake. All that making nice is really violence? All that joy and pleasure of love is violence, and birth, and rebirth of new life, are all violence? Get it checked before you drive on it, cause it won't support much weight.

Being nice to someone with the intention of extracting joy and pleasure from them sounds like a very violent activity to me. I don't know how anybody could be so disrespectful towards another person like that.

Of all the myths that men manufacture, the self and the other are the most outre. With love is a coming together, and a loss of self, and a loss of other, so that two sexual halves can do what the common microbe can do as soon as it has the energy: breed.

What you really mean here is a loss of consciousness. Love is an avenue for two people to become so unconscious together that they are no longer aware of their own deluded belief in self and other.

It is a fake loss of self and other, in other words. There is no real loss of these things, just a temporary forgetfulness of their existence.

Thus, the pleasure found in love is nothing more than the temporary relief from all the worries and fears which normally inflict the average person (i.e. the person who believes in the self).

Consider, my friend, that the self is imposed upon us by nature and society, and that many examples may be found where the self in society is more or less of a virtue. Consider that the only times a man might be whole is in his mother and in his wife.

If you need another person to make you a whole, doesn't that make you half a person?

Are you implying that love is only for half-wits?

Consider that love is the one relentless and undeniable force in our lives, and that the individual will quakes before it, and bends its knees.

Well, you certainly make it clear that it is the one undeniable force in your own life. You're like a herion-addict who can only think of the next hit.

Funnily enough, heroin-addiction is also a violent activity.

-

[edited for grammer - DQ]

[Jason]

Being nice to someone with the intention of extracting joy and pleasure from them sounds like a very violent activity to me. I don't know how anybody could be so disrespectful towards another person like that.

Ah yes play coy David. I'm sure pb's disrepect for others makes you really sad. NOT. Respect means nothing to you, but as a means to an end. The end being truth. You're largley amoral in the conventional sense. And no, equating propogating truth with being a type of morality is not what I'm talking about. If torturing thousands of people was on balance beneficial for the advancement of truth, you would opt for it. Am I right?(I am putting words in your mouth after all.)

[propellerbeanie]

propellerbeanie wrote:

You take the cake. All that making nice is really violence? All that joy and pleasure of love is violence, and birth, and rebirth of new life, are all violence? Get it checked before you drive on it, cause it won't support much weight.

Being nice to someone with the intention of extracting joy and pleasure from them sounds like a very violent activity to me. I don't know how anybody could be so disrespectful towards another person like that.

I will agree that sex without love is violence. Sex with love is not. Sexuality plays a significant, though not an over riding part in every love with reproductive mating as a goal or prize. I don't know where you are from or where you have been; but the thought that you can extract anything from a relationship is childish. Relationships are like life, that you can only get out what you put in, and don't believe you can trade dirt for gold, or the injury is your own.

Of all the myths that men manufacture, the self and the other are the most outre. With love is a coming together, and a loss of self, and a loss of other, so that two sexual halves can do what the common microbe can do as soon as it has the energy: breed.

What you really mean here is a loss of consciousness. Love is an avenue for two people to become so unconscious together that they are no longer aware of their own deluded belief in self and other.

It is a fake loss of self and other, in other words. There is no real loss of these things, just a temporary forgetfulness of their existence.

Yes well da. Self is only a form of consciousness, but then, so is love. Biologically we are the extention of the life of our parents and the parents of new life. Yet we have this self conciousness, that is always forced upon us in the beginning, that becomes our little treasure we cannot live without. To love -the walls of self must first be breached. We still have ourselves, and are reminded of ourselves; but when we think of it, our selves might have four legs instead of two, or six, or perhaps even eight or more. The definition of self, changes, and the center of self changes.

Thus, the pleasure found in love is nothing more than the temporary relief from all the worries and fears which normally inflict the average person (i.e. the person who believes in the self).

This is like saying a roller coaster ride is a few ups and downs. When I say love is everything, and you say love is nothing more -you show you have never felt love, or are too young to know yet what life in the fullest will demand of you.

Consider, my friend, that the self is imposed upon us by nature and society, and that many examples may be found where the self in society is more or less of a virtue. Consider that the only times a man might be whole is in his mother and in his wife.

If you need another person to make you a whole, doesn't make you half a person?

I am a whole half of a biological unit. I am a whole person, but my sense of self includes others: all those I would gather into my life boat with me if the world were sinking.

Are you implying that love is only for half-wits?

Not at all. Half wits haven't what love demands, Love desires intelligence, and two heads are better than one; though it is always good to remember as Shake said: that when two people ride a horse someone has to sit in front. A relationship is like a horse, and if the destination is the same who cares who sits in front.

Consider that love is the one relentless and undeniable force in our lives, and that the individual will quakes before it, and bends its knees.

Well, you certainly make it clear that it is the one undeniable force in your own life. You're like a herion-addict who can only think of the next hit.

Funnily enough, heroin-addiction is also a violent activity.

A force is not an addiction. I am the product of love. My children are a product of love. And not everyone is a product of love, and yet we all have some sense of it, as the binding quality of all human beings to a greater or lesser extent. My wife is an addiction, not always good for me, but always feeling good for me.

-

[David Quinn]

propellerbeanie wrote:

DQ: Being nice to someone with the intention of extracting joy and pleasure from them sounds like a very violent activity to me. I don't know how anybody could be so disrespectful towards another person like that.

I will agree that sex without love is violence. Sex with love is not.

On the contrary, any activity that is performed without love is sublime, glorious, enlightened and pure.

By contrast, any activity performed with love is always selfish, hateful, sadistic and violent. For the latter is always is performed with some kind of personal gain in mind.

It is no coincidence that in our war-ravaged, violent, misery-ridden world, people everywhere constantly praise love. The two are very much intertwined.

Sexuality plays a significant, though not an over riding part in every love with reproductive mating as a goal or prize.

If your wife refused to sleep with you anymore and started openly having sex with your neighbour, would you continue to love her?

I don't know where you are from or where you have been; but the thought that you can extract anything from a relationship is childish.

If a person couldn't extract anything from a relationship, he would have no reason to enter into it. I dare say that you had initially entered into your relationship with your wife, and continue to remain in it, because you're able to extract excitement, companionship, sexual pleasure, children, emotional comfort, feminine approval, relief from loneliness and boredom, etc, from it. If you weren't able to extract these things from her, I'm pretty sure you would soon divorce her.

Relationships are like life, that you can only get out what you put in, and don't believe you can trade dirt for gold, or the injury is your own.

Listen to yourself - "putting in" and "getting out" are both violent, intrusive activities.

pb: Of all the myths that men manufacture, the self and the other are the most outre. With love is a coming together, and a loss of self, and a loss of other, so that two sexual halves can do what the common microbe can do as soon as it has the energy: breed.

DQ: What you really mean here is a loss of consciousness. Love is an avenue for two people to become so unconscious together that they are no longer aware of their own deluded belief in self and other.

It is a fake loss of self and other, in other words. There is no real loss of these things, just a temporary forgetfulness of their existence.

pb: Yes well da. Self is only a form of consciousness, but then, so is love. Biologically we are the extention of the life of our parents and the parents of new life. Yet we have this self conciousness, that is always forced upon us in the beginning, that becomes our little treasure we cannot live without. To love -the walls of self must first be breached. We still have ourselves, and are reminded of ourselves; but when we think of it, our selves might have four legs instead of two, or six, or perhaps even eight or more. The definition of self, changes, and the center of self changes.

Oprah would surely whimper if she heard this stuff. You really know how to lay it on thick.

There is a world of difference between the spiritual man who pulls his ego out by the roots, and permanently discards it, and the lover who leaves his ego intact and uses other people for the purpose of forgetting its existence every now and then. The former activity is noble and good, with endless beneficial conseqences for the world; the latter is evil and base, causing endless wars, violence and misery to be perpetuated everywhere.

DQ: Thus, the pleasure found in love is nothing more than the temporary relief from all the worries and fears which normally inflict the average person (i.e. the person who believes in the self).

pb: This is like saying a roller coaster ride is a few ups and downs. When I say love is everything, and you say love is nothing more -you show you have never felt love, or are too young to know yet what life in the fullest will demand of you.

This is like a heroin addict saying, "You have never felt the ecstacy of a heroin hit. You haven't lived."

The horrific consequences of heroin-addiction are plain for all to see, which is reason enough to not want to get involved in it. Likewise, the consequences of love are simply too horrific for any person of sound mind to willingly engage in it.

At bottom, your only defense of love seems to be: it feels good. You cannot seem to find any other justification for it. It is the mindless defence of a drug-addict.

pb: Consider, my friend, that the self is imposed upon us by nature and society, and that many examples may be found where the self in society is more or less of a virtue. Consider that the only times a man might be whole is in his mother and in his wife.

DQ: If you need another person to make you a whole, doesn't [that] make you half a person?

pb: I am a whole half of a biological unit. I am a whole person, but my sense of self includes others: all those I would gather into my life boat with me if the world were sinking.

You said above that a man isn't whole unless he is in his mum or wife.

Now you are trying to say that you are indeed a whole person without having to do this.

Which is it to be?

DQ: Are you implying that love is only for half-wits?

pb: Not at all. Half wits haven't what love demands, Love desires intelligence, and two heads are better than one; though it is always good to remember as Shake said: that when two people ride a horse someone has to sit in front. A relationship is like a horse, and if the destination is the same who cares who sits in front.

Would you really be happy letting your wife sit in front all the time? I have my doubts ......

What about agape love? You have evidently rejected all traces of it from your life. You don't believe in the higher principle of loving all people and things?

-

[David Quinn]

Jason wrote:

If torturing thousands of people was on balance beneficial for the advancement of truth, you would opt for it. Am I right?(I am putting words in your mouth after all.)

If I could, I would happily torture millions of Muslims and Christians by taking away their holy books and articles of faith and forcing them to think. Some forms of torture would be very valuable to the cause of wisdom.

It's interesting that despite the fact that many millions of people have been tortured and killed for the sake of love, hardly anyone gives it a second thought and almost no one holds back in trying promote love in the world.

If a virus were to emerge and kill just a fraction of the number of people that love routinely kills, everyone would immediately spring into action. No expense would be spared towards combating the virus and wiping it out. But when it come to the killer love virus, which is a far more deadly strain, the mental blocks go up and nothing is considered amiss.

It's a very different situation when it comes to truth. Truth is infinitely more valuable than love, yet almost everyone holds back in promoting it, and as soon as it begins to impact on our lives in any way, we immediately discard it as though it were the most repulsive thing on earth.

Our priorities are all askew. As Chuang Tzu would say, we are a race of upside-down people.


-

[propellerbeanie]

propellerbeanie wrote:

DQ: Being nice to someone with the intention of extracting joy and pleasure from them sounds like a very violent activity to me. I don't know how anybody could be so disrespectful towards another person like that.

I will agree that sex without love is violence. Sex with love is not.

On the contrary, any activity that is performed without love is sublime, glorious, enlightened and pure.

Some conclusions are their own punishment.

By contrast, any activity performed with love is always selfish, hateful, sadistic and violent. For the latter is always is performed with some kind of personal gain in mind.

It is no coincidence that in our war-ravaged, violent, misery-ridden world, people everywhere constantly praise love. The two are very much intertwined.

People do not love because it is bad for them, or because they expect no benefit, but the best benefit as I see it is that it brings us out of ourselves, and teaches us to care, and without this transformation we would all be forever egocentric children.

Sexuality plays a significant, though not an over riding part in every love with reproductive mating as a goal or prize.

If your wife refused to sleep with you anymore and started openly having sex with your neighbour, would you continue to love her?

Would this not be evidence that she did not love me, just as her sexuality as a prize shared only with me is proof of love? Love is a form of relationship, and like all relationships suffers under its rules. People in love can make rules to suit themselves, but the best love relationships are exclusive.

I don't know where you are from or where you have been; but the thought that you can extract anything from a relationship is childish.

If a person couldn't extract anything from a relationship, he would have no reason to enter into it. I dare say that you had initially entered into your relationship with your wife, and continue to remain in it, because you're able to extract excitement, companionship, sexual pleasure, children, emotional comfort, feminine approval, relief from loneliness and boredom, etc, from it. If you weren't able to extract these things from her, I'm pretty sure you would soon divorce her.

I recieve what my wife gives as a gift, and all the benefits of the relationship. But the notion that I could extract, or just reach in a grab some part of what I want without putting my whole life on the line for good and bad is foolish. I thought when I was young that I could extract pleasure from women, and I doubt that those women have ever thought twice about me. But I have often thought of them. Not sexually. As much as I wanted sex without caring, the very thought that I could get so intimate with so many without caring gnaws at me as a wrong I cannot make right, and even the fact that I cannot care about them now with sincerity fills me with self loathing.

Relationships are like life, that you can only get out what you put in, and don't believe you can trade dirt for gold, or the injury is your own.

Listen to yourself - "putting in" and "getting out" are both violent, intrusive activities.

Intrusive, yes. Intrusive is nature, born between shit and piss and covered with blood. But, in love not violent. All violence toward people has their objectification in mind. Love does not objectify people, it personifies people.

pb: Of all the myths that men manufacture, the self and the other are the most outre. With love is a coming together, and a loss of self, and a loss of other, so that two sexual halves can do what the common microbe can do as soon as it has the energy: breed.

DQ: What you really mean here is a loss of consciousness. Love is an avenue for two people to become so unconscious together that they are no longer aware of their own deluded belief in self and other.

It is a fake loss of self and other, in other words. There is no real loss of these things, just a temporary forgetfulness of their existence.

A fake love equals a fake loss of self. A true love equals a true loss of self.

pb: Yes well da. Self is only a form of consciousness, but then, so is love. Biologically we are the extention of the life of our parents and the parents of new life. Yet we have this self conciousness, that is always forced upon us in the beginning, that becomes our little treasure we cannot live without. To love -the walls of self must first be breached. We still have ourselves, and are reminded of ourselves; but when we think of it, our selves might have four legs instead of two, or six, or perhaps even eight or more. The definition of self, changes, and the center of self changes.

Oprah would surely whimper if she heard this stuff. You really know how to lay it on thick.

There is a world of difference between the spiritual man who pulls his ego out by the roots, and permanently discards it, and the lover who leaves his ego intact and uses other people for the purpose of forgetting its existence every now and then. The former activity is noble and good, with endless beneficial conseqences for the world; the latter is evil and base, causing endless wars, violence and misery to be perpetuated everywhere.

The spiritual person does not pull up his ego and discard it. Like the lover, he finds a new center for his consciousness. Children are called ego centric. They think their world revolves around them. Love and hate are two emotions that change the focus of ones existence. In love and hate we cannot think of ourselves. Whether this is called exocentric or eccentric I don't know. Some people do not bond, and some cannot. For those who do bond, there is a change in self. Food does not satisfy if one is left hungry, and if one is sick, then all suffer. Love is caring, and what is extracted is taken from self- self consciousness, selfishness, impatients, emnity, and as in catharsis we are made human by our ability to care.

DQ: Thus, the pleasure found in love is nothing more than the temporary relief from all the worries and fears which normally inflict the average person (i.e. the person who believes in the self).

Nothing more, again. You will have as little success defining love as defining the nature of existence. love is open ended, and different for all who feel it. If I suggest some common attributes of love, or of all relationships, I do not mean to say the thing can be defined finitely. Love is all to me, and nothing more to you. Sorry.

pb: This is like saying a roller coaster ride is a few ups and downs. When I say love is everything, and you say love is nothing more -you show you have never felt love, or are too young to know yet what life in the fullest will demand of you.

This is like a heroin addict saying, "You have never felt the ecstacy of a heroin hit. You haven't lived."

Very few of our experiences in life are communicatible. Does this mean we should not try? Very often one only feels love when the whole page of reality is warped before our eyes, and suddenly you are hurting because another is in pain, or happy from another's joy. Some times it is like wearing a sweatshirt saying 'I'm in love', on the front, and 'I'm stupid so kick me', on the back. If fools fall in love, then love also makes fools. This is no place for amatures. Love is serious business. People ought to think about it and talk about, and there should be warning signs, and classess, even certifications.

The horrific consequences of heroin-addiction are plain for all to see, which is reason enough to not want to get involved in it. Likewise, the consequences of love are simply too horrific for any person of sound mind to willingly engage in it.

At bottom, your only defense of love seems to be: it feels good. You cannot seem to find any other justification for it. It is the mindless defence of a drug-addict.

Rather, it is good; and often feels terrible.

pb: Consider, my friend, that the self is imposed upon us by nature and society, and that many examples may be found where the self in society is more or less of a virtue. Consider that the only times a man might be whole is in his mother and in his wife.

DQ: If you need another person to make you a whole, doesn't [that] make you half a person?

pb: I am a whole half of a biological unit. I am a whole person, but my sense of self includes others: all those I would gather into my life boat with me if the world were sinking.

You said above that a man isn't whole unless he is in his mum or wife.

Now you are trying to say that you are indeed a whole person without having to do this.

As whole as any other person on two legs, but like the old joke: A unmarried man is incomplete, and a married man is all done. I am complete, and all done, and happy about it.
Take my advice, I'm not using it. Love will never make you well. Children look for love as a cure, and it is not. Love demands everything you have, and gives everything you want. Love is life.

DQ: Are you implying that love is only for half-wits?

pb: Not at all. Half wits haven't what love demands, Love desires intelligence, and two heads are better than one; though it is always good to remember as Shake said: that when two people ride a horse someone has to sit in front. A relationship is like a horse, and if the destination is the same who cares who sits in front.

Would you really be happy letting your wife sit in front all the time? I have my doubts ......

What about agape love? You have evidently rejected all traces of it from your life. You don't believe in the higher principle of loving all people and things?

My love focus is my wife and children. I cannot agree that there are different sorts of love. There are different forms of relationship. If I could not care for my wife or children, I could not care for myself, nor care for any other in this world.

[David Quinn]

propellerbeanie wrote:

pb: I will agree that sex without love is violence. Sex with love is not.

DQ: On the contrary, any activity that is performed without love is sublime, glorious, enlightened and pure.

pb: Some conclusions are their own punishment.

A cute response, but I don't think you understand where I am coming from. What do you think I meant by the above?

DQ: By contrast, any activity performed with love is always selfish, hateful, sadistic and violent. For the latter is always is performed with some kind of personal gain in mind.

It is no coincidence that in our war-ravaged, violent, misery-ridden world, people everywhere constantly praise love. The two are very much intertwined.

pb: People do not love because it is bad for them, or because they expect no benefit, but the best benefit as I see it is that it brings us out of ourselves, and teaches us to care, and without this transformation we would all be forever egocentric children.

And yet you will happily kill others for the sake of your "love". Can one be any more selfish and egocentric than that?

pb: Sexuality plays a significant, though not an over riding part in every love with reproductive mating as a goal or prize.

DQ: If your wife refused to sleep with you anymore and started openly having sex with your neighbour, would you continue to love her?

pb: Would this not be evidence that she did not love me, just as her sexuality as a prize shared only with me is proof of love?
Love is a form of relationship, and like all relationships suffers under its rules. People in love can make rules to suit themselves, but the best love relationships are exclusive.

Shouldn't you continue to love your wife no matter what she does? Are you saying that your love for her is conditional on her behaving in a certain way? Does it all hinge on what sort of benefits she happens to bring you?

It would seem that the entire basis of your love for your wife is narcassistic and egocentric to the core.

pb: I don't know where you are from or where you have been; but the thought that you can extract anything from a relationship is childish.

DQ: If a person couldn't extract anything from a relationship, he would have no reason to enter into it. I dare say that you had initially entered into your relationship with your wife, and continue to remain in it, because you're able to extract excitement, companionship, sexual pleasure, children, emotional comfort, feminine approval, relief from loneliness and boredom, etc, from it. If you weren't able to extract these things from her, I'm pretty sure you would soon divorce her.

pb: I recieve what my wife gives as a gift, and all the benefits of the relationship. But the notion that I could extract, or just reach in a grab some part of what I want without putting my whole life on the line for good and bad is foolish. I thought when I was young that I could extract pleasure from women, and I doubt that those women have ever thought twice about me. But I have often thought of them. Not sexually. As much as I wanted sex without caring, the very thought that I could get so intimate with so many without caring gnaws at me as a wrong I cannot make right, and even the fact that I cannot care about them now with sincerity fills me with self loathing.

You're either very stupid or you're deliberately being a troll.

The "pleasures" of love aren't just confined to the sexual realm. There are the emotional pleasures as well, which are probably even more significant - for example the pleasure of being cared for by another human being, and receiving their praise and approval. If you weren't able to receive these things from your wife, you would have no reason to be with her and you would soon divorce her - especially knowing how vain and selfish you are.

pb: Relationships are like life, that you can only get out what you put in, and don't believe you can trade dirt for gold, or the injury is your own.

DQ: Listen to yourself - "putting in" and "getting out" are both violent, intrusive activities.

pb: Intrusive, yes. Intrusive is nature, born between shit and piss and covered with blood. But, in love not violent. All violence toward people has their objectification in mind. Love does not objectify people, it personifies people.

If you found out that your wife has been sleeping with another man, would you fly off into a rage and hit her? One gets the impression that you would.

There's more than a whiff of "serenity now" in your posts. This is an allusion to the Kramer character in "Seinfeld" who, in one episode, kept chanting "serenity now" as a way of keeping calm - which seemed to work for a while until he suddenly exploded into a great rage.

DQ: There is a world of difference between the spiritual man who pulls his ego out by the roots, and permanently discards it, and the lover who leaves his ego intact and uses other people for the purpose of forgetting its existence every now and then. The former activity is noble and good, with endless beneficial conseqences for the world; the latter is evil and base, causing endless wars, violence and misery to be perpetuated everywhere.

pb: The spiritual person does not pull up his ego and discard it. Like the lover, he finds a new center for his consciousness. Children are called ego centric. They think their world revolves around them. Love and hate are two emotions that change the focus of ones existence. In love and hate we cannot think of ourselves. Whether this is called exocentric or eccentric I don't know. Some people do not bond, and some cannot. For those who do bond, there is a change in self. Food does not satisfy if one is left hungry, and if one is sick, then all suffer. Love is caring, and what is extracted is taken from self- self consciousness, selfishness, impatients, emnity, and as in catharsis we are made human by our ability to care.

Yep, sure. Serenity now.

DQ: The horrific consequences of heroin-addiction are plain for all to see, which is reason enough to not want to get involved in it. Likewise, the consequences of love are simply too horrific for any person of sound mind to willingly engage in it.

At bottom, your only defense of love seems to be: it feels good. You cannot seem to find any other justification for it. It is the mindless defence of a drug-addict.

pb: Rather, it is good; and often feels terrible.

Rather, it is evil; and often feels good - to the evil.

Just as patriotism is the virtue of the vicious, love is the virtue of evil people.


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[alex]

DavidQuinn,

Why are you harassing propellor so mercilessly? Are you trying to provoke him to rage?

Men love their wives more than vice versa.

You're right that most people would stop loving their spouses or other people if they got nothing in return. And yet, I'm not sure if it is wrong as you say to engage in a mutually rewarding relationship of give and take.

suppose you went on a three day hike in the mountains. You could go alone. Or you could take a buddy with you. If you take a buddy, you get some conversation, some possible mutual protection. You can say, hey if you go get some water I'll start a fire. So it's beneficial. Both benefit and its more efficient than going alone.

Suppose you went with a guy who just did absolutely nothing, was useless. Chances are, you'd ask someone else next time. It's understandable, isn't it?

Maybe your point is, that it isn't really love. Which I agree. But if it isn't love, what is it?

[David Quinn]

Put simply, it's selfishness dressed up as virtue.

Why am I harassing propellerbeanie for the immense praise he gives his lowly narcissistic indulgence? Primarily because he echoes the deluded mythology of our times and unwitttingly helps people turn away from Truth.

If this were the Middle Ages and propellerbeanie was praising the values of the Catholic Church, then my response would be exactly the same. It is a case of the philosopher speaking against the ignorance of his era. In the past, people use to incessantly praise the Bible and the Catholic Church; nowadays, it is women and love which dominate our culture.

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[N0X23]

Intriguing first post propellerbea.....er.. ah... I mean, “alex”. ;)

[Kevin Solway]

Interesting lyrics of a quite beautiful song I've just be listening to:

The boy with the thorn in his side
Behind the hatred there lies
A murderous desire for love
How can they look into my eyes
And still they don’t believe me ?

[alex]

Why, hello Nox23

DavidQuinn,

Oh I thought it was money dominating our culture.
Probably birth control elevated love in our culture.
You call raising a family a narcissistic indulgence. Well, perhaps it is. And what would you have people do? The way society has handled this problem in the past was to encourage people to become renunciates. But everyone can't be a renunciate. Or the Hindus, they encourage sanyas in middle age. Gets the worst of the lust out of your system, then concentrate.

But you didn't answer my question - isn't a certain amount of mutually agreed upon mutual narcissistic indulgence unavoidable unless yer a hermit?

[Kevin Solway]

Isn't a certain amount of mutually agreed upon mutual narcissistic indulgence unavoidable unless yer a hermit?

My father used to tell me that you couldn't survive in the competitive business world without lying and cheating. . . . Did a good job of putting me off the idea of work.

[alex]

What a fine old man. If I had to count the 5 most honest people I've known, my parents would both make the list. Poor saps. Not very successful by any measure.

you see, it's money.

[Pye]

.
[Speaking of Nietzsche] Some posts above remind me strongly of the following aphorism (The Gay Science, 14) wherein the "selfless" nature of love is called out to stand beside its bedfellow avarice (greedy possessiveness):

Sexual love betrays itself most clearly as a lust for possession: the lover desires unconditional and sole possession of the person for whom he loves; he desires equally unconditional power over the soul and over the body of the beloved; he alone wants to be loved and desires to live and rule in the other soul as supreme and supremely desirable. If one considers that this means nothing less than excluding the whole world from a precious good, from happiness and enjoyment; if one considers that the lover aims at the impoverishment and deprivation of all competitors and would like to become the dragon guarding his golden hoard as the most inconsiderate and selfish of all "conquerors" and exploiters; if one considers, finally, that to the lover himself the whole rest of the world appears indifferent, pale, and worthless, and he is prepared to make any sacrifice, to disturb any order, to subordinate all other interests -- then one comes to feel genuine amazement that this wild avarice and injustice of sexual love has been glorified and deified so much in all ages -- indeed, that this love has furnished the concept of love as the opposite of egoism while it actually may be the most ingenuous expression of egoism . . . .

Perhaps propellerbeanie remembers a little incident (with me) at TalkPhilosophy to which this aphorism makes substantial address. If you do, pb, and if you make the right connections, you might start cracking a window of air and light onto what some of these people are saying.

No, I'm not onto the slaughtering side of this, but it is true that I have not been able in my lifetime to (sexually, familial-ly) love without the pain and confusion of (probably hardwired) exclusion. I question that sort of love (all the way to virtual non-participation in it). I question it seriously against another, cleaner vision of love that thus far, for me, exists only as idea.

.

[alex]

Pye that was a funny quote. I'd say the problems are from our animal nature. Sexual jealousy. It comes from the limited resources and energy to raise kids. You want to know who your kids are. People were probably happy before they figured out paternity.

Is enlightenment at odds with physical survival? It seems so.

I don't believe in sexual exclusiveness, altho I live it. but I don't really care, and even if I care, I'd fight it. It is a spiritual flaw.

What I see of infidelity is also nauseating.

[propellerbeanie]

DavidQuinn,

Men love their wives more than vice versa.

I believe you would be hard pressed to prove this point. Most men are poor at love and rich in excuses. Perhaps it cannot be quantified. Perhaps it is, that love is an emotion we know by touch, and that we get the benefit of by feeling. The love we feel for another must be translated into something to be felt by the one you love. Love has to be turned into deeds of some description to benefit another. We only feel our own love.

You're right that most people would stop loving their spouses or other people if they got nothing in return. And yet, I'm not sure if it is wrong as you say to engage in a mutually rewarding relationship of give and take.

At its most basic, love, and from love marriage is our first contract relationship, and here I expect I depart Nietzsche. To be all a relationship must be -to be called love, there are no rules. The goal of each in life is the same, each one desires the other, and each wishes to share with that other the adventure of life. Depending upon the length of the relationship in time, some live forever; even beyond the death of one, and it is difficult to get less than nothing from a dead person, but people do love on if only because love is hope.

[propellerbeanie]

Isn't a certain amount of mutually agreed upon mutual narcissistic indulgence unavoidable unless yer a hermit?

My father used to tell me that you couldn't survive in the competitive business world without lying and cheating. . . . Did a good job of putting me off the idea of work.

Lying and cheating are damned hard work for the honorable, and honesty is dead weight for the rest; so everybody earns their keep the easy way.