samadhi wrote:All I see you doing is equating love with attachment. Loving without attachment is not that rare. I'm sure you can look within your own experience and see that not everything you love has to do with attachment.
Are you referring to self-sacrificial acts of love, for example giving up ones life for the well being of a friend, family or a country? Surely you'd agree that this also works through identifying ourselves with this 'other' and then act out of belief or instinct that this one part of us with which we identify on some level can prosper by sacrificing another ('lesser') part of ourselves.
It's still selfish, only the self has expanded to include more than the usual body periphery. Remember, one doesn't include an objective other but the image one has of the other, like dying for a country or friend is dying for the ideal they represent, someones
most loved part that needs to live on or prosper (or
most hated part that must die, as the flip side).
Whether anyone is "really" in control isn't the point. There is an illusion of control that the ego functions within and is quite comfortable with. If you think this isn't so, why not post your name, ssn and bank account number on a web site for identity thieves since you are not in control anyway.
It's interesting to investigate further the workings of power and sacrifice in this context. If there's a gain to be made, something else has to give. These are the tides of control & surrender. In your example one gains wealth and the means of controlling it by administrative means. The surrender is to pay the price: one is forced to protect the wealth as others will be caused to increase power too by surrendering to criminal activities (for example because they have less moral restraint). The illusion of control appears to be nothing else here but surrendering to reason, even the power of prediction that informs our actions, needed after the initial rise in power (obtaining
ownership).
There's nothing to gain without surrendering or overcoming. If gaining wisdom is the goal, surrendering will be part of that process; giving up the right things at the right time. It's like building a sand structure on the beach and then wait for the tide to fill the channels and slowly undo it until it's swallowed wholesale. The structure was build with its destiny in mind, of course, its function fulfilled in its ending.
One cannot control the tides. But all power and as such your "illusion of control" which Nietzsche called:
will to power, resides locked
within this flow.
