frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
this is something i've thought on and off about for a very long time, but i wanted to post a thread about it. recently as some of you will know i've been involved in a project to campaign against some fucking horrific animal cruelty stuff, and ive been involved in other stuff of a similar sort of nature over the years as ive become an activist and started campaigning around various issues. During that time I've often felt intense loathing, if not actual hate for the people who do these things and certainly fucking have done recently and did at other times too.
i was wondering two things. Is the concept of the sort of universal love of humanity, as preached by some religions such as Christianity, a good concept to follow? im aware that nietzsche said that it devalued the concept of love, because one cannot possibly love all people in the world, even if they were all good, and it devalues the real love that one feels for your family and friends. I've never read any of his work apart from various quotes here and there and I'd be really interested in finding more about his argument. Is it actually a good idea to aim for though? I'm coming to the conclusion that it actually isn't.
Secondly, is hatred always bad? Obviously if you think about the person or thing you hate all the time, it's quite self destructive, but we all have the capacity for hatred, so is it always a bad thing to feel as an emotion? I mean actually HATING someone or something, not just feeling angry. Could it in fact be turned into something positive, or for a good use? So when religions or anyone else tell you not to hate, could they be wrong, or could they only be right in the sense of that sort of all consuming hatred that eats you up? There are one or two people in the world I've known personally who I do hate and I'd like to see dead, I don't spend all my time thinking about it, yeah it's wrong, but is it necessarily any better than an abstract "loving" of everyone and "forgiving" that isn't really forgiving at all?
Sorry if this is a really daft thread but I'm hungover on a sunday afternoon
i was wondering two things. Is the concept of the sort of universal love of humanity, as preached by some religions such as Christianity, a good concept to follow? im aware that nietzsche said that it devalued the concept of love, because one cannot possibly love all people in the world, even if they were all good, and it devalues the real love that one feels for your family and friends. I've never read any of his work apart from various quotes here and there and I'd be really interested in finding more about his argument. Is it actually a good idea to aim for though? I'm coming to the conclusion that it actually isn't.
Secondly, is hatred always bad? Obviously if you think about the person or thing you hate all the time, it's quite self destructive, but we all have the capacity for hatred, so is it always a bad thing to feel as an emotion? I mean actually HATING someone or something, not just feeling angry. Could it in fact be turned into something positive, or for a good use? So when religions or anyone else tell you not to hate, could they be wrong, or could they only be right in the sense of that sort of all consuming hatred that eats you up? There are one or two people in the world I've known personally who I do hate and I'd like to see dead, I don't spend all my time thinking about it, yeah it's wrong, but is it necessarily any better than an abstract "loving" of everyone and "forgiving" that isn't really forgiving at all?
Sorry if this is a really daft thread but I'm hungover on a sunday afternoon