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The concept of universal love

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 :D


If you're going to love all these animals unconditionally, why not work on trying to love people, too?

You seem to be talking about who or what is deserving of love. The animals did nothing to deserve it; why should the people have to pass some sort of added test?
 
If it's the "essence of a thing" rather than the thing itself then that's essentially meaningless no? Do you love everyone in the world? If you do that then whats the difference between some guy in the street or someone you have some connection with emotionally?

Even in a religious sense, I don't.

I don't think its meaningless at all, if you love a thing you don't love it because of reasons but rather love the thing in itself. Love can be universal because it doesn't necessarily have to be about anything at all, obviously this doesn't give you permission to go hugging some random person on the street unless your with some hippies or something :)
 
Yep good to hate racism.
Yeah, I don't think just being racist's necessarily (NECESSARILY) a good enough reason to hate someone though. Depends what they do.

So, if they're mean to animals, you loathe them; but if they're racist against blacks, chinese, arabs or what have you, maybe, maybe not?
 
If they're someone's old relative making some stupid comment, then no I don't hate them. Pity them, get disgusted with them, angry with them, etc, but not hate.

If it's someone beating up "pakis", someone devoting their life to propagating holocaust denial, someone threatening to disown their own kid because they are marrying someone in another race ahd toall intents and purposes trying to make their lives a misery (there's an example of this in my family) etc, then yes

I think that was obvious from my post. Everyone has some prejudices, being racist isn't a reason in itself for real loathing where you wish someone to be dead etc. If they act on it, then yes, it can be, but I don't think passing on an email forward about immigrants or making some stupid joke is reason enough for the kind of hatred I'm talking about in my post unless there's other stuff to back up their racism.
 
So, if they're mean to animals, you loathe them; but if they're racist against blacks, chinese, arabs or what have you, maybe, maybe not?

That's not what I'm saying. And you haven't actually got a clue what sort of stuff I've been doing or what I'm talking about, do you. When I said "fucking horrific animal cruelty" I wasn't talking about lab technicians (i know one) or mentally ill women throwing cats in bins ffs.

And since you ask, I think before I love someone or let them into my life in any way I think they do have to pass some sort of "cunt test." A test which I think you have failed

I find it fucking insulting that you are implying I don't care about racism. There are people I don't speak to in my family because of among other things racist views and these were among the people i was referring to in my post. People in my family actually died and were killed because of attempting to stop racism in nazi germany and south africa. Being a committed zionist as you obviously are, you have a pretty fucking warped idea of the concept of racism anyway

let's not forget your mate deisel either - do/did you hate him? Walked into that one didn't you?

belushi says you're a tool btw
 
If you're going to love all these animals unconditionally, why not work on trying to love people, too?

You seem to be talking about who or what is deserving of love. The animals did nothing to deserve it; why should the people have to pass some sort of added test?

When you put down a dog because it has savaged a child in a moment of rage the dog is not going to understand why it is being killed. When you imprison a man because he oversaw a genocide he knows full fucking well why he is being jailed.
 
I don't love all animals unconditionally btw. I like animals, but I don't love all of them. Especially not wasps.
 
When you put down a dog because it has savaged a child in a moment of rage the dog is not going to understand why it is being killed. When you imprison a man because he oversaw a genocide he knows full fucking well why he is being jailed.

Exactly. You can't love all people. It's fluffy liberal bollocks.
 
'Love your Enemy' is another bollocks christian one- you may not have heard of it being a judaic gyal but by christ (lol) it annoys me. Fuck my enemy- we make peace if it is possible but if not then the bastard goes down. I can't consider ever doing a Chamberlain 'I hold in my hand a piece of paper'. Conditions for peace must not run abhorrent to principles I hold close- shaking hands with a Nazi is well and truly off the cards.

Universal Love is beloved by 60's children who thought it might work- it doesn't. It also ties to buddhist philosophies of acceptance, which can also fuck off. Don't roll over, don't cower. That is dog behaviour.
 
true enough gorski, true enough. But most dogs I've known can be cowed-the only time I ever got faced down by a dog was a farm dog. The fucker had me proper backed up against a wall till a farmhand rescued me. That's an admirable trait- it didn't try to eat me (execution). Dogs, like humans, have the capacity for universal love but in practise it is a thing that allows you to be cunted off by people who don't hold such vaunted principles. No, it is a beautiful concept and one that will be utterly destroyed the first time some unscrupulous wanker with a gun and a uniform meets a wide eyed teen with a rhetoric of love and freedom.
 
I think it's good to hate racism. I tried to hate a racist but I can only manage to despise him and slightly feel sorry for him.

Probably good to hate bad people, who are genuinely bad. Otherwise where would be the motivation to stop them doing what they do?


I can't hate but I can be repulsed by, for sure. I'd certainly love to see more love in this world of ours.
 
Why can't you hate though? It's an emotion like any other. Or is it a case of it actually being there but people wanting to call it something else?
 
I don't get why people will be down on hate. It is perfectly rational to hate that which is fucking abhorrent. So long as hate isn't the central concept that defines you then why not carry in your heart a hate for things like NK prison camps where camp born kids never even know an outside world exists, or the african dictator who starves his people or the smarmily haired shitbag who gets a Lordship- they fucking deserve hate. I'm not going to rise above it and claim to be freer because I don't have hate for these people, fuck that. It's as natural as love ffs, just direct it correctlty
 
I don't think its meaningless at all, if you love a thing you don't love it because of reasons but rather love the thing in itself. Love can be universal because it doesn't necessarily have to be about anything at all, obviously this doesn't give you permission to go hugging some random person on the street unless your with some hippies or something :)

But then it's not really love. It might be some kind of warm funny feeling but it's not love, because for it to be there has to be reasons behind why you love them in the first place even if it's unconditional, even as simple reason as "because it's my kid". Otherwise you might as well have that kind of vague warm fuzziness about a cardboard box.
 
I mean in terms of you hating someone but not wanting to call it "hate", the same way that people often love their friends but don't want to call it love.
 
It's a strong word because it's a strong emotion. FWIW I only hate a handful of people, all of whom I've known personally, if that.
 
But then it's not really love. It might be some kind of warm funny feeling but it's not love, because for it to be there has to be reasons behind why you love them in the first place even if it's unconditional, even as simple reason as "because it's my kid". Otherwise you might as well have that kind of vague warm fuzziness about a cardboard box.

I disagree, love isn't a relation to a thing but a state of being. Saying that love is about a cardboard box is incorrect because love itself isn't about things in the same way as likes and dislikes. Nobody just likes, they have to like an object. I don't think love is comparable here.
 
That's not true though, you don't go around just loving and not loving anything in particular. Unless you're confusing love with happiness. :hmm:
 
And I disagree btw, I think love is a strogner form of liking someone, and there is often an obsessional component in it as well with romantic love and relationships. Nothing necessarily wrong with that though. They're all emotions.
 
I've got no problem with hate. If somebody commited an act of gross cruelty to someone I loved I'd want them to suffer. I'm quite comfortable with bloody revenge. It seems prudish to feel otherwise. Hate is part of our makeup. Nothing wrong with it.

That might be debatable, but there's certainly nothing wrong with not having hatred.
 
I tend to go along with what Knotted said. I mean, hatred is one of the emotions, and so it's obviously there for a reason.

Is it? Does there have to be a reason? All, any, emotions have reasons do they? No, i can't see that.

Universal love is something that is beyond the coin that has love on one side and hate on the other side. Hatred means no liberation, no freedom. Hatred for its host means control, suffering. It is inconsistent with liberty and freedom.

Universal love i assume to be love for life itself, love for all that constitutes life. In that love for life, there cannot be room for hatred. How easy that is for a human is another story entirely.
 
Is it? Does there have to be a reason? All, any, emotions have reasons do they? No, i can't see that.

Universal love is something that is beyond the coin that has love on one side and hate on the other side. Hatred means no liberation, no freedom. Hatred for its host means control, suffering. It is inconsistent with liberty and freedom.

Universal love i assume to be love for life itself, love for all that constitutes life. In that love for life, there cannot be room for hatred. How easy that is for a human is another story entirely.

you're such a fucking hippy :D


Seriously though. There's a difference between loving life, loving people, etc, and loving ALL life and ALL people. As much as you may think you do or want to, you don't do that mate :D
 
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