I have heard it said that love is more powerful than hatred or anger, or that   
   love is incompatible with hatred or anger. I do not know if love is more   
   powerful than hatred or anger; the world has seen all sorts of hateful people   
   rising to powerful    
   positions and all sorts of loving people who wound up in the gulag. As for   
   these things being incompatible with each other, that is wrong. If you love a   
   woman, you would be angry at people who hurt her. If you love your child, you   
   would be angry at    
   someone who rapes your child.   
      
   I suppose the issue here is the definition of love. I cannot be expected to   
   extend romantic love to every woman; I will extend it to woman for whom I feel   
   it. I cannot be expected to extend parental love to every child; I extend it   
   to my child. I have no    
   expectations of anyone else to the contrary. Indeed I consider such   
   expectations to be a folly.   
      
   With Christlike love, meaning extending to people compassion and understanding   
   without partaking of their follies, it may very well be reasonably expected   
   that one do so to everyone. However I have very rarely seen this actually   
   done, even by many people    
   who see this as their value. I have seen this done by some people. I regard   
   these people to be saints. What they have is workable; however it is in no way   
   an easy thing to achieve.   
      
   Even Christ however got angry at some people. If God is love – and God gets   
   angry, as he has done of course many times – then love and anger are in no   
   way incompatible. As Solomon said, there is the time for everything. If you do   
   not feel anger at    
   someone who rapes your child, you are not being enlightened; you are being a   
   wuss. A loving parent would very much be angry at such a thing, and I would   
   never expect of anyone to the contrary.   
      
   Now it may be very well valid to extend understanding even to people who do in   
   fact do such a thing. But to expect someone to not be angry about it is   
   ridiculous. I would be angry if such a thing were to happen; and I have no   
   expectations of anyone else    
   to the contrary.   
      
   When I was in my early 20s, living in the Silicon Valley with a beautiful   
   girlfriend, a fellow came over from Louisiana. He gave me a line about love   
   being incompatible with anger and how can I, being angry at some people, be   
   actually loving. He got a    
   job through me with a computer company; borrowed a Jeep on a loan from them;   
   and then skipped off down the road in the Jeep without making the payments.   
   What we see here obviously is not love; what we see here is conmanship. There   
   are many guys who are    
   seen by others as nice people, but who are actually mean and dishonest.   
   Whereas very few people see me as a nice person, but I am actually loving.   
      
   Once again, I do not know if love is more powerful than hatred or anger. It   
   does work to understand people, but understanding is not the same thing as   
   love. I can understand why Germans listened to Hitler; but that does not mean   
   that I approve of their    
   choice to follow him. The same is the case with women who followed Catherine   
   McKinnon or the men who followed Osama Bin Laden and Eminem. Do by all means   
   understand where they are coming from; but do not buy into their errors.   
      
   As for the leaders of all these movements, one should be angry at them. All of   
   them have encouraged horrendous behavior, which fell on the shoulders of all   
   sorts of people who have done nothing wrong. The Jews in Germany were not   
   responsible for Germany'   
   s problems; the Treaty of Versailles was. The men nearest the liberal centers   
   of learning and culture did not invent misogyny; in fact they were the least   
   misogynistic men out there. The girls in Islamic, right-wing and disadvantaged   
   communities did not    
   invent feminism; most of them are willing to treat men well. All of these   
   movements hurt all sorts of people who had done nothing to cause either social   
   problem, and in all cases the results have been disastrous.   
      
      
   I do not see why either emotional state should be more powerful than the   
   other. But what appears to be more powerful than both is intelligence. This,   
   of course, can be used in service of hatred, love, or anything else under the   
   sun. That has always been    
   the case. That always will be the case.   
      
   In my case, I am not using this in service of either hatred or love. I am   
   using it to correct errors. I do not only use intelligence; I have had all   
   sorts of influences – both intentionally and not intentionally – and I   
   have empathized with many such    
   influences, as well as with any number of people. This gives me a full   
   picture, combining the perspective of observation with the perspective of   
   experience. It makes it possible to understand both the experience of the   
   participants and their effects on    
   the rest of the world. This does away with both the error of mere observation   
   – that of coldness and lack of compassion – and the error of mere   
   experience – that of mindlessness. I may not be the only person who does   
   such a thing, but I have found    
   it to be a superior methodology than that of either experience or observation   
   acting alone.   
      
   Should one, as Christ advised, love one's enemies? Maybe; but do not love only   
   them. Love also the people whom they stand to hurt or deceive. When a woman   
   told me that she was praying for the death of her ex-husband I told her that   
   she could not do such    
   a thing. I told her to pray both for him and for the people he stood to hurt.   
   That way she would be doing what the Bible wants her to do, while also   
   addressing her legitimate concerns for herself and any number of others.   
      
   Once again, I do not know if positive emotional states are more powerful than   
   negative ones. I do however see things that are more powerful than both.   
      
      
   So that while I may be legitimately expected to be compassionate and   
   understanding of others, at no point can I be expected to love them the way in   
   which I've loved the women I've loved. Nor can I be expected to love everyone   
   in the way in which I love    
   my daughter. Define love precisely, then say which love is appropriate and for   
   whom. I will not love just any woman the way I've loved the women I've loved,   
   and I will not love just any child the way I love my daughter. But if the task   
   is to be    
   compassionate and understanding of others, I am game.   
      
   http://ibshambat7.blogspot.com/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)