Sunday, November 23, 2003
The Love Continuum: A Nerd’s Perspective.
To properly describe love, a 180° continuum is insufficient. Instead to see the full scope of love and its diametrically opposed counterparts, a complete 360° continuum must be employed.
At 0° is love itself. This love is unconditional. “If I loved someone conditionally, it would not be love, only convenience or obligation. Love, by definition must be unconditional or it is not love at all.” The conditional aspect of love is purely emotional; I do not discount the validity of emotional love, but its pre-eminence over the attitude of love is nil. Secondly, this love is active, for without activity, it becomes worthless. Money left in a jar too long not only cannot be spent, and not only cannot grow, but in fact diminishes in value. Similarly, idle love also ebbs in potency. This love also is humble, putting others ahead of itself. It does not put itself down, but instead seek to elevate others to a higher station. Love bonds relationships together; therefore, when one promotes another, then he is lifted with them. Love is unconditional, active, and humble.
At 120°, there resides hatred. Now, one would think that hatred, being the opposite of love, should be placed at 180°. But this theory is a false dilemma; it is based on the premise that love has but one opposite. Hate is the breaking of relationships. It is often unconditional. Though this is a strength for love, it is a weakness for hatred. It is based on a Non Sequitir argument. The Nazis hatred the Jews and Gypsies because they were of a lesser race, but no logical reasoning can bring one to this conclusion; their proposition is untrue because their premises are faulty and do not follow. Hate, like love, is active; it demands that action be taken on the hated one. The actions, however, are pejorative, not constructive. Hatred also has a foil for humility to deal with: his name is pride; it sees others as beneath it, not worthy of contact. In fact, others are so beneath it that they must be annihilated, destroyed. Hatred, then, is unconditional, active, and prideful.
The third option inhabits the 240° position. This is indifference; indifference is neither the builder nor destroyer of relationships, but the complete lack thereof. It is a conditional state, depending on a set of pros and cons. One would be indifferent towards someone who had nothing to offer, but not towards someone who offered much. It is quite inactive as well, being generally characterized by apathy. When one disregards another, no need for action exists as with hatred. Also, indifference is full of pride, seeing itself seated high above the rest. Those who have much to offer are accepted not as people, but as tools; the rest are simple not worth the expenditure of resources. Indifference is conditional, inactive, and prideful.
One might reason, then, that since indifference has all three elements opposing love, whereas hatred has but one, that it must be the one true contrary term. This, however, puts hatred and love too close together for comfort. It is true that both hatred and love represent the existence of relationship, but that they exist at opposite ends of the spectrum. Indifference is the non-existence of relationship altogether, and so it must be found as far away from both love and hate as possible. Imagine the way a magnet behaves. When two identical poles are put together, they separate. Imagine, then three magnets of the same pole. They will therefore separate as far as they can from both of the other magnets. Essentially, this thesis recognizes the fact that love exists in opposition to both hatred and indifference on two separate scales, and synthesizes it all into one continuum.
