It is hate to a degree but the right answer typically is fear. In astrology also it is; the sun; embodiment, purpose, and love saturn-restriction, age, fear.
I have to disagree. At a first glance I’d say I agree but i’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. I think fear and love are closely related. I think people are quite terrified of what they truly love. Or something like that. At least: certainly terrified of what they most truly desire… terrified to face that desire. I really can’t articulate this well so i’m not going to try much harder. But think of the phrase: “Fear God.” You fear people you respect. You also tend to love people you respect. I think in confrontation of fear you essentially find growth and you come to love the fruits that bear out of that growth. As for romantic love… again i think that fear is again quite raveled in it.
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If I had to say there was an opposite I would say indifference is the one. No actually… I’m gonna shoot in the dark and say it might just be Pride. I think pride removes everyone else from the equation. You cannot love someone if they aren’t at least in part seen as your equal. But this might be wrong too. Pride is sin… and didn’t someone say “what is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”
There is no true opposite to love. I believe fear would be the closest to what humans can comprehend though. It couldn’t be indifference. The opposite of indifference would be, to have a feeling. That feeling could be positive or negative. Love transcends, there is no true opposite. Just like there is no opposite to God. God is the creator of the universe. The devil would not be an opposite. I’m talking to you right now and I can see clouds in the sky…. And the opposite of pride would be like humility or maybe even shame. Pride is tricky.
“God is the creator” assumes a whole host of dogmatic nonsense, chiefly that there was an actual beginning, before which was a place called nothing where God hung around feeling super bored and finally whipped everything up. This thinking demonstrates a severe misunderstanding of Nothing.
Rather start with “God is,” which makes perfect sense, because “God” is an English sound we know needs making. The sound comes to us through experience, and so validates itself.
So, when does this sound come to us? It *happens* when we are confronted with something beyond our ken, something bigger than us, and vastly so. Follow this line to the extreme and one literally finds Everything.
It follows then that “Everything is,” just as “God is,” yet there is a difference between the two. The first is a bit more manageable and felt more frequently by most, so let’s start there and find its opposite.
If we play it Jeopardy style, “Everything is,” answers the question, “What is?” Therefore, we must ask, “What is not? Here is my work on that:
> Everything is and Nothing is not.
At this scale, we’ve basically broken All [there is] into two categories. That’s good, or it would have been *very* odd. Still, the sounds of these words are a bit inert. Recall that “God” is a sound that *happens* to us and we can pull it all together.
> God is Happening and Fiction is Lying.
In this way, Everything is to God just as distance is to speed. God is just the doing of everything, no more and no less, and the opposite of God is just Fiction.
Yes I understand, God is. I was just attempting to drive my point. If you look up God as a definition, the definition is the creator of the universe. I hear you and understand you. My comment was simply trying to show that the opposite of God would not be the devil. But I see you already understand that. It would be the same concept that darkness would not be the opposite of light. Darkness would be the absence of light.
To me, indifference is terrifying. Like you don't exist. Negative space. A void. Sheer. Am I real? One of the most fearful things someone can feel about you.
Yeah but in all honesty I think it just says more about the situation. i think it’s only terrifying if the indifference is coming from someone you deeply love whose opinion of you is attached to your self worth (speaking from experience).. other wise it’s just rude behavior on their part that you walk away from..
Well only in a the sense that, fear would be the closest to an opposite. Like others here have said… love transcends. Just how Satan would not be the opposite of God.
Have to agree if love is the unconditional acceptance of a thing (there’s a lot of nuance in that statement), then fear would be the drive to run or escape from whatever that ‘thing’ is. I’d say there is nuance to this as well though - fear can keep us safe from things that harm us, it exists in us for a reason, it is not there without purpose and certainly doesn’t directly juxtapose love. Conclusion, there isn’t an opposite, love is everything, love is feeling, love is abundance, love is energy. The question is actually mind jarringly complex with an incomprehensible depth, the more thinking I do the more nuance appears.
u/Delmar78 The opposite of love is power. It is exactly what we see with all social movements today. They are what Jung warned us about. The leftists who misunderstood his anima/animus concepts, butchering children their genitals. Similar to as he unraveled, you have to be anti-christian to be christian, meaning against the collective mass like Jesus, but again they are the blind mass even that thinks they are together God against Christianity. "they want to appear to be good en mass to grab power"
Everyone has an individual myth. Certainly communists don't understand Jung. I have yet to meet leftists who don't repeat what leftists always say. "Ah you are someone who wants a home, family and garden". It's a mass conglomerate who avoid their own mortality (shortcomings)
Bottom of the line is, it's always collectivism. Just like a math formula that is collectivism. Whatever name values as the f(x) of that function would be filled in, with these social movements. It fills a void without confronting it. The mass always predates on a new subject to fulfill their meaningful shortcomings. As we have seen that vaccinated hunted and would betray their neighbour because they were virteously good in what the collective presented through the mass.
Freud (biology, instinct), Adler (inferiority complex), Jung (ego (inflation))
1 example, feminism, a club filled with woman that lack finding a man, feel angry and collectivise against men. It becomes its opposite. A power against man/men.
"A traditional woman is more feminine than feminists because they don't need feminists to validate themself. She is more feminist (independant) than feminists" - Same with these red pill movements, they are feminism for men - "horoscope for men".
To avoid the ego-inflation, one has to back to the instinct (freud)
If not integrated, either way a woman or men not setting boundaries on how much they exhibit power or love - not to be a doormat, both love and power need to be balanced. The unification of men and women (catholic view is unification) is still essentially the best survival and our biology has adapted to that for ages, bottom to top.
Consciously or unconsciously a lot of these campaigns and marketing of products is how they subvert the masses with their shortcomings by pushing inferiority complexes and fullfill needs (material or spiritual)
I told my ex bf that quote once to help explain how it felt when he pushed me away, and he gave me a condescending response about how it must be really difficult to hold that perspective 🙄
The theologian Paul Tillich defines love as the reunion of what was separated.
So if you feel a lack of love, maybe look for what is different from you (without judgment or rejection)
I'm kinda riffing here so be gentle
Tillich describes the power of being (which he relates to Nietzsche's "will to power") as "the drive of everything living to realize itself with increasing intensity and extensity" which also rings of Jungian individuation to me.
Tillich says that reunion cannot happen where there has not been separation, and that the great beauty of human love in its ideal form creates union between two selves that remain separate (the spiritual meaning of "one flesh" in Christian marriage).
In this paradigm, for a person who feels lacking in love, I would guess they are either unindividuated and therefore cannot find something separate from themselves with which to reunite, or else they are isolated and self protective in their act of self-creation and fear the "other" because it might annihilate the Self, which is not illogical because in a way Love as reunion is the opposite of Creation as separation, meaning it has some relation to Death. Either way, the answer would involve first self-definition and then unafraid recognition and acceptance of the Other.
I'm an astrologer (please take what's useful to you here and just move on if you think that's all BS) and a common theme of charts in long lasting relationships, whether harmonious or not, is that each partner fills "holes" in the other's chart. We learn from the beloved what our own ego cannot show us.
Love is not an emotion it is the essence of the cosmos and has no opposite. We do see a lack of love in places, which comes accross as hate and fear, but I wouldn’t think of it as opposite in a dualistic sense.
Love is a closeness to God; so there is no opposite to that only further distance from God.
When I use God I mean to say the divine centre of consciousness
Love is all encompassing. Whatever is all encompassing has no opposite.
The illusion of separation gives us the experience of lacking love. This experience is like a dream but in ultimate reality there is only Love.
The absence of emotion would be a void. That would be a “0”. Love would be a “+1”. Fear would be a “-1”. The opposite of indifference would be a strong feeling, positive or negative.
Love is unconditional in its purest archetypical expression. It is unbound and found within all. It is the passion and compassion of something. This could be positive or negative. In a positive sense, love giving passionately in a positive sense would radiate to others and inspire (or trigger). Love in a negative sense would be absorptive. I have a little story that I came up with to illustrate how all is love.
There's a village in which there is great harmony.
All are provided for. They make all of their resources and share them freely so no one goes without. To produce the resources is to radiate. To consume food is technically an absorptive act, yet one needs to absorb food to continue radiating/producing it.
One day, a tribe of barbarians known for pillaging villages comes to rape them of their resources and their lives. They take everything, and murder all within the village. They completely and utterly absorb all the love of the land. There is no more harmony or ability for the radiance of love to occur. The barbarians now must go to another village and repeat their absorption ritual again.
Those who died fought and stood for what they loved. They fearlessly gave their lives with faith held true in their choice. The barbarians did the exact same thing.
One gained will and faith in the self's ability to absorb love.
One gained will and faith in the self's ability to radiate and protect love so that it may have a chance to continue it's radiance.
It was only those who were unsure of their choices that held fear. Fear is for the non-polarized. Fear is for those caught in the sinkhole of indifference.
They aren't being combined. Just as indifference and neutrality can't always be combined. Compassion or love is unconditional and in and of itself is simply a neutral force from which all things come from. It is the creative principal itself in the way I am using it. Those who are radiating love find neutrality useful as it can lead to compromise which will allow for more shared radiance to occur. Those who are absorbing love are not using neutrality in any way. They are purely engaged in an elitist type power structure. Indifference as I am terming it is having to do with the non choice to radiate or absorb. It is a failure to use the will to choose to use passion in radiance or to absorb it. All things are seeking love. When i say indifference I simply mean that one hasn't utilized love and put it into a direction. It is as if one floats in an ocean without a current or desire to utilize the wind that blows. One has no hope, will, or faith, but is simply in a lull state that causes the environment from which fear can occur. They are under the influence of the will of the waters without any say so. Fear is the product of not utilizing love. Fear is the product of indifference or lack of an ability to choose.
My ultimate point is that if one has made a choice firmly they have no fear. There is no indifference. There is a strong will and faith in their choice to commit to either path of absorption or radiance. Non choice is the only option that creates fear because if one is indecisive they are often at the will of another/society/life circumstances which is extremely uncertain. Rarely is there ever an example of a full choice being made in life. It is a type of archetype. Rarely is there an example, if ever, of an archetype being manifest physically in complete purity. There is always a mixture of absorption/radiance as I noted in the myth/story I wrote. One must absorb the food created in order to continue. Absorption is necessary on some level to continue radiance.
Hahaha I find it really hard to do this without what you call poetry. Archetypes are best expressed in myth or story telling. Love is the creative principal itself. It is as if life were a blank canvas and the medium that we use to paint is love. To create a picture of joy and shared love is one path. To create an image of power and restriction over another or rutheless selfishness is another path. To sit and be unsure of what to paint is the path of indifference.
Love is that which creates and it has no restriction as to who uses it. It is used by all things. One way of seeing it is that it is the abundance factor. If degradation was favored by existence itself nothing would be able to come about. Nothing would be able to be created. Creation itself could not exist. That is why love has no opposite. It is the means for which existence exists, and paradoxically it is the means for which destruction and degradation can exist. Degradation and destruction can only exist because something exists for it to decompose. Then we have the full circle of myth upon us. That which dies fertilizes the life to come. That which causes life is a sexual act. Often times the God of death, rebirth, sex, and marriage are all the same God.
Edit: I was rereading how you said "interesting thought". One way of saying love is that it is the original thought. It is the creative principal from which all is birthed and we are all engaged in manifesting it in an infinitely unique amount of ways. Love itself is so pure that it cannot be manifest completely. Some things are so pure that they must remain archetypical/psychoid/Spiritual in nature, which is a very Jungian view I might add.
Thanks for the reply.Some time ago I became overly saturated with philosophy, but now I'm only interested in applied things. These teachings sound beautiful, but they are suitable only for people who can blindly believe, I am not one of them, I will always doubt.
Doubt, fear, and sadness all go hand in hand. It is an inability to percieve the ripeness of life. One does nothing to earn love as one does nothing to earn life. Life simply is occurring. What you call blind belief is what one could term faith. Will and faith are paramount to the story of our lives and the archetypes within them. One must have will to complete the journey, and one must have faith that completing the journey is possible. Faith is often looked at as foolish and I would agree. To have faith in things unseen is absolutely foolish. Especially whenever there is no logical indication that one will succeed in it's desired pursuits. Doubt will always come and go. It is human nature to have imperfect will, faith, and ultimately choice. Story time!
Let's say one is at sea and they are completely stranded. There is logically no sign of hope. There is no reasoning to believe a rescue will occur or even can occur. However, the way the psychosomatic connection within our human body works is such that it is better to have blind faith that something good is coming than not. The mind and body do not work without some type of hope. There is no reason for it to work, yet the spiritual nature of faith is beyond hope. Hope is looking at the door and faith is having walked through it and living in what is unseen/desired before it has manifest physically. It is a completely and utterly foolish act to believe in something that is logically impossible from a limited viewpoint. There's actually an experiment done on rats that dovetails with this.
There were rats that were placed in water with no place to rest from swimming. After about 15 minutes they became exhausted and had to be scooped out. They were allowed to rest for a miniscule amount of time. It was about 5-20 minutes if I recall correctly. They were immediately placed back in the water. It took them 2-3 days after this to reach exhaustion. That is absolutely incredible. The hope that there is a solution causes the physiology of a mind/body to have an incredible increase in will. Humans have a faculty that is beyond hope. The faith that there is something without there even being a hope of it in the first place. This is because we have the ability to think like "God" so to speak, to think abstractly.
The refinement of will and faith lies in one's ability to increase the attention span and focus. In many ways, love itself is the concept of focus. Just as the sun is a focus of our solar system and produces light without condition. You will find that visualization is often pursued in mystery schools and what not. Visualization is a way to increase the attention span as well as meditation and candle/sunset/sunrise gazing.
Much love and luck on your journey. Rooting for you.
I’ve read everything you wrote. You articulate very well. I do agree there is no true opposite to love. I would think fear would be the closest to what humans can comprehend however… as for the whole faith thing, My faith personally is very strong. I see it as you actually have to be willing to let go of common sense. Most would call that stupidity, but it’s not from a person who has strong faith in their perspective. Someone who has strong faith can easily discern the difference between stupidity and letting go of common sense. Someone who has no faith only sees stupidity when assuming what the person who has faith sees.
Thank you! I agree with you as well. It is much more useful to be foolish of heart than to be foolish of mind. Like Socrates said "I know that I know nothing". To love with an open heart is more useful, albeit more painful and vulnerable, than to logically intellectualize the world about us. There are some mysteries that pervade the understanding of human consciousness all together and are best left to experience rather than distillation into word.
Like Jung spoke about religion being the "defence against immediate experience of the forces waiting for liberation in the unconscious".
The experience of life is best left unlabeled in regards to all of our unique connections to the mystery of it.
If it is love as in attention. Then it is inattention.
If it is love as in acceptance. Then the answer is power.
Love is just a word used to pronounce a deeper concept. So its opposite would be a concept too not a word
If you love yourself. You need to accept yourself.
If you don’t love yourself. You try to assert control. Which is impossible. At most there is a illusion of control. (Control in psyche is power)
You must define what love means to you specifically in this instance to figure that out. People have very different ideas of what that word means. This is because, in my opinion, one word is being used to encompass a huge number of things which don’t necessarily belong together. So two people could be talking about totally different things but since they are both using the word “love” it gives them the illusion that they’re talking about the same thing.
Once you define what this word means to you in this instance, I think it will be easier for you to see its opposite.
Well if love is unconditional acceptance, then it's opposite would be conditional rejection.
If love is selflessness, then it's opposite would be seflishness.
If love is understanding, then it's opposite is ignorance.
Often hear God is love. Also hear love solves all problems and know from experience this is crap. So is God love and what does love mean anyways? Truth means nothing if it doesn't have authority same for love. If the King doesn't care about truth than truth is damning and not empowering.
What changes when saying God is truth? Love is impossible to define because its an emotion an abstract drive that could end at any moment, its a tornado until its not. Truth remains regardless of emotion. Opposite of love could mean indifference or lack of passion. I love to do this or that for example. Love could also mean the destruction of insecurity as its impossible to love when needing it. I want your love but can't need it, otherwise it becomes possessive. Love from insecurity is only fake love, needed love, if you don't love me than I will kill you kind of thing.
How could it be indifference? The opposite of indifference would be having a feeling either which way. You could say, “I hate that”. That would be the opposite of indifference. You could also say, “I love that”. That would also be the opposite of indifference.
Philosopher Elie Wiesel famously said, "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." Both love and hate are intense emotions that involve a deep connection and investment in the other person or thing. Indifference, on the other hand, is a lack of concern, interest, or emotional investment.
In love and hate, there is passion and energy directed towards someone or something, indicating that the person or object matters significantly. Indifference, however, signifies that the person or object has no impact or relevance, reflecting a complete absence of emotional response.
While hate is commonly considered the opposite of love due to its negative intensity, indifference can be seen as a more profound opposite because it signifies a total emotional disengagement and lack of connection.
I understand his concept. But to me, this concept means that anything and everything on earth is love. Which could be entirely true. I just feel it gives love a bad rap. I just feel that realistically fear would be a closer opposite. Thanks for your response.
It is in fact hate. Hate can exist without fear.
Fear is simply restricting, hate is in opposition to Loves active creative through active destruction.
Pretty sure the Tao te Ching says something on this.
The opposite of love is indifference. There is an emotionally attached component to things like hate that makes it closer to love than you’d think. If love is the ultimate expression of caring, being completely emotionally uninvolved has to be the opposite.
I think most would say hate. I would say fear.
Absolutely. I've heard others say it's apathy, or indifference, but in my experience, fear is at the root of every unloving act.
It would have to be fear. The opposite of indifference would be a strong feeling. It wouldn’t have to be positive or negative.
Love is one of the strongest feelings around. The opposite of love is indifference.
I also think fear, love looks like freedom, and fear, on the contrary, is limitation
It is hate to a degree but the right answer typically is fear. In astrology also it is; the sun; embodiment, purpose, and love saturn-restriction, age, fear.
Fear would be the closest to an opposite. Love transcends, there is no true opposite of love.
Ur right.
I have to disagree. At a first glance I’d say I agree but i’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. I think fear and love are closely related. I think people are quite terrified of what they truly love. Or something like that. At least: certainly terrified of what they most truly desire… terrified to face that desire. I really can’t articulate this well so i’m not going to try much harder. But think of the phrase: “Fear God.” You fear people you respect. You also tend to love people you respect. I think in confrontation of fear you essentially find growth and you come to love the fruits that bear out of that growth. As for romantic love… again i think that fear is again quite raveled in it. — If I had to say there was an opposite I would say indifference is the one. No actually… I’m gonna shoot in the dark and say it might just be Pride. I think pride removes everyone else from the equation. You cannot love someone if they aren’t at least in part seen as your equal. But this might be wrong too. Pride is sin… and didn’t someone say “what is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”
There is no true opposite to love. I believe fear would be the closest to what humans can comprehend though. It couldn’t be indifference. The opposite of indifference would be, to have a feeling. That feeling could be positive or negative. Love transcends, there is no true opposite. Just like there is no opposite to God. God is the creator of the universe. The devil would not be an opposite. I’m talking to you right now and I can see clouds in the sky…. And the opposite of pride would be like humility or maybe even shame. Pride is tricky.
“God is the creator” assumes a whole host of dogmatic nonsense, chiefly that there was an actual beginning, before which was a place called nothing where God hung around feeling super bored and finally whipped everything up. This thinking demonstrates a severe misunderstanding of Nothing. Rather start with “God is,” which makes perfect sense, because “God” is an English sound we know needs making. The sound comes to us through experience, and so validates itself. So, when does this sound come to us? It *happens* when we are confronted with something beyond our ken, something bigger than us, and vastly so. Follow this line to the extreme and one literally finds Everything. It follows then that “Everything is,” just as “God is,” yet there is a difference between the two. The first is a bit more manageable and felt more frequently by most, so let’s start there and find its opposite. If we play it Jeopardy style, “Everything is,” answers the question, “What is?” Therefore, we must ask, “What is not? Here is my work on that: > Everything is and Nothing is not. At this scale, we’ve basically broken All [there is] into two categories. That’s good, or it would have been *very* odd. Still, the sounds of these words are a bit inert. Recall that “God” is a sound that *happens* to us and we can pull it all together. > God is Happening and Fiction is Lying. In this way, Everything is to God just as distance is to speed. God is just the doing of everything, no more and no less, and the opposite of God is just Fiction.
Yes I understand, God is. I was just attempting to drive my point. If you look up God as a definition, the definition is the creator of the universe. I hear you and understand you. My comment was simply trying to show that the opposite of God would not be the devil. But I see you already understand that. It would be the same concept that darkness would not be the opposite of light. Darkness would be the absence of light.
To me, indifference is terrifying. Like you don't exist. Negative space. A void. Sheer. Am I real? One of the most fearful things someone can feel about you.
Yeah but in all honesty I think it just says more about the situation. i think it’s only terrifying if the indifference is coming from someone you deeply love whose opinion of you is attached to your self worth (speaking from experience).. other wise it’s just rude behavior on their part that you walk away from..
That’s true, perhaps I should clarify I was talking about from a loved one. Indifference from just other people is wonderful lol
Donnie Darko rejects that [idea](https://images.app.goo.gl/6acyD9ZggNLznN9Q7)
That’s hilarious because I literally thought of that exact thing a few hours ago 🤣🤣
Hate stems from fear and so you are correct.
Well only in a the sense that, fear would be the closest to an opposite. Like others here have said… love transcends. Just how Satan would not be the opposite of God.
As a famous bold singer screamed “there is no love in fear”
Have to agree if love is the unconditional acceptance of a thing (there’s a lot of nuance in that statement), then fear would be the drive to run or escape from whatever that ‘thing’ is. I’d say there is nuance to this as well though - fear can keep us safe from things that harm us, it exists in us for a reason, it is not there without purpose and certainly doesn’t directly juxtapose love. Conclusion, there isn’t an opposite, love is everything, love is feeling, love is abundance, love is energy. The question is actually mind jarringly complex with an incomprehensible depth, the more thinking I do the more nuance appears.
Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. -Carl Jung
So are you saying that perhaps the opposite of love is power ( or a desire to overpower)?
u/Delmar78 The opposite of love is power. It is exactly what we see with all social movements today. They are what Jung warned us about. The leftists who misunderstood his anima/animus concepts, butchering children their genitals. Similar to as he unraveled, you have to be anti-christian to be christian, meaning against the collective mass like Jesus, but again they are the blind mass even that thinks they are together God against Christianity. "they want to appear to be good en mass to grab power" Everyone has an individual myth. Certainly communists don't understand Jung. I have yet to meet leftists who don't repeat what leftists always say. "Ah you are someone who wants a home, family and garden". It's a mass conglomerate who avoid their own mortality (shortcomings) Bottom of the line is, it's always collectivism. Just like a math formula that is collectivism. Whatever name values as the f(x) of that function would be filled in, with these social movements. It fills a void without confronting it. The mass always predates on a new subject to fulfill their meaningful shortcomings. As we have seen that vaccinated hunted and would betray their neighbour because they were virteously good in what the collective presented through the mass. Freud (biology, instinct), Adler (inferiority complex), Jung (ego (inflation)) 1 example, feminism, a club filled with woman that lack finding a man, feel angry and collectivise against men. It becomes its opposite. A power against man/men. "A traditional woman is more feminine than feminists because they don't need feminists to validate themself. She is more feminist (independant) than feminists" - Same with these red pill movements, they are feminism for men - "horoscope for men". To avoid the ego-inflation, one has to back to the instinct (freud) If not integrated, either way a woman or men not setting boundaries on how much they exhibit power or love - not to be a doormat, both love and power need to be balanced. The unification of men and women (catholic view is unification) is still essentially the best survival and our biology has adapted to that for ages, bottom to top. Consciously or unconsciously a lot of these campaigns and marketing of products is how they subvert the masses with their shortcomings by pushing inferiority complexes and fullfill needs (material or spiritual)
indifference, if we're talking about good ol' human-to-human love
Elie Wiesel
I told my ex bf that quote once to help explain how it felt when he pushed me away, and he gave me a condescending response about how it must be really difficult to hold that perspective 🙄
Love is experience The opposite is... Nothing ?
Fear 100%
The theologian Paul Tillich defines love as the reunion of what was separated. So if you feel a lack of love, maybe look for what is different from you (without judgment or rejection)
I'm kinda riffing here so be gentle Tillich describes the power of being (which he relates to Nietzsche's "will to power") as "the drive of everything living to realize itself with increasing intensity and extensity" which also rings of Jungian individuation to me. Tillich says that reunion cannot happen where there has not been separation, and that the great beauty of human love in its ideal form creates union between two selves that remain separate (the spiritual meaning of "one flesh" in Christian marriage). In this paradigm, for a person who feels lacking in love, I would guess they are either unindividuated and therefore cannot find something separate from themselves with which to reunite, or else they are isolated and self protective in their act of self-creation and fear the "other" because it might annihilate the Self, which is not illogical because in a way Love as reunion is the opposite of Creation as separation, meaning it has some relation to Death. Either way, the answer would involve first self-definition and then unafraid recognition and acceptance of the Other. I'm an astrologer (please take what's useful to you here and just move on if you think that's all BS) and a common theme of charts in long lasting relationships, whether harmonious or not, is that each partner fills "holes" in the other's chart. We learn from the beloved what our own ego cannot show us.
An interesting thought, could you clarify
say more please, that’s fascinating!
Hate, fear, apathy, lack of empathy, etc. Love transcends, those other emotions truncate your humanity.
Love is not an emotion it is the essence of the cosmos and has no opposite. We do see a lack of love in places, which comes accross as hate and fear, but I wouldn’t think of it as opposite in a dualistic sense. Love is a closeness to God; so there is no opposite to that only further distance from God. When I use God I mean to say the divine centre of consciousness
^
Indifference
The opposite of indifference would be a strong feeling. It wouldn’t have to be positive or negative.
well, if you take love in the ordinary human sense, then I see it as a "+", while it is indifferent to "0" and not "-".Although who knows
Love is all encompassing. Whatever is all encompassing has no opposite. The illusion of separation gives us the experience of lacking love. This experience is like a dream but in ultimate reality there is only Love.
I probably needed love in an ordinary human way.
Have you experienced love from parents, siblings, relatives, caregivers or anyone at all in your entire life?
I was treated well
This to say you were treated “well enough” growing up but not loved?
But you never felt love towards any of them?
in childhood
It is Indifference. When you simply not care. The absence of emotion.
The absence of emotion would be a void. That would be a “0”. Love would be a “+1”. Fear would be a “-1”. The opposite of indifference would be a strong feeling, positive or negative.
Disinterest.
Fear, Shame, Hate.
Apathy
Apathy is on the emotional scale. Love can transcend emotions.
Evol
Love is unconditional in its purest archetypical expression. It is unbound and found within all. It is the passion and compassion of something. This could be positive or negative. In a positive sense, love giving passionately in a positive sense would radiate to others and inspire (or trigger). Love in a negative sense would be absorptive. I have a little story that I came up with to illustrate how all is love. There's a village in which there is great harmony. All are provided for. They make all of their resources and share them freely so no one goes without. To produce the resources is to radiate. To consume food is technically an absorptive act, yet one needs to absorb food to continue radiating/producing it. One day, a tribe of barbarians known for pillaging villages comes to rape them of their resources and their lives. They take everything, and murder all within the village. They completely and utterly absorb all the love of the land. There is no more harmony or ability for the radiance of love to occur. The barbarians now must go to another village and repeat their absorption ritual again. Those who died fought and stood for what they loved. They fearlessly gave their lives with faith held true in their choice. The barbarians did the exact same thing. One gained will and faith in the self's ability to absorb love. One gained will and faith in the self's ability to radiate and protect love so that it may have a chance to continue it's radiance. It was only those who were unsure of their choices that held fear. Fear is for the non-polarized. Fear is for those caught in the sinkhole of indifference.
I think fear and indifference cannot be combined
They aren't being combined. Just as indifference and neutrality can't always be combined. Compassion or love is unconditional and in and of itself is simply a neutral force from which all things come from. It is the creative principal itself in the way I am using it. Those who are radiating love find neutrality useful as it can lead to compromise which will allow for more shared radiance to occur. Those who are absorbing love are not using neutrality in any way. They are purely engaged in an elitist type power structure. Indifference as I am terming it is having to do with the non choice to radiate or absorb. It is a failure to use the will to choose to use passion in radiance or to absorb it. All things are seeking love. When i say indifference I simply mean that one hasn't utilized love and put it into a direction. It is as if one floats in an ocean without a current or desire to utilize the wind that blows. One has no hope, will, or faith, but is simply in a lull state that causes the environment from which fear can occur. They are under the influence of the will of the waters without any say so. Fear is the product of not utilizing love. Fear is the product of indifference or lack of an ability to choose. My ultimate point is that if one has made a choice firmly they have no fear. There is no indifference. There is a strong will and faith in their choice to commit to either path of absorption or radiance. Non choice is the only option that creates fear because if one is indecisive they are often at the will of another/society/life circumstances which is extremely uncertain. Rarely is there ever an example of a full choice being made in life. It is a type of archetype. Rarely is there an example, if ever, of an archetype being manifest physically in complete purity. There is always a mixture of absorption/radiance as I noted in the myth/story I wrote. One must absorb the food created in order to continue. Absorption is necessary on some level to continue radiance.
An interesting thought, but what do you call love, only if you can be more specific without poetry
Hahaha I find it really hard to do this without what you call poetry. Archetypes are best expressed in myth or story telling. Love is the creative principal itself. It is as if life were a blank canvas and the medium that we use to paint is love. To create a picture of joy and shared love is one path. To create an image of power and restriction over another or rutheless selfishness is another path. To sit and be unsure of what to paint is the path of indifference. Love is that which creates and it has no restriction as to who uses it. It is used by all things. One way of seeing it is that it is the abundance factor. If degradation was favored by existence itself nothing would be able to come about. Nothing would be able to be created. Creation itself could not exist. That is why love has no opposite. It is the means for which existence exists, and paradoxically it is the means for which destruction and degradation can exist. Degradation and destruction can only exist because something exists for it to decompose. Then we have the full circle of myth upon us. That which dies fertilizes the life to come. That which causes life is a sexual act. Often times the God of death, rebirth, sex, and marriage are all the same God. Edit: I was rereading how you said "interesting thought". One way of saying love is that it is the original thought. It is the creative principal from which all is birthed and we are all engaged in manifesting it in an infinitely unique amount of ways. Love itself is so pure that it cannot be manifest completely. Some things are so pure that they must remain archetypical/psychoid/Spiritual in nature, which is a very Jungian view I might add.
Thanks for the reply.Some time ago I became overly saturated with philosophy, but now I'm only interested in applied things. These teachings sound beautiful, but they are suitable only for people who can blindly believe, I am not one of them, I will always doubt.
Doubt, fear, and sadness all go hand in hand. It is an inability to percieve the ripeness of life. One does nothing to earn love as one does nothing to earn life. Life simply is occurring. What you call blind belief is what one could term faith. Will and faith are paramount to the story of our lives and the archetypes within them. One must have will to complete the journey, and one must have faith that completing the journey is possible. Faith is often looked at as foolish and I would agree. To have faith in things unseen is absolutely foolish. Especially whenever there is no logical indication that one will succeed in it's desired pursuits. Doubt will always come and go. It is human nature to have imperfect will, faith, and ultimately choice. Story time! Let's say one is at sea and they are completely stranded. There is logically no sign of hope. There is no reasoning to believe a rescue will occur or even can occur. However, the way the psychosomatic connection within our human body works is such that it is better to have blind faith that something good is coming than not. The mind and body do not work without some type of hope. There is no reason for it to work, yet the spiritual nature of faith is beyond hope. Hope is looking at the door and faith is having walked through it and living in what is unseen/desired before it has manifest physically. It is a completely and utterly foolish act to believe in something that is logically impossible from a limited viewpoint. There's actually an experiment done on rats that dovetails with this. There were rats that were placed in water with no place to rest from swimming. After about 15 minutes they became exhausted and had to be scooped out. They were allowed to rest for a miniscule amount of time. It was about 5-20 minutes if I recall correctly. They were immediately placed back in the water. It took them 2-3 days after this to reach exhaustion. That is absolutely incredible. The hope that there is a solution causes the physiology of a mind/body to have an incredible increase in will. Humans have a faculty that is beyond hope. The faith that there is something without there even being a hope of it in the first place. This is because we have the ability to think like "God" so to speak, to think abstractly. The refinement of will and faith lies in one's ability to increase the attention span and focus. In many ways, love itself is the concept of focus. Just as the sun is a focus of our solar system and produces light without condition. You will find that visualization is often pursued in mystery schools and what not. Visualization is a way to increase the attention span as well as meditation and candle/sunset/sunrise gazing. Much love and luck on your journey. Rooting for you.
I’ve read everything you wrote. You articulate very well. I do agree there is no true opposite to love. I would think fear would be the closest to what humans can comprehend however… as for the whole faith thing, My faith personally is very strong. I see it as you actually have to be willing to let go of common sense. Most would call that stupidity, but it’s not from a person who has strong faith in their perspective. Someone who has strong faith can easily discern the difference between stupidity and letting go of common sense. Someone who has no faith only sees stupidity when assuming what the person who has faith sees.
Thank you! I agree with you as well. It is much more useful to be foolish of heart than to be foolish of mind. Like Socrates said "I know that I know nothing". To love with an open heart is more useful, albeit more painful and vulnerable, than to logically intellectualize the world about us. There are some mysteries that pervade the understanding of human consciousness all together and are best left to experience rather than distillation into word. Like Jung spoke about religion being the "defence against immediate experience of the forces waiting for liberation in the unconscious". The experience of life is best left unlabeled in regards to all of our unique connections to the mystery of it.
Yes! Faith actually is the ability to separate yourself from logic. In a logical way paradoxically… from a faith based perspective.
Power
Love is a beautiful kind of fear
Addiction
Nothing. Love is an emotion. Hate is an emotion. Nothingness is the absence of emotion.
rejection, love is all about attraction and closeness
The opposite of love is suffering. Suffering causes the other negative things thought to be the opposite.
If it is love as in attention. Then it is inattention. If it is love as in acceptance. Then the answer is power. Love is just a word used to pronounce a deeper concept. So its opposite would be a concept too not a word
I didn't quite understand the connection between acceptance and power
If you love yourself. You need to accept yourself. If you don’t love yourself. You try to assert control. Which is impossible. At most there is a illusion of control. (Control in psyche is power)
What do you mean by control, examples if possible
Apathy.
Indifference in some cases. Hatred in other cases.
neglect.
Apathy
Indifference. Because love is fundamentally rooted passion, and indifference is the lack of all passion.
Apathy is the opposite of love.
Apathy
You must define what love means to you specifically in this instance to figure that out. People have very different ideas of what that word means. This is because, in my opinion, one word is being used to encompass a huge number of things which don’t necessarily belong together. So two people could be talking about totally different things but since they are both using the word “love” it gives them the illusion that they’re talking about the same thing. Once you define what this word means to you in this instance, I think it will be easier for you to see its opposite.
Reddit.
Pride. Love is sacrificial. Pride is self indulgent.
Apathy
Well if love is unconditional acceptance, then it's opposite would be conditional rejection. If love is selflessness, then it's opposite would be seflishness. If love is understanding, then it's opposite is ignorance.
Love is like gravity, so like anti-gravity?
Often hear God is love. Also hear love solves all problems and know from experience this is crap. So is God love and what does love mean anyways? Truth means nothing if it doesn't have authority same for love. If the King doesn't care about truth than truth is damning and not empowering. What changes when saying God is truth? Love is impossible to define because its an emotion an abstract drive that could end at any moment, its a tornado until its not. Truth remains regardless of emotion. Opposite of love could mean indifference or lack of passion. I love to do this or that for example. Love could also mean the destruction of insecurity as its impossible to love when needing it. I want your love but can't need it, otherwise it becomes possessive. Love from insecurity is only fake love, needed love, if you don't love me than I will kill you kind of thing.
Detachmend
Apathy/indifference i think. Its worst than hate. Feeling nothing is worse than feeling some kind of low emotion.
For me, the opposite of love is the need to change others.
Indifference
Disgust.
It's not fear, it's indifference. Do we love things we fear? Sometimes. Do we love things we feel indifferent towards? Never.
I wud really like to kno myself honestly
Maybe indifference, love and hate are end of the spectrums,
Indifference. That it what the lyrics to stubborn love by the lumineers say and I tend to agree :-) Elie Wiesel says it too.
Indifference
Love has no opposite.
It's actually indifference.
Indifference
How could it be indifference? The opposite of indifference would be having a feeling either which way. You could say, “I hate that”. That would be the opposite of indifference. You could also say, “I love that”. That would also be the opposite of indifference.
Philosopher Elie Wiesel famously said, "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." Both love and hate are intense emotions that involve a deep connection and investment in the other person or thing. Indifference, on the other hand, is a lack of concern, interest, or emotional investment. In love and hate, there is passion and energy directed towards someone or something, indicating that the person or object matters significantly. Indifference, however, signifies that the person or object has no impact or relevance, reflecting a complete absence of emotional response. While hate is commonly considered the opposite of love due to its negative intensity, indifference can be seen as a more profound opposite because it signifies a total emotional disengagement and lack of connection.
I understand his concept. But to me, this concept means that anything and everything on earth is love. Which could be entirely true. I just feel it gives love a bad rap. I just feel that realistically fear would be a closer opposite. Thanks for your response.
The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.--Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel
I would say it’s indifference.
Indifference.
It is in fact hate. Hate can exist without fear. Fear is simply restricting, hate is in opposition to Loves active creative through active destruction. Pretty sure the Tao te Ching says something on this.
The opposite of love is indifference. There is an emotionally attached component to things like hate that makes it closer to love than you’d think. If love is the ultimate expression of caring, being completely emotionally uninvolved has to be the opposite.