Comments | zorander22: On Love and Understanding

zorander22

On Love and Understanding

May 21, 2006 22:44

Greetings once again! I trust all of you who celebrate Victoria Day are having a good time! Today's post will be a bit on the nature of love. But first, an update of my life, and a current... frustration ( Read more... )

Leave a comment

Back to all threads

serpentesse May 22 2006, 03:56:01 UTC

Thanks for posting this. I don't think I agree with what you define as hate - does a lack of understanding really equate hate? Maybe the actions can be expressed as hateful, but that's a completely different thing.

zorander22 May 22 2006, 04:00:32 UTC

I'm glad you liked it. I don't think a lack of understanding necessarily equals hate, but that a lack of understanding is necessary for hate to exist.

serpentesse May 22 2006, 04:04:58 UTC

That, I agree with.

sublunamsusurri May 22 2006, 06:25:10 UTC

Perhaps hate is also a lack of willingness to understand as well. Its sometimes far easier to villify then to try to comprehend.

There was something about marriage from a movie that stuck with me, which kinda ties in to the whole creating something together idea. It was something along the lines that we get married so that there is someone to witness our lives. Someone, I guess, who will know and share the mundane and extraordinary, and with whom you can create a shared meaning of existance. If that makes any sense, and if it doesn't, I blame the late hour and too much work ;).

(The comment has been removed)

Re: Shall We Dance? zorander22 May 22 2006, 16:19:32 UTC

Thank you :) I think marriage can be a beautiful thing... it saddens me to hear people who give up on it before they even try.

i_am_the_owl May 22 2006, 13:04:03 UTC

You're making the assumption that hate is always irrational and based on a lack of understanding.

zorander22 May 22 2006, 16:07:05 UTC

I agree, thank you for posting :)

I think that's beautiful... what movie is it?

sublunamsusurri May 23 2006, 03:19:07 UTC

Shall we dance, yes. I know its a corny dancing movie but I liked it.

i_am_the_owl May 22 2006, 13:02:46 UTC

That's naive thinking. There are plenty of people that I like just fine until I start developing an understanding of them. Knowing why a person behaves a certain way or why they are a certain way doesn't change the fact that they are and are behaving in that way.

guntar May 22 2006, 15:47:47 UTC

I agree that there are people I like fine until I understand them. Then you can get this sort of sick feeling in your stomach whenever you're around them.

I also agree that most love is the result of an inadequate knowledge of the person. I've known many, many couples who fall in love and then come to understand the person better, and can't stand them anymore. When you don't know a person completely, you're able to fill in all the cracks with what you want to believe is there.

However, I do agree with Dan when he says that understanding destroys hate. I find that, instead, it generates pity.

zorander22 May 22 2006, 16:12:20 UTC

Yes, that's true. There are some people of whom it's easy to say they're not so bad until you get to know them... But I think that that understanding is still superficial, compared to their core. If you understand them fully, then I believe you cannot hate them.

Perhaps I didn't address this clearly enough in the post. There are couples that think they are in love with each other... but if they don't know enough about each other, what exactly are they loving? It is this skewed image in their mind that they love, not what the other person is. Once you go deeper and see some of those flaws, it is easy to come to anger and feel as though now you see what the person is truly like. I think you just need to go even deeper than that.

guntar May 22 2006, 17:02:27 UTC

I know what you're saying, but I think it's a matter of degree. You can never completely know another person, just as you can never completely know yourself. As Lacan says, there's a cypher behind the cypher of existence.

There is no line where you can say, "OK, now I understand this person." Whenever you love someone, you love your conception of the person. There's always something that you cannot know. To say that you need to understand a person fully to love them is to make love impossible.

zorander22 May 22 2006, 17:07:11 UTC

Good points. I agree, you can never fully know another person... If you did, it would be as if you had that whole other person inside of you; their point of view would no longer be unique.

However, you can understand their core... I think everyone shares the same core, the same fundamental principle, even though they all have different views. So while you may not be able to fully know another person, you can still understand the basis for their actions... and ultimately realize that basis is also shared by you, and by everyone else. This is the secret to universal love. And remember... "it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye"

zorander22 May 22 2006, 16:08:36 UTC

Clearly, if you only know the surface of a person, and then get to know a bit more... you often are going to find much that you don't like, so it appears as though understanding can lead to hate. I'm suggesting that if you go deeper, and truly understand the person... and why the behave the way they do... you would not have that hate.

i_am_the_owl May 22 2006, 18:18:15 UTC

If someone is causing me to hate them, me understanding that their behavior is caused by deep-rooted emotional trauma caused by years of abuse, that still doesn't excuse their behavior.

I hate people for what they do (application) not why they're doing it (abstraction).

Back to all threads