I was at a party a few years ago and made a flip comment about an unpleasant situation that "I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy." Someone else, equally flip, asked me who my worst enemy was and I was surprised that a name came from my lips without any hesitation whatsoever.
But I'm defining "enemy" differently. My worst enemy is someone who I believe would do me harm if she knew how. The only thing that protects me from her is that she's immensely lazy, not very bright, and not very imaginative, so she hasn't figured out an effective way to try and harm me, personally.
But she's done her level best to get people fired from their jobs and sent to jail in return for imagined slights, and she'd do the same to me if she could come up with a way to frame me.
So blah blah blah about that, but I can define someone as an enemy without feeling anything much towards them except wariness. There's no particular emotional entanglement on my part, at least not one that I'm aware of.
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I mean, clearly, different choices are made based on different priorities.
Why state explicitly different priorities?
To me, choices are facts you can point to.
Priorities get dangerously close into motivations, which as an outside observer, you can only guess at. So why muddy it up with your own guesses?
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But I'm defining "enemy" differently. My worst enemy is someone who I believe would do me harm if she knew how. The only thing that protects me from her is that she's immensely lazy, not very bright, and not very imaginative, so she hasn't figured out an effective way to try and harm me, personally.
But she's done her level best to get people fired from their jobs and sent to jail in return for imagined slights, and she'd do the same to me if she could come up with a way to frame me.
So blah blah blah about that, but I can define someone as an enemy without feeling anything much towards them except wariness. There's no particular emotional entanglement on my part, at least not one that I'm aware of.
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