My thoughts on "universal love"

Started by zarus tathra, May 15, 2014, 12:59:32 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

zarus tathra

In the end of the book/movie 1984, Winston defiantly tells O'Brien, his interrogator, that "love will conquer hatred," which seems to imply that love hurts the Party and hatred supports the party. O'Brien even tells him that "hatred is as necessary as love, or perhaps more necessary," as if hatred were the basis of their system. Right afterwards, O'Brien tells Winston that the ultimate goal is to get him to love the party and Big Brother, something of a contradiction to the preceding conversation.

This illustrates something that should be very obvious to anyone who isn't a hippie, which is that "the system," and really, any system, relies on love much more than it does hatred, that any hatred that it attempts to instill is calculated to increase love of the system. That is why it does not matter which country Oceania is at war with; what matters is that the people love the system.

Generalizing this basic idea, it seems that anyone proposing to instill "universal love" is also trying to pave the way for Orwellian government, and vice versa. Stalin, Napoleon, Hitler, all these men talked of universal this and universal that. And of course, Christianity played no small part in inspiring the West's will to conquer. Not even the Dali Llama is immune; his book "The Compassionate Life" talks about how his ideal is for a "benevolent" world government that controls all access to weaponry.
?"Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed, when there is a lack of will." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Ideals are imperfect. Morals are self-serving.

AllPurposeAtheist

Dude, you probably ought to go outside a bit more and mingle with people.
I don't buy into universal love anymore than universal hatred. 1984 was pushing the boundaries quite a bit of the 'what if' world.
All hail my new signature!

Admit it. You're secretly green with envy.

Jason78

Failure to love the Party is a failure of the Party.   And in the end Winston was conditioned to love the Party.  So much so that he'd betray his lover and himself. 
Winner of WitchSabrinas Best Advice Award 2012


We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real
tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -Plato

stromboli

We had universal love back in the 60's with the Hippie movement. Lasted until they got out of college. Now they are old men and women with Defense Department contracts.

Solitary

Failure to love the Party is a failure of the Party.   And in the end Winston was conditioned to love the Party.  So much so that he'd betray his lover and himself. 

:syda: Sounds like organized religion to me.  :axe: Solitary
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

PickelledEggs

Quote from: zarus tathra on May 15, 2014, 12:59:32 AM
This illustrates something that should be very obvious to anyone who isn't a hippie, which is that "the system," and really, any system, relies on love much more than it does hatred, that any hatred that it attempts to instill is calculated to increase love of the system. That is why it does not matter which country Oceania is at war with; what matters is that the people love the system.

Love and hate has nothing to do with "the system". "the system" relies on fear, control, and cooperation.

SilentFutility

Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on May 15, 2014, 05:49:21 AM
Dude, you probably ought to go outside a bit more and mingle with people.
I don't buy into universal love anymore than universal hatred. 1984 was pushing the boundaries quite a bit of the 'what if' world.
Over 15k posts on an internet forum and accusing someone with just over 1k posts of spending too much time inside.
I've amassed quite a post count myself but I'm not going around finger pointing and implying people are saddos for posting here.

1984 was supposed to push those boundaries and is full of symbolism and metaphors which translate to potential events in the future rather than being a 100% accurate depiction of them.
Animal farm mimicked events in the Russian Revolution but that doesn't mean George Orwell thought the Russian Revolution was orchestrated by talking pigs...


Shol'va

"Universal" as a concept to me seems to imply a sort of absolute, in the sense that it is applicable across the board without exception.
People posess the capacity for love, hatred, or both, but not all people posess them both. As such, I would be inclined to say that "universal love" does not exist.

stromboli

I thought the hippie reference was apt because that was one of their themes, everybody love everybody else. If you have a utopian society where everyone is fed, no one disagrees on any ideology, and all there is to do is mingle and have sex, maybe. The closest I can come to that is the Eloi in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine" and they were the victims of the Morlocks. It is a utopian idea but a practical impossibility.

Shiranu

I just realized my post didn't post... that's obnoxious...

QuoteThis illustrates something that should be very obvious to anyone who isn't a hippie, which is that "the system," and really, any system, relies on love much more than it does hatred...

Completely disagreed, especially depending on what system we are talking about, but okay.

Quote...that any hatred that it attempts to instill is calculated to increase love of the system.

Aaaaand then you completely contradict yourself.

Love in that sense is no more "love" than the wife has for the husband who abuses her and their children. To use extremes (as 1984 does), do you honestly believe the "love" North Koreans have for their dear leader, their fanatical worship of him, is anything similar to the love that say Scandinavians have for the benefits their government provides them? Or if we to make a more accurate opposite, a country whom's government say's nothing about what people should or shouldn't think, nor promotes it's goods or it's bads, and yet it's people still loved it because of the benefits and fairness the government provided and treated them with.

You use the worst examples of "universal" yet ignore all the instances where it works, and infact that many of the great benefits of modern society are dependent on universality. I cant help but wonder if you are pushing some agenda :).
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

SGOS

Quote from: stromboli on May 15, 2014, 10:09:30 AM
We had universal love back in the 60's with the Hippie movement. Lasted until they got out of college. Now they are old men and women with Defense Department contracts.
I loved the 60's.  I still look back at those years with a great fondness.  I thought the world was finally headed in the right direction, although some of the hippies were kind of pretentiously competing with the others to be more back to nature than thou or cooler than thou.  While we made comments about the plastic society that existed around us, the hippie movement had a certain plasticity of its own, and I was quite sure many of the hard core members of the movement would eventually sell out.  It wasn't like many were actually rejecting the foulness of a corrupted society.  It was more like they were taking a 10 year vacation from it.  You know, before they got into defense contracts and corporate take overs.

However, I think some lasting and positive social change did come out of those years, and even while some of the hippies eventually condemned the movement for all the drugs, sex, and rock and roll, I still think the loosening of sexual attitudes was a very good thing.  I don't have much good to say about the drugs.  I'm neutral about that part of it.  But I never could understand why anyone would get their nose out of joint by the rock and roll, which had been a part of society 10 years before the coming of the flower children.

the_antithesis

Universal love is nonsensical, anyway. It's like saying everyone is special is the same as saying no one is.

zarus tathra

#12
Point is, if more people outright hated the system, then the system would cease to exist, while if the only thing people did was "love" each other, then the system would probably still exist for the most part.

All those posts full of petty, effeminate sarcasm, and none of you seem to have grasped my basic point.
?"Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed, when there is a lack of will." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Ideals are imperfect. Morals are self-serving.

Shiranu

Quote from: zarus tathra on May 24, 2014, 07:28:18 AM
Point is, if more people outright hated the system, then the system would cease to exist, while if the only thing people did was "love" each other, then the system would probably still exist for the most part.

All those posts full of petty, effeminate sarcasm, and none of you seem to have grasped my basic point.

Didn't miss it, nor do I quite understand how effeminate is an insult, but so what? The system falls, the system lives. Do you really think no one has ever thought to themselves, "If everyone REALLY hated a system, it wouldn't last"? That is a concept I think most people have down by 3rd grade.

Ultimately you said something everyone knows (a system can only thrive on "love" or forced "love", and will fail if it's hated enough)... wow, colour me amazed!
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

the_antithesis

Quote from: zarus tathra on May 24, 2014, 07:28:18 AM
none of you seem to have grasped my basic point.

That's because we do not care what you have to say.