Love and Hate

   

    How many people are walking around carrying hate in their heart? How many people cling to their bitterness? To what degree does this poison define the masses? Why do we have such an inability to let go? It seems to me that these are the questions that have been incessantly present since the dawn of humanity. They can be ignored only at our collective peril. We can no longer accept the myth that we are islands unto ourselves. We must accept the obvious and incontrovertible truth that we are inclusively deeply connected all the way down to the core of our collective ontological existence. We in the twenty first century must give up the last vestiges of the idols of the enlightenment. The enlightenment held that we were somehow distinct and separate from one another. For many of us it is easier to think of the world as a series of disconnected random occurrences from which no clear meaningful pattern will ever emerge. This then gives people the feeling of freedom to divorce themselves from the consequences of their actions. It is a sort of existentialists nightmare of sorts. I would speculate that many people bury themselves in meaningless pursuits in order to avoid these very questions. Therefore how could it not be the responsibility of us all to awake the masses from the darkness of mental slumber? Is it not the job of the poet to stir within us all an awakening of perception to the world around us and in us? Is it not the job of the prophet to scream at the top their lungs to force us to see that the shit around us is of our own making? Is it not the job of the philosopher to provoke deeper meaningful questions from the depths of our collective yearnings? Is it not the job of the teacher to teach more than regurgitation? Is it not the job of the friend to walk alongside to listen and to then faithfully hold up a mirror?

    It is strange that roughly 81% of the U.S. population lives in cities or suburbs and yet we are seemingly more disconnected than ever. Our collective feelings concerning this conundrum are even further complexing. People yearn for community and yet they spurn the very things necessary to find it. In many ways my generation is different than the ones that came before. However in this respect I fail to see any sizeable difference. We too find it incredibly difficult to engender deep community. It is genuinely exhausting and complicated to fulfill our obligations to both our friends and career responsibilities. Many find it near impossible to think of anything besides the endless stream of demands on their time. However at the end of the day we are unavoidably faced with what we want out of life. This question demands an answer and refuses deflection. To seemingly refuse and return to the slumber of incessant movement in the interest of avoidance is, in and of itself, an answer to the question.

    There is wisdom in the East and we in the West would be fools to ignore it. Much of eastern thought (Buddhism) has maintained that we are deeply mistaken if we fundamentally don’t understand our identity to be rooted first and foremost within the context of the sea of humanity. It is here ,within being connected to one another, that we can experience what it truly means to be authentically human. We must first understand that we are all ineluctably connected. Then we must learn to embrace this dauntingly beautiful reality and to shed our fear.

    As we enter into the insanity of the American capitalistic holiday of Christmas, where we worship at the altar of insatiable materialism, I would like to stop and consider this idea of humanity par example. Regardless of what flavor of religion you favor I would ask you to stop and consider the beauty within this Christian narrative. In order to understand the paradigm shifting nature of this story I think it is important to do some contextual work first. Plato argued that things that ontologically existed could primarily be defined as things which possessed the power to affect other things. Furthermore things were perfect insofar as they could affect others and imperfect insofar as they could be affected by others. This then is why Nietzsche describes life as the will to power. But what if we took that paradigm and flipped it on its head? What if we said that things increase in power insofar as they are able to both affect and be affected by others? In short, what if we gain power by the sheer ability to be in relationships? This I think is what the Jesus narrative so beautifully does. It says that the very nature of the divine is found within humanity itself in its very ability to relate to one another. This I think is exquisite to consider that beauty is found in physical messiness and not in some abstract etherial immutable realm. Again and again the greatest teachers across time and space have told us to love. We are taught to accept the absurdity of life and to live a life inspired by love. So in this season of advent I hope that I will remind myself to see the world in terms of redeemable love whatever that means. As my friends at Netzer would probably say: What that means God only knows, or perhaps thats just a bunch of bullshit spiritual prose. Maybe we are the ones God has been waiting for and perhaps he has been waiting at our door. He is waiting at our door. Now please go and live and love well!

Comments

[David]

Please provide examples of how the greatest teachers have instructed us to accept the absurdity of life. I'm not sure how absurdity might harmonize with spirituality.

[Florin Paladie]

I think the title you chose is poignant, though apparently simplistic. At its core love means connecting, relating to the other. Love and isolation are mutually exclusive. You're bringing an important point in that we need to go beyond our established relations/communities to those who are DIFFERENT than us so as to fully tap the reservoir of love. When we're not wholeheartedly open to this we have to admit that we're allowing hate into our being.

There's really no middle ground between LOVE and HATE. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can make choices that nourish our souls and can contribute to the well being of the whole humanity.

[David]

The East can also teach us much about humanity's connection to everything else. Completely accepting other people, creatures and things is an essential step on the path to enlightenment.