From an
emotional point of view, Love and
Hate are opposites; the positive and negative
extremes of "like" and "dislike".
From a
Holistic point of view, the
second half of the above
sentence is the correct part--"like" and "dislike", along with
fear,
desire,
sadness, and whatever-else, are emotions. Therefore they *do* work on a
sliding scale, much like we imagine. Love, however, does *not* qualify as an
emotion in most
philosophies, and "hate", in these
paradigms, is often summarily
rejected as some sort of f*cked-up
illusion.
From a
Chaotic point of view--and this is Chaos the realm of
study and
practice, not chaos-the-lack-of-organization--Hate
is Love. Why? Well,
Chaoists (along with many
mystics) place Love outside the
realm of the
emotional; therefore
Love has no
opposite. But they aren't so
silly as to
deny that there is such a thing as Hate; everyone who's seen or felt it knows it's real, in some way at least. The theory that
Hate is Love relies on Love's being a sphere where the other "feelings" we have are
merely lines; there are
realms,
sectors, AREAS of Love, not just
degrees like there are with the
emotions.
Hate is simply one of the realms of Love; it is Love
expressed as its own opposite--something that only a
sphere could do, I guess. This is a pretty
abstract conjecture to be making, I know, and the only
reason I've ever
bought it is that Hate, when you
taste it, is like
Love in the Mirror. It's like watching
water burn...
But
anyway. Now, from a
straight-up Magickal point of view, Love is simply the word for
a god; that
highest thing that
Nietzsche says the
Creator "Hung above us" so that we had
something to aspire to, and
by aspiring to it, we
worship and
sanctify Life itself. Heavy
sentence, no? *lol* But surely, you're thinking, the
"highest thing" like that must have an opposite--Hate, right? Okay, well, no. In fact,
the highest things are the things most
renound for NOT having an
opposite -- Love, Will, The One, Laughter, etc etc
depending on who you read. Hate in
magickal terminology--and this is
magick-the-field-of-study-and-practice, not
30-easy-steps-to-magick-by-Llewyllyn--is
another way of USING Love, and one which, in the
correct circumstances, can be just as
sacred,
pure and
useful as Love can.
It's also
easier, in
any terminology, to Hate than it is to Love, whatever
theory you accept about their
relationship. It is also, in
any terminology (any
rational terminology, I should say), BETTER to Love than to Hate, except, as I said before, for certain magickal purposes. It produces
better results,
better health, and
better understanding of the world to Love when one would normally Hate. For instance, if I were to take the Hate-Path when my
writeups got The Treatment from some
disgruntled noders, I wouldn't have to
work at it at all. I'd just
sit here and swear to myself, and maybe
say something nasty, because Hate
burns if you leave it in too long. Taking the Love-route not only
sounds hippie, it's
against our first instincts when we think we're wronged. But all of the
above terminologies, with a
little more study, also provide
methods to induce the Love-over-Hate response; one of them is
Laughter. Believe it or not, by
laughing to myself at my
negative reps, I can
pretty much instantly transmute Hate to Love. The
burn goes away.
This is
enough for me personally to ascribe (for now) to the
theory that Love is indeed the Stuff, and that
Hate is just what happens if you cook it wrong. Otherwise, how could something so simple
transform one straight into the other, without passing through any place in between? It's not like my
Hate, when exposed to Laughter or whateverelse, rides the
whole spectrum of feeling through
neutrality and up into
Love. It's just
wham!--Hate, then Love. Like
adding a molecule and WHAM! Where you once had
oxygen, now you have
water.
Anyway, that's what I know. Does anybody have any
other or
further theories on what Hate is and where it comes from? Love to
hear 'em...