From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Wed Jun 25 2003 - 21:32:29 BST
Hi Duncan, Sam, all,
Duncan, I appear to have offended your liberal sensibilities. I try not to
identify with either camp.
I may respond in more detail, but first I'd like to know if you agree or
disagree with putting compassion as a lower form of love than romantic love.
My comments about compassion were aimed at depicting it as a higher form of
love.
Sam, I was a bit surprised that you would go along with putting personal
romantic love above compassion which I see as Christian love. The Jesus
depicted in the gospels never indulged in romantic love, for example. Was he
missing out on the highest level of human love?
I would also ask that you consider the following:
Romantic love - lust = celebrity.
The more I think about it, the more I think that when you remove sexuality
from romantic love, what is left over is very much like the love we have for
celebrities. This parallel of romantic love and celebrity lends support to
personal romantic love as best describing a social level love and compassion
as a non-personal 4th level love.
Thanks,
Steve
> Steve,
>
>>> when someone attacks one's ideas (intellectual self) we
>>> do not see it as a personal attack
>
> Then I need no tact when responding to your comments? :)
>
>>> Pity is a mode of contempt not a mode of love though liberals
>>> often mistake it for love
>
> I take objection to absurdly relating contempt and pity and molesting
> its synonyms to make a clumsy political slur. Pity is not the same as
> condescension - that is what you will find justified by the political
> right. I give a view of pity and a defence of liberal benefaction.
>
> Pity, the emotion, is generally conceived as the result of empathy - the
> imagining of oneself in another's position. Pity is a negative feeling
> generated by the experience. When acting though the emotional experience
> of another's perspective, any action that transpires is helping another
> but as though it were oneself.
>
>>> liberals have sympathy for the poor.
>>> To see poor people makes them feel bad and results in a
>>> sympathetic desire for their own bad feeling to end through
>>> ending the poverty that caused it.
>
> I emphasise the empathetic nature of pity which is otherwise obfuscated
> in the statement "makes them feel bad".
>
>>> A compassionate response is "disinterested" in the sense that
>>> the compassionate person has a desire to relieve other's suffering
>>> or bring others happiness but does not have a personal interest.
>
> The redefinition of the pity synonym 'compassion' alludes to the
> inclusion of altruism whereas your 'pity' does not. Altruism, defined as
> an action benefiting another while harming oneself, is desperately
> flawed for reasoning motivation.
>
> I'll demonstrate using your above statement - the subject "does not have
> a personal interest" yet their action is motivated in order to satisfy
> their own "desire to relieve...". Your own desire is your self-interest!
> It is the same desire satisfaction syllogism as your definition of
> 'pity' yet you tried weakly to add altruistic intent to 'compassion' and
> ignore the origination of the feeling in 'pity'. This was, as far as I
> can determine, only to give a pejorative sense to the term liberal.
>
> The empathetic response should not be belittled by the absence of a
> mythical concept. Without this, your distinction between the two seems
> to be 'feeling' pain of others (pity) and 'seeing' pain of others
> (compassion) of which the second I consider weaker.
>
> Immorality, criminality, and anti-social personality disorders are
> examples of individuals unable to determine the consequences of their
> actions through understanding their emotional effect on others by being
> unable to view the world from other's perspectives - i.e. lack of
> empathy - psychopathic behaviour.
>
> We prompt the 'perspective shifts' of empathy to teach children
> morality: - "you wouldn't like it if someone did that to you" says the
> parent, the child shifts perspective to that of little Jimmy he just
> thumped and feels bad, perspective returns to themselves and they feel
> regret with the result of not wishing to repeat the action. A moral rule
> is learnt.
>
> Empathetic responses to suffering may appear as strictly altruistic yet
> the empathiser, as I shall describe later, does it for selfish benefit.
> Outward benefits such as social acceptability are sought by others
> unaware of the means, so they seek to emulate its appearance for their
> own benefit - these are the sanctimonious and the pious. Not the
> liberal. The trigger for their reaction would be identification of a
> situation and not the automatic emotional response. Seeing and not
> feeling - which has much the same end effect when responding to
> suffering but not when choosing your actions. Seeing alone can only
> judge the result of an action post facto and not imagine it before
> performing something unfamiliar. To create a visual image of a reaction
> prior to an act necessitates empathy to imagine the emotions involved!
> Feeling outside of one's own immediate situation facilitates prediction
> and pre-emption - reaction to seeing alone, does not.
>
> Q. Why should one try and empathise with others if it causes pain - is
> it altruistic!?
> A. Feel and share someone else's joy and there will be little doubt!
> Feeling many other's happiness is better than one's own in isolation.
> Feel the delight of suffering lifted. Feel the pleasure of your own
> child glee. Empathy is selfishly motivated yet can have the appearance
> of altruism. It is a selfishness that is self stoking, non-destructive,
> does not conflict with others and universally beneficial.
>
> Many seek descriptions of Oneness. I would suggest a community thinking
> and acting through each others perspective offers the much sought after
> unified whole - it acts as one.
>
> Incidentally, the liberal pities all those around an illiberal while
> they ignorantly wreck pain on others. The political right requires the
> parental prompting to respect, understand and feel from other's
> perspectives so that they may be shamed and understand the effects of
> their actions. Pity is caring and those on the right often seem not to
> care at all.
>
> D
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
> [mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk] On Behalf Of Steve Peterson
> Sent: 24 June 2003 19:31
> To: moq_discuss@moq.org
> Subject: Re: Re: MD The Transformation of Love
>
>
> Hi Platt, Wim, Sam, Scott, all
>
> Steve said:
>>> I think you have agape and amor reversed. I see compassion as a
>>> higher form of love than romantic love. Romantic love (amor) has an
>
>>> "I'll love you if you'll love me" quality to it. It is indeed a
>>> "personal love" which makes it a lower form of love than compassion
>>> (agape) which is a disinterested love that transcends self-ishness.
>>
>
> Platt replied:
>> Transcends selfishness? I think not. As a generalization, liberal
>> types
>> want to be admired for their "compassion." At least they talk
> incessantly
>> about how wonderful it would be if everyone was as caring and
>> compassionate as they--with other people's money, of course. :-)
>
> Steve:
> Scott had it right about the type of compassion I'm talking about. The
> type that liberals want to be admired for and that you are railing
> against is their pity for the oppressed. Pity is a mode of contempt not
> a mode of love though liberals often mistake it for love.
>
> I see compassion as the highest form of love. Liberals have sympathy
> for the poor. To see poor people makes them feel bad and results in a
> sympathetic desire for their own bad feeling to end through ending the
> poverty that caused it.
>
> A compassionate response is "disinterested" in the sense that the
> compassionate person has a desire to relieve other's suffering or bring
> others happiness but does not have a personal interest. By contrast the
> person in romantic love wants the object of his affection to suffer for
> him as he suffers for her. He wants to be loved by her as he loves. A
> compassionate love wants nothing in return.
>
> I personally find the feeling I get of compassion to be the same as that
> in appreciation of beauty. Of course here again we have a contrast.
> There is the lustful (eros) kind of appreciation of beauty that seeks to
> posses that beauty, and there is the the higher form that just
> blissfully experiences without seeking to possess.
>
> Platt said:
>> As for Tarzan and unborn babies not being human, you've ignored human
>> potential. An ape will always be an ape, but Tarzan has the potential
> to
>> speak like you and I.
>
> Steve:
> Wim raised the same point and I agree entirely. I didn't mean to
> suggest that participating in human culture as a necessary part of a
> definition of humanity solves the whole abortion issue. However, for me
> it solves the question of whether killing of an unborn fetus is the
> equivalent of murder as is often argued by anti-abortionists. It's not.
> In an abortion, there is a killing of a potential for humanity, but no
> existing humanity could be killed. I do think that that potential needs
> to be taken seriously and am in agreement with Wim as to legal
> consequences.
>
> Platt said:
>> Finally, a self-aware human doesn't stop at the social level.
>> Internally
>> you and I view our ideas as an integral part of our personalities.
> Viewed
>> by others, we may be seen as purely social level creatures, mere
> ciphers
>> in a sea of humanity. But that view can lead to all sorts of bad
> things,
>> like Communism for starters. The sanctity of the individual,
> comprising
>> all levels, is the foundation for political liberty and currently the
>> pattern most capable of responding to DQ. Lest there be any doubt
> about an
>> individual comprising all levels, consider this quote from Pirsig:
>>
>> "The MOQ divides the hominem, or 'individual' into four parts:
>> inorganic,
>> biological, social and intellectual. Once this analysis is made, the
> ad
>> hominem argument can be defined more clearly: It is an attempt destroy
> the
>> intellectual patterns of an individual by attacking his social status.
> In
>> other words, a lower form of evolution is being used to destroy a
> higher
>> form. That is evil." Note 140-Lila's child
>
> Steve:
> I didn't mean to eliminate participation in intellectual patterns from
> the individual or the self. i agree that these are part of the forest
> of static patterns that comprise the self. That's fine with me if you'd
> like to add participation in intellectual patterns to your definition of
> humanity. I don't think it is necessary, however.
>
> In fact, your ad hominen quote supports my case. When someone attacks
> one's social self we consider the attack "personal." On the other hand,
> when someone attacks one's ideas (intellectual self)we do not see it as
> a personal attack. So the "person" that it is being attacked is the the
> personality I was talking about as a social pattern of value.
>
> Thanks,
> Steve
>
>
>
> MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
> Mail Archives:
> Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
> Nov '02 Onward -
> http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
> MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
>
> To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
> http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
>
>
>
>
> MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
> Mail Archives:
> Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
> Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
> MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
>
> To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
> http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
>
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jun 25 2003 - 21:33:37 BST