From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jun 27 2003 - 16:36:15 BST
Hey Johnny,
Thanks for the comments.
JOHNNY
> I think compassion implies hypocrisy (as it demands an impossible ideal,
> something that can only be strived for and which we all fall short of
> achieving, but which we all agree is an ideal)...
RICK
Fair enough. But personally I just don't find it very helpful to believe
that compassion is some impossible ideal and everyone who falls short of it
is a hypocrite. Okay... so we're all hypocrites now what? Moreover, I find
it counter-intuitive to think that compassion is something that only a
handful of 'saints' really understand.
JOHNNY
...and romantic love is mixed
> with biological emotions.
RICK
I do think romantic love is 'mixed' with biological emotions, but I also
think that agape is a part of the 'mix'. Both passion and compassion are
ingredients.
JOHNNY
I realize that you are saying that by definition
> amor is different from eros and agape, I just question whether anything
> actually can be put into any of those neat catagories in real life. I
think
> romantic love and jealousy are hard to discern sometimes.
RICK
No argument there. The categories are only as good as they are helpful.
Personally, I've had a hard time deciding where love of 'family' fits in.
The way I love my parents certainly isn't 'amor', yet it seems more
particularized than 'agape'. Moreover, it seems to have a biological
component as well but certainly one that is different than "lust" (unless
you're a Freudian maybe). Any thoughts?
> RICK
> >Moreover, I don't think compassion *needs* to be 'intellectually
realized'
> >at all, as I have said, I think it exists quite comfortably on the social
> >level.
JOHNNY
> I think it required philosophy. It required thinking about society as a
> whole.
RICK
Disagree. I think a certain component of compassion is a prerequisite to a
successful society. Social patterns value compassion because it fosters
cooperation which makes for a stronger society. Moreover, compassion is a
behavior, not an abstract thought.
> >RICK
> >But the love we know as a baby (for our mother I presume you mean) isn't
> >'amor'. It's a biological thing. All 'individual loves' aren't alike.
> >What makes amor unique is that it is an individual, loving an individual,
> >on the basis on their individual characteristics (what Pirsig might call
> >their 'ideas') as opposed to merely on the basis of their status as a
> >social
> >pattern.
JOHNNY
> Sure, I'd go as far as to say that no individual loves are alike. Some
are
> 80%eros, 10%compassion, etc, 5%convenience, etc...
RICK
I'd go for that.
JOHNNY
> Well, that's my point. The troubadors and the greeks may have been the
ones
> that invented the distinctions, but they didn't invent the idea of two
> people loving each other.
RICK
Well, they didn't invent the idea of two people loving each other
biologically, or the idea of two people loving each other as comrades. And
while they likely didn't "invent" the idea of amor, it was surely "invented"
by the culture which their art reflected. Perhaps we might say they
protected, popularized, and developed the new and delicate notion of amor
and the notions of individuality it represented.
JOHNNY
> There was a greater need to write about intellectual ideas of compassion
> than there was a need to write about individual love. The static latches
> were in place for individual love all over the place in biological and
> social patterns. But the intellectual idea of compassion required new
> static latches in the form of religious texts. It was a new idea and
needed
> to be spread somehow.
RICK
On the contrary Johnny, it was the emergence of Society from Biology which
required compassion. But I sense this dispute is becoming interminable.
JOHNNY
No one needed to spread the idea of people loving one
> other person, attraction and jealousy and lust and fear and pride took
care
> of that. The troubadors perhaps romanticized those base emotions into
> something palatible to people who now expected an intellectual basis for
> things.
RICK
Disagree. Your getting mixed up with eros again. Can you really not see
the differences? Eros is the biological drive, it doesn't care at all about
the lover's individual personality. No personalities are required for eros,
social patterns aren't required either. Animals experience eros. Animals
don't experience compassion though. But social patterns do. They need to
because their survival depends on willing cooperation between the physical
people that populate the society. Such a society needs no concept of
'individuality' at all. In fact, the very notion of compassion seems to
flow quite naturally from the idea of a society in which there are no
individuals, everyone is equally ruled by the social patterns, and therefore
literally 'treat others like themselves'. This makes the society more
stable. The more stable the society, the better the chance it has at
supporting a 4th level (Intellectual or Personal or whatever). This is the
only one of the three categories that REQUIRES the concept of individuality
and with that concept comes amor. The birth of romance was inextricably
bound to the birth of autonomous individuals from purely social patterns
long after compassion was written into the sacred texts. Moreover, you're
still painting purposely unflattering pictures of amor... "attraction and
jealousy", "lust and fear" are not amor.
JOHNNY
> What do you make of the idea of compassion coming from realizing the equal
> worth of every person?
RICK
I think I disagree. Especially if "person," in this sense, means
"individual". I think I'd prefer something more like: compassion comes from
realizing the worth of humanity.
> >RICK
> Obviously the choice will be limited to those people whom you
> >actually encounter in life in a significant enough way to get to know
their
> >personality. However, keep those Olson twins dreams alive J because
> >improbable as may be... you really never know (just ask Larry Fortensky).
JOHNNY
> Why not any individual? I'm supposed to settle for someone convenient
now?
> How do I know when to give up my dream of marrying Ashley and Mary-Kate
> Olsen and "choose" someone else?
RICK
That's all up to you J. How strongly do you value the dream of dating an
Olsen twin? My point (obviously) was only that your options will be limited
by your experience. The wider the assortment of experiences you have, the
greater the possibilities will grow.
take care
rick
Look, I really don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're
alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you
got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And
therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be
noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively. -
Mel Brooks
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 : Fri Jun 27 2003 - 16:46:25 BST