Saturday 22 September 2012

Love

Unthinking people sometimes assert that 'love' and 'hate' are opposites. They're not, of course; a better opposition would be between 'love' on the one hand and indifference on the other.  Love and hate, both modes of emotional intensity, have a worrying amount in common.  Nevertheless it would be insane to say they are synonyms. Love puts the other above you, even if it blots out everyone in the world who is not you and I.  Hate puts the other below you.  It is a false idiom to say we fall in love, although falling is a very expressive and exact way of talking about the way hatred possesses us.  We don't fall in love; we rise into it.

1 comment:

pixi666 said...

I've heard that before somewhere: "The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference." or something along those lines, but for the life of me I can't remember where.