Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Blog Response B

The "All You Need is Love" concept is the idea that if humans treated each other lovingly, society would have no conflict. This is certainly an idea i would love to agree with, however my knowledge of human nature gets in the way of my ability to believe in this. I agree with Confucious, in that treating everybody lovingly would not lead to a harmonious social order. Confucious also believes that we must have li, respect for ritual and custom, to counteract with jen, good will and benevolence.

I agree that a civil and social stability can not be based only on being kind and lovely to everyone because I think much more is needed. While love is surely important, so is hatred. While it sounds harsh, I firmly believe that in order to have good, you must have bad; so in order to have a society filled with love, you also need hatred. By having both opposite ends of the spectrum, you create the credibility of love. By this, I mean that love is only credible if you have something that you hate or do not love to compare it to. I base this idea off of the "cute puppy" discussion we had in class.

To summarize, I believe that a stable society needs both love and hate in order to function properly, so no, I do not agree with The Beatles' statement that "All You Need is Love" regardless of how much I want to.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with you in that we need opposite ends of the spectrum in order to appreciate love, but that doesn't necessarily mean we need hatred in order to give love credibility. Sure, hatred allows us to appreciated love more, but a reasonable opposition as opposed to an unreasonable one would allow us to appreciate people getting along with one another as opposed to going to extremes.

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  2. Hi, Eirinn. I'm glad to see you taking a clear position, but remember the one main content rule regarding blog posts: explore the possible answers first, then take a position. Show me you’re actively considering the options.

    Along those lines, you're not giving much of a reason behind the position that love isn't enough. How is it that looking out for others requires hate to happen? Remember, we're not talking about the emotion love, but just behaving and living in a particularly giving way. For me to hold the door open for other people or to build a house for a homeless family doesn't require other people to be hateful, does it?

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