All you need is love. Is that really true? Can we all handle it? For one, it is the ideal way of living for most; only needing love and world peace – free from hatred, etc. To others it isn’t a solid solution to our society’s problems. You need evil to determine what’s right from wrong and allow you to decide how you can actually be loving towards another.
Then the idea of Confucius, needing li or respect for ritual and custom to have pure jen or good will. This would seem more logical to most people as well. Too much love can also create social problems, utopia, so the idea of have a certain balance and following rituals and customs to allow yourself to be peaceful and loving within is a start to being able to be loving and understanding towards others.
Personally, I would have to agree with the idea of Confucius. I think that having this balance is necessary. You need good to knock out the bad, and bad to knock out the good. What will the world come to if EVERYONE is “loving”? Though I do agree that times that we’re in now, where there’s just so much hatred around the world and millions of innocent people are dying rapidly; it would be ideal to just make it all stop. Unfortunately that can’t be done. But if everyone were balanced and loving within themselves, then things would be very different. Not necessarily saying that with this method that we’re going to find world peace, but I definitely feel as though there wouldn’t be as much hatred as we have in the world right now.
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I agree that we all want everyone to love each other but in reality our world could not function based on this. we do need a balance between good and bad because without it we wouldn't know whats right from wrong.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea that we need evil to determine what's right from wrong -- just like we need hate to determine what love is, sadness to determine happiness and so on. I also agree with the need for respect for society, culture and law. Without love, things would be pretty depressing. With love, everyone knows that things are pretty great. However, without respect for the law and culture and so on, society can hardly function, while with respect for the law and for culture, then a society can function.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I think love is one of the most important things, but on a personal level. Without that ability to love people close to us then we have nothing, that doesn't mean we have to love everyone equally for society to funtion. While love is more personal and more individual, respect can be applied in a global sense, which is what is needed for a successful government and society.
I really like your idea that we need the inevitable evil in the world to determine what is good. I mentioned in my post how we have studied in class the importance of opposites in the world (good/evil, men/women, yin/yang), and how they balance out the world. I think your post is very well focused around sort of the same idea, which I like. I also agree that it is impossible to love everyone, and everyone can't agree with each other on every little thing, but there are certain standards to displaying your opinions which create Confucius' li.
ReplyDeleteSusana, Nice job on exploring the issue before you assume a position. I'm wondering though why you think there needs to be evil in the world for me to behave in a loving way. All I need to do is put the needs of others before myself, right? That's not hard to remember, is it?
ReplyDeleteAlso, what do you mean when you say too much love can create social problems? Illustrate your point with an example.
Finally, do you really agree w/ Confucius about the importance of li? Should we listen to our parents, no matter what?