Love & Hate: Two Sides of the Same Coin

A long time ago I dated a girl who was fond of saying, “Love and hate are two sides of the same coin.” Are love and hate opposites? Both manifest in relationships as "issues" are worked out. So it might be more accurate to view love and hate as polar complements. She was right.

 

I always thought there was truth in her quoting this old saw because when we “hate” someone or something there is almost always “thumthing thimilar” within ourselves about which we are unsettled—or that we find unsettling. Deep down we might very well suspect our own frailties-of-character to explain any spurious negativity coming from us, all the while condemning others for the very same shortcomings we are unable to fully apprehend in ourselves. But importantly, there is a spiritual dimension to this as well.  

Christ’s message of love, viz., to love one’s enemies, brings the spiritual aspect to bear upon this enigma; we win people over by our love, not through our hate. But if hate is the “other side of the same coin,” then one’s discernment into perceiving “hate” that is coming from another might ultimately be understood as that other’s ignorant, or perhaps better said, “awkward” or "tough love" way of caring. Could that be?  

 

My old girlfriend’s reference to a “coin” probably threw me off. After all, think about a dirty old coin vs. the purity of love; i.e., reducing/projecting an intangible and mysterious essence-of-being, love, onto a side of a coin—well, the analogy itself is unsettling.

 

However, “hate” can more easily be identified with a coin: the love of money, bribery, blackmail, “buying the love” of another, money as prompting the materialist urge—yes, hate seems stamped into that coin.

 

And yet, giving alms, the giving of coins, money, to the poor and the needy…isn’t that an act of love? (Some might say it is an act of “enabling,” i.e., it enables a bum to go out and buy the daily bottle of Wild Irish Rose (by which that bum’s family, if still holding on, is further neglected—and what of the “family of man,” cheated by the self-abnegation of one-of-their-own?)).

 

Thus, I’d say that the opposite of love is “indifference,” benign neglect. I can think of three examples: 1)The bum who is indifferent to his or her family by the selfish act of feeding that hungry ghost of addiction; 2) the bum who ignores another, while ridiculing him, mostly behind his back; and 3) the bum who ignores and avoids being a role model for the younger generation.

 

If indifference is the opposite of love, what is the opposite of hate? (Note: if love and hate are polar complements, perhaps finding the polar complement to indifference is key.) Is it caring and affection? It would seem so.

 

However, I would proffer that “real law” is the opposite of indifference. Real law (natural law and common law) is the embodiment and standardization of time-tested values that are enforceable against people whose actions run contrary to them. Another way of expressing the honoring of law, then, is to hold “traditional values” with regard to others for the greater integrity of society (“integrity” meaning cohesive, thriving,  flourishing—and not only in the materialistic sense).

 

Getting back to the example of handouts/giving alms—Is NOT giving a handout to a bum indifference? Maybe. Or maybe it’s more in the sense of “hate,” as in “I hate subsidizing this behavior. So this bum may think I hate him or her but I am exercising tough love, not hate; the object of my hate is the person's underlying pathos.” (Could the underlying pathos be that they are“breaking some law” by begging for handouts?)

 

Some say, “Can we afford to take the chance they are NOT in real need?” (—No, the poor bum must eat.)

 

Others say, “Can we afford NOT to take the chance they are in real need?” (—Yes, let’s not feed the estoppel against the greater integrity of society.)

 

Well, the deeper we go the more complicated the psycho-spiritual calculus gets. Words and essays have their limitations. Suffice it to say, though, that if love and hate are two sides of the same coin, then their opposites must similarly correlate. You do the math, er, the accounting, er,…whatever…

 

The importance of making these fine line distinctions is to encourage a society of sovereign, liberty-loving individuals who come together and inter-connect for a noble and common purpose. The opposite of that is a “que sera, sera society,” a population of intel/media-brainwashed dolts  who wouldn’t know love or real law if it hit them in the face.

 

The wrong side of the coin, hate and indifference, means denying God, elevating technocracy above the natural world, accepting and tolerating perversion, and showing no regard for those hard-won, unalienable rights of humanity. Logically, then, the flip side, the love and lawful side of that same coin, honors the obverse of such mangled values, does it not?