My thoughts on "universal love"

[Art Axmann]

In the end of the book/movie 1984, Winston defiantly tells O'Brien, his interrogator, that "love will conquer hatred," which seems to imply that love hurts the Party and hatred supports the party. O'Brien even tells him that "hatred is as necessary as love, or perhaps more necessary," as if hatred were the basis of their system. Right afterwards, O'Brien tells Winston that the ultimate goal is to get him to love the party and Big Brother, something of a contradiction to the preceding conversation.

This illustrates something that should be very obvious to anyone who isn't a hippie, which is that "the system," and really, any system, relies on love much more than it does hatred, that any hatred that it attempts to instill is calculated to increase love of the system. That is why it does not matter which country Oceania is at war with; what matters is that the people love the system.

Generalizing this basic idea, it seems that anyone proposing to instill "universal love" is also trying to pave the way for Orwellian government, and vice versa. Stalin, Napoleon, Hitler, all these men talked of universal this and universal that. And of course, Christianity played no small part in inspiring the West's will to conquer. Not even the Dali Llama is immune; his book "The Compassionate Life" talks about how his ideal is for a "benevolent" world government that controls all access to weaponry.

 Lock five people in a room with two small bags of groceries for two weeks and then let's see how far your universal love goes.

[Dreamer]

The issue is with the expansive meaning of the word love. It refers to rather distinct meanings depending on who uses our and what context.

But yeah generally people don't do things because they want to be grateful or not increase love. People do their best and whatever that are doing they do because they think it will serve them well.

[EldonG]

For what it's worth, I consider myself a hippie...and the system in no way thrives on love.  Love is an emotion...a temporary feeling.  So is hate.  Niether one causes any society to operate or not in any sense of the word...it's rhetoric.

Empathy, and caring for your fellow man, and the world we share is the basic hippie ethos...something I very much believe in...and that doesn't support a corrupt system.