Part 1: Love vs Fear, and how knowing the difference could significantly impact your life.
Of course we all want to assume we know what love and fear are, and can easily tell the difference between something lovable and something scary. However, this is merely scratching the surface of the concepts we will need to grasp in order to reach a better understanding of the philosophical differences between love and fear. Now, a lot of this is based of my opinion and personal experience in my relationships, work, and interactions with other people. This philosophy is my foundation for my day to day representation of myself. The impacts I feel it has left on me and those I'm close with, feel significant enough that I tend to teach it to most anyone who will listen. So, with that said, I welcome you to enjoy the read, offer your incite, and critique it as necessary.
In order to further understand these concepts as I do, think of love and fear, not as two ideas or uncontrollable feelings, but choices. In any given situation I can choose to either react out of love or fear. To react out of Love would be to accept the situation as it is, without judgement or attachment to the outcome. To react out of Fear would be to attempt to control the situation to lead to a desired outcome.
Example: Driving in heavy traffic. You're waiting in a long line of cars to take a certain exit and notice people keep cutting you, and the cars in front of you, making you have to wait even longer to exit. Annoying to say the least, but none the less we understand what is happening and why (no one likes waiting in traffic, duh). So, the choice is ours. Do we treat our fellow drivers with LOVE: Allowing enough space for our fellow drivers to fit in between us and the car in front of us, if they have to merge. FEAR: Accelerating and braking in unison with the car in front of us so no one else can fit, disregarding whether they have to merge. I wont say their is a correct answer here, but imagine if everyone allowed enough space for everyone. Impossible right? lol.
Anyway, I'll be continuing on these concepts in future posts, please add to the discussion with examples of your own, or scenarios you'd like broken down. I can break down most any situation between these two concepts and I admire a challenge.
Thanks for reading
- Bennytremble
Reading the title had me wondering how people can confuse the two. It boils down to a "me first" or "you first" approach, I guess. I think that's the two main political movements in the US: Democrats = Fear. Republicans = Love. Except, most people would think its the other way around. The democrats started out more libertarian, but have moved right across. They say one thing and do another. The Republicans are traditionally more strict and less libertarian, but with the Democrats being even worse, it's pushed them more to the libertarian side, plus they say what they mean and mean what they say, honest and straight.
To conserve essentially means to keep or hold or remain unchanged. So in my opinion conservatism, or the republican party, is much mor oriented to controlling the rights of others to keep from them encroaching on what they have (property, access to govt funding, american land, sacredness of marriage) where as libertarianism is much more open and unnattached to who gets what as long as its equal, focused more on individuals not being excluded (equal marriage rights, open borders, less restraints on access to govt funding). I hold a mix of both viewpoints and try to keep myself from choosing a side based on what i gain vs what others lose. I wouldnt say either side is better than the other. Id say if we arnt choosing love, we have more to learn. We shouldnt want, or decide what others are entitled to, and shouldnt expect anything more than we'd expect for everyone else regardless of nationality, creed, sexual orientation, or political stance lol.
As far as what these parties are shifting toward, id agree actually to a point, and have noticed the motive shift in both parties as well. Id say thats a side effect of short sitedness by people choosing with their emotions to cling to a party and embrace its viewpoints without really paying attention to why. There is no democrat or republican in reality, just people protecting what they think is right. I truely hope the way our young generations can learn comphensate for this through realizing the power of critical thinking, and fact based reasoning as opposed to appealing to emotions. There will be no winning side as long as people choose their side out of emotion. Not that emotion is a bad thing, it just not what we should base our logic off of when determining how to govern eachother. People are biased and self oriented. Not all, but most. Its my hope we grow out of this phase and learn to solve our problems together. Thanks for your comment :) @wish