I should clarify..
I would like to love everyone, regardless of race, gender, political leaning, or desire to throw me in jail / beat me / condemn me for who I am. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have yet quite achieved that level of detachment. As a friend of mine once put it, I love half of everyone. I’m not very happy about that either. It’s a sad thing when you can’t even live up to your own ideals.
In other news, apparently LiveJournal has decided that they don’t care about losing users left, right, and center. I encourage any and all who are currently paying for accounts to notice the really horrid things LJ is doing and consider sending your $30 somewhere better – like a hosting provider? 😉 Or perhaps a homeless shelter, or a no-kill shelter for puppies, or your DVD collection.. or.. there have to be millions of things better to do with your money than giving it to a bunch of moralist, censoring.. never mind. I’ll stop now.
September 13th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Heh, yes! A hosting provider! I know a great one too. 🙂
Set your own policy, your own rules, without imposed censorship.
http://www.balboatech.com/ –Duh! 🙂
Hehe, I do have a free hosting plan available currently, by the way.
As far as the rest… I wonder if you don’t take your definition of loving everyone too strictly. I wonder if having a love for all people as a whole or if loving everyone as kin or some variation isn’t a natural intelligent way to function but – it could seem to conflict with reason when it comes down to picking a guy out of a crowd and knowing what he’s done with his life.
Sheer… You haven’t read The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, have you?
“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.”
“This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part it is of what kind of a whole; and that there is no one who hinders thee from always doing and saying the things which are according to the nature of which thou art a part.”
“Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbours, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the daemon within him, and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the daemon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and men. For the things from the gods merit veneration for their excellence; and the things from men should be dear to us by reason of kinship; and sometimes even, in a manner, they move our pity by reason of men’s ignorance of good and bad; this defect being not less than that which deprives us of the power of distinguishing things that are white and black.”
And I’ll just toss this one in because I like it;
“We ought to observe also that even the things which follow after the things which are produced according to nature contain something pleasing and attractive. For instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker’s art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating. And again, figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion’s eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many other things- though they are far from being beautiful, if a man should examine them severally- still, because they are consequent upon the things which are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they please the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and deeper insight with respect to the things which are produced in the universe, there is hardly one of those which follow by way of consequence which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure. And so he will see even the real gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than those which painters and sculptors show by imitation; and in an old woman and an old man he will be able to see a certain maturity and comeliness; and the attractive loveliness of young persons he will be able to look on with chaste eyes; and many such things will present themselves, not pleasing to every man, but to him only who has become truly familiar with nature and her works.”