The opposite of love is indifference

Yesterday I wrote “I didn’t know”, really asking fellow white people who do indeed care enough about anti-racism to question why they “didn’t know” up until recently about the true history and how it is the foundation of so many of the systems and institutions of western society.

In that post I asked people to consider that if, after all of this time, they “didn’t know, then a part of this is because, somehow, it was “doesn’t matter” to them up until recent weeks.

I guess I keep using the medium of my daily writing to keep hammering home ideas for awareness so that we don’t all drop back into comfort zones and behaviours.

So, today, some further thoughts linking to “I didn’t know” and doesn’t matter, a thought around love, hate and indifference.

There is no love without hate; and there is no hate without love. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference; the opposite of feeling can only be the absence of feeling. Disinclination, which is coloured by feeling, often only serves the purpose of concealing and protecting oneself against an inclination. Love and hate must go hand in hand; and the people we love most we hate also, because hate is grounded in the nature of love.

“The Beloved Ego: Foundations of the New Study of the Psyche” by Wilhelm Stekel