I can see some polar opposites in the sensations related with both terms, however would not consider them entirely different.
Not so much believe, but I feel like it is. The two are just such opposites. When I'm worried about something, my entire character is changed and I want interaction with nothing but myself. When I'm loving about something, I'm much more outgoing and willing to express myself.
Think about it for a second Love and Fear are the two main driving forces in anybody's life Almost all interactions are based on those two core emotions i could analyse deeper but im tired lol
Hate and love both require passion, they're more similar than most people realize. Apathy is the opposite of love.
Donnie said it well and right theres still more things to everything then just those two things so no its not
This. Fear is the opposite of bravery. Fear and love having much in common outside of the typical scare of marriage is hard for me to comprehend.
The point should be that we try to think of the world as digital or binary, when the truth of the matter is that it's more like analog. Here, you say both love and hate require passion, that is not necessarily true. People become accustomed to love and begin to take it for granted, I'm sure someone who has been married for a few decades could stand behind me on that. Just the same, hate can be felt and applied casually, this idea is usually how I understand racism. Passionate hate is applied directly to a subject, apathetic hate is applied generally - like the difference between shooting one man with a sniper rifle and aiming a machine gun at a group of people. The notion of opposites as it is here is a trick question. All these words can connect to other words that describe emotions by an unimaginable combination of relations. We seem to be trying to say that how we hate is either 0 (FALSE) or 1 (TRUE) when at any given moment it is some value most likely between. I think we're going even farther and trying to say that if hate is FALSE than love must be TRUE, which is a fallacy if you ask me. I've known women that both loved and hated me, often at the same time or in very close sequence. Apathy is apathy, love is love, hate is hate, and fear is fear. edit: Last night there was a thread about good and evil, and I rejected the notion that people are one or the other. I drew a crude diagram in paint and then realized the folly of it. It was like a number line, divided just before the arrows, and the words GOOD and EVIL were placed in the sections outside the middle. But I realized that there is sometimes goodness in a motivation to do evil and likewise. The right way to symbolize it would have been to put a point at the center and draw lines outward from it toward notions of good and evil, love and hate, etc.
I think no matter what you say, you can't remove the elements of affection and passion from love - for your example about married couples, people fall out of love all the time - I won't disagree with you there. However, the whole reason the marriage started was because the two members were attracted to eachother at one point. I really doubt that anyone has gotten married by saying, "I don't care." So if we have to polarize love like the OP wants to, then I'm still pretty sure that apathy is the opposite of love. Apathetic hate sounds like a contradiction to me.
I love many things I fear, they consume me. I don't think they're opposites, but usually don't go hand in hand.
You're right, but it doesn't affect my point much. I didn't say people started love apathetic, but we can see long lasting marriages where they might love each other enough not to be divorced but barely have any passion left. I think you're helping to illustrate the point I made, though. I can't fully extricate passion from love, but I can add in a little apathy, which is the thing you said should be its opposite.
Ok, back to expand Again, think about it Fear drives us into cycles, fear lessens our being. Fear in todays world is comfortable. Why don't you take a plane? Fear of negative experience. Why don't you take an acting class? Fear of failure. Why aren't you more outspoken in a group? Fear of getting shut down... This can be applied to near anything I can think of When we chase the fear away with Love, we're more open to new experience, more passionate and more accepting of our current state. Love improves our beings, enriches us with experience. If we're more Loving of the moment, we as individuals are more in power and control of our lives just a thought, hard to put into words but it makes total sense to me
We will always have anxieties. With some, we can charge at them as a warrior would, and they would melt away at the very thought. With others, we can only wrestle. We can pin it down, but it always throws us off. Perhaps after a long, long time of wrestling we finally start to win when the opponent simply loses the strength to continue resisting. What we fear, we should always at least be willing to face since sometimes that's all that's needed. What we wish would change, we should always be willing to wrestle with until we outlast it. One thing that should never be done in the face of fear is surrender, except to the possibility of failure. If we will not wrestle the demon, why should we continue to live?