Familarity Breeds Contempt?

Yes.

Why, Setanta?

If contempt is there already, familiarity makes it worse. I am extremely familiar with Mrs. SealPoet, yet there is no contempt. (Well, not that I'm going to tel you about anyway... it passes.)

Because we tend to fill in the blanks, so to speak, when we get to know someone. Later on, as we become more familiar, we might discover that they are casually racist, or dishonest, or intolerant. I don't say it is inevitable, but it can easily come about.

Well, Seal and Setanta, We all have our moments of frustration, but contempt? I don't think so. Contempt implies a type of dismissal. Neither of you possess that quality. That I know from our exchanges.

There are so many combinations of people in the world and almost all of them are incompatible with any single person's criteria for friendship. With such a high chance of meeting someone and finding out that the specifics of their life don't suit your needs, it would seem that familiarity does breed contempt. However, many others and I have managed to pick our acquaintances carefully and minimise the chances of despising our fellow comrades.

Familiarity can breed contempt if you aren't a good judge of character, otherwise, you are safe to like the people that you place around you.

How about... familiarity fosters contempt?

'Cuz I was also familiar with the former Mrs. SealPoet. Wasn't familiar enough with her when I married her.

I agreed with the "Yes" votes.

The less famaliar you are with something the more likely you are to be ambivilant about it (or them).

I don't think you can have true contempt (or love for that matter) for someone or something until you build familiarity.

I have said this before, but it is worth repeating. There are only two emotions that man possesses: One is love, the other is fear....and then there is the dog in the manger.

I wouldn't consider contempt to fit into either love or fear. Just plain old revultion.

Individual, That's really too bad. You hang in there, buddy.Now Letty of Florida has some promises to keep.

I think humans posess a few more emotions than love and fear. I believe we also hate, feel sadness and happiness.

Everybody I know has a least one habit I despise. Maybe it's the traits we share ino common but when I can predict actions and see them become reality, I can truly feel contempt. A brother who breathes loudly while eating, a best friend who's always late, a father who preaches ad naseum or a lover who falls asleep once too often may all get my goat but I love each of these people whole heartedly as well. They just drive me nuts, is all. The closer the proximatey or the more time I spend with 'my burden' the worse the reaction becomes.
Hope this makes sense.

Ceili, Of course what you said makes perfect sense. Now let me explain what I mean by two emotions:

First, love is comprised of many things, and I won't insult any of you here by saying the Greeks have several words for it.

Fear, on the other hand, is the well spring of many emotions:
anger--suspicion--hatred--revenge and when taken to extreme, paranoia, and you all can put yourself in the situations of which I speak.

Familiarity with people or ideas, etc. doesn't cause contempt, although it may cause the feelings that we choose to call contempt as an ego protection. I have no intention of rattling on, because I think most of you understand what I mean.

When looking at the situation in the world today, we see love that has been corrupted.

Incidentally, Good morning all.

Where do the feelings of indifference, impassiveness, and apathy come from?

I'd say they could come from fear too, Individual. The person who is scared of being hurt retreats to indifference/ impassiveness/ apathy. If you don't care, you can't be hurt.

If you don't care, you can't be loved either. It's absolute indifference, the person wouldn't care about any fear.

The very act of caring enough about being hurt to be apathetic is an oxymoron.

My, dear Individual. Do you realize how many oxymorons and paradoxes there are among humans? To paraphrase the bard: love is cold fire; a feather of lead, and peace marches often end in violence. The only ones that can hurt us are those we love the most."A cruelty bourne by the stream of love." Apathy and indifference is feigned by the subconscious, rather like a retreat back into the womb, but in the final analysis, we can trace it back to love and fear.

I used to believe that we could only be hurt by those we loved, I also believed that we could only be hurt by the truth. That was all wrong, in my observations of people's reactions to insult and forced harm to their psyche by people they didn't even know, the effects lasted for months and even years with continual references to and recollections of the event.

On another note, absolute apathy cannot be an oxymoron. It is nothing and cares for nothing. If someone did it out of fear, they would care about being hurt and that would be an oxymoron. If they did it out of love, they would care about someone else's safety and that too would be an oxymoron. Therefore, apathy comes from neither love nor hate. As Letty stated, love and hate are the only possible emotions. That means that apathy doesn't come from an emotion. Where, then, does complete indifference to anything and anybody come from?