@fresco,
fresco wrote:
Forget the world and rationality!
There is a certain quality of experience, with which meditators are familiar, in which the "self" and its attachments dissipate. In this state, "my friend" "my enemy"and even "my life" have been transcended and supplanted by a harmonic holistic merger. The phrase "unconditional love" is perhaps another description of this experience, because residual aspects of it can manifest themselves in our non-meditational everyday life.
Now what is not understood by those who are pursuing "the debate" by verbal argument is that such experience is ineffable..... A swimmer cannot transmit the "feel" of that experience to a non-swimmer.....The grandeur of a mountainscape cannot be adequately transmitted by a pictorial representation.
The certain quality of experience that you describe: the miasma in which myself, my friend, and my enemy dissolve into one, constitutes a complementary system. Let us imagine similar (microcosmic) physical context: a work environment, let's say. In such a context i can imagine that petty survival instincts, my sense of affinity with others, and my personal conflict with others will actually combine to create a more productive workplace. But that dissolution of self, friend and enemy will only take place if the highest product is that of the efficiency of the system. But in that and any similar case, the dissolution is only a condition of the "product", and not "love" except in the abstract sense. In that sense love is a byproduct, and it certainly has conditions.
It is easy to imagine situations in which "non-interference" can be named as a sort of abstract "messianac" "love", but i have a feeling that the OP meant something different.
There is a sort of superficial love, which we call infatuation, which is precisely the easy affection for that which is compatible with our own "project". But love in the sense of caring...that only occurs when one cares despite another's differences...a passion that we indulge in despite our best interests, to care for another in equal measure with ourselves. This may require the construction of a new "system", we develop a new relationship. But make no mistake, this new, volatile amalgam requires constant maintenance. It requires preciesly, a self, or rather two (minimum), to maintain it.
fresco wrote:
I would merely re-emphasize my use of the word "ineffable".
In the absence of "self" there are no differences....there are no others....there is nobody to communicate with or things to communicate about.
In this case, where something material is being debated, that is "love": a mode not only of feeling but of behavior, the term "ineffable" has no place. Hate or love something in an "ineffable" manner; what would be the difference?
In the absence of a self, in the absence of others, there is no love...merely systematic regularities. I know that it is the conceit of your approach that all oppositions are subsumed in the system, and that is ultimately your undoing...some oppositions are not reducibole as a matter of course. Some oppositions can only be addressed pragmatically, negotiated without guidelines.
You will surely disagree, and at this hour, i do not feel like arguing the point. Perhaps i will do so later, but i make no promises. Good luck to you.
