Wednesday, September 21, 2016

The Child of Plenty and Poverty

The ancient Greeks were shitheads in many ways but they were scarily intelligent. One of those who was scarily smart was Plato, who once opined that love was the “child of plenty and poverty.”

By that, as Jerome Levin wrote, Plato meant we have just enough to know we’re missing something (because if it didn’t have it at all we would never miss it, like not missing sight if born blind), and so we seek to supplement our lack “by merging with the beloved, who has them in superfluity – or at least so we hope.”

In other words, everyone has “holes” in their character, and we hope the beloved can fill those holes. That appears to be one of those permanent imperfections in the human race.

We long for something which completes us. To the religious, like St. Augustine (who was the first in the West to suggest this in his autobiography) we seek God to complete us and make us whole (which comes from the same root word as “holy” and “hale”).

The first time I fell in love I was 18, and it happened within minutes – or maybe within a minute. As soon as did, I knew exactly what it was. How did I know that when it had never happened before? I could only conclude I knew what it was because it had happened before only I was a baby and didn’t remember it. I was sure it had something to do with my mother and father, as it does with everyone.

It seemed to be something old and yet something new. Years later I remembered that old saying, “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”

The feeling toward this woman started with an immense and overwhelming feeling of jealousy. She only worked about three blocks from me (I was working nights, as she was), and I wanted to run over there is make sure she was at work and not with some guy. But I didn’t.

For that matter, how did I know it was jealousy when I had never felt it before? Same thing – I was remembering the feeling from being an infant. How else could I have immediately identified the feeling?

With the second woman it started not with jealousy but a searing envy, which is odd because I am not envious at all, and had never felt it before. But I knew exactly what it was, so I again figured I was remembering it from being a baby (and there are a lot of researchers who agree with me on these things).

Why would I be envious? Because she had something I wanted. And I wanted it badly. It really did feel like there was a big hole in me and only she could fill it. Intellectually I knew this was stupid but my emotions were telling me something completely the opposite.

I wanted to make her good qualities part of me because I felt like I was lacking in those qualities.

With the third woman it was again the envy. But no jealousy, just the way with the second there was no jealousy. In fact, after the first one I’ve never felt jealousy again.

I shake my head at the Manosphere, as I have written many times. It knows nothing of love, jealousy and envy – or gratitude. It has nothing to say about these things, except to tell you that you’re supposed to have a lot of “plates” and how to “spin” them. Which, as I’ve written more than once is an excellent way to wreck your life because it is closer to nihilism than anything else.

I suppose there are some people out there who don’t have that many holes in them. For them I guess love is really more based on gratitude then envy.

What I have found, though, is that if you find someone like you, cut from the same cloth (associative mating), that even if there is envy at first – and if you trust them and they you – you give up that feeling of envy and instead come to gratitude and thankfulness.

In fact, the late psychiatrist Melanie Klein once wrote a very famous book called Envy and Gratitude, about how if you can work through the envy it turns into gratitude.

It’s painfully obvious that feminism, being leftist, is based on the envy of men, and therefore there is no gratitude in it. Women, even though they don’t know it, are cutting their own throats.

For that matter, there is a lot of envy of women in the Manosphere – and therefore no gratitude. That’s why feminists put down men and the Manosphere puts down women as loveless hypergamous whores only interested in “cash and prizes” (the people telling you these things are clueless fools).

The Manosphere is the mirror image of feminism – grandiosity (as in those non-existent “alphas”), envy, devaluation, no gratitude.

Women have a lot be grateful for when it comes to all that men have done for them. But these days, what do men have to be grateful to women?

And that is going to hurt both men and women.

There is an old saying by Hegel: “The owl of Minerva flies only at night.” It means wisdom only comes only after a lot of strife. We only learn after the fact.

4 comments:

DeNihilist said...

The great Amirican Mystic, Richard Rose stated that there were only three emotions in life, Love, Hate and Nostalgia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rose_(mystic)

Anonymous said...

Which is to say: the manosphere and feminism both have nothing to say about love, except to dismiss it.

Unknown said...

Bob, sometimes you sound like a woman. Love is an illusion, which lasts six or seven years at most. That seven year itch is real. Love makes you blind. It makes you see someone that you want to see and not the way he or she actually is in real life. After the spell wears off, you suddenly realize that you're with someone who is not at all what you thought. Never get married for love. Love never lasts. Find someone who listens to you and helps you and doesn't join the chorus of complaints when times turn bad. Love stinks. Marriage is a lifetime commitment. You need someone on YOUR SIDE.

Unknown said...

The lover always idealizes the loved.