This makes sense, really.

[novapsyche]

So, going along with my ongoing argument/conjecture:

If the opposite of love is not hate, but fear--

then the opposite of hate is not love, but confidence.

Comments

la vie boheme

[thegreenyear.livejournal.com]

the opposite of war isn't peace -- it's creation!

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

I always thought the opposite of love was indifference.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I think the love/indifference diametric is asymmetrical. That is, the one does not cancel out the other. Love, when confronted with fear, tends to dissipate into nothingness--the same when fear is met with love.

Again, this is just my conjecture, done with the lame words English has to offer.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

You're trying to fit emotions on a diametrical scale. Wrong paradigm, grasshopper.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I realize that emotions exist on a continuum. That is not something I'm contesting.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

I don't even know if a continuum is right either, I think we need to create something a bit different. A star formation comes to mind, some emotions seem opposed, but they are interconnected.

We could look at biochemistry, which emotions produce which chemical signatures. Is stress an emotion? Most people would say stress is a response to emotion. But they've done studies using biochemicals and found that context was important.