What’s the opposite to love?

the complex picture.

[Updated September 26]. A Swedish journalist writes in the review "What's the oppostite to love?" about a book with the title “Our Era’s Fear for Seriousness” that came 1995. In this book of thoughts the author tilted at a spirit of the time refusing to set about the large questions of society and life. To express it simpler: people (or the society in all) refused to discuss any deeper issues the author thought.

And this is still valid, and has become even worse the author thinks as you can read below. And some are wondering where all the intellectual are in debates. Why they are so silent and not reacting. They are only talking and writing about what's opportune?

But talking seriously doesn’t exclude laughter the reviewer thinks. On the contrary, these two parts have to go together. Roy Andersson, the author of the book in the review, wrote his thoughts down in a decade lined with a long neoliberal era and a gigantic retreat to the idea that "alone is strong."

And once again see what Owe Wikström writes about the individualism and the negative effects of individualism. The idea about alone is strong is that a defense mechanism, namely denial of needs, a denial that gives you a false sense of power - and strenght. Which doesn't mean that we don't have (can't have) a natural, genuine strenght.

We were in a deep economical crisis. The gulfs between the classes had started to grow again. The belief in the future was gone with the wind. The humanism was on retreat. The humor that ruled was above all the ironists, the ones making fun of seriousness and engagement. See what Alice Miller writes about irony.

There was an increased contempt for moral values, a contempt that was attacking the fundamental or basic content of the notion solidarity – to see yourself in other people. My addition: but at the same time there exists a new morality. People joked over the notion solidarity, over people who believed in solidarity and were trying to uphold such ideals, people who believed in seeing yourself in other people. How many damaged people do we actually have I can't help wondering, who have to make fun of people who try to be empathic and compassionate? What does this phenomenon say? I have my ideas.

What’s concealed in the wake of this if not a slowly growing belief in the übermensch-ideal (a super-human-being ideal) once again, which means a contempt for weakness. People blowing their trumpets: I can indeed! But this is problematic, because there are also people hiding their light under a bushel. And that's the other side of the coin. The lack of people with a sound selfesteem?

Back to the reviewer again: a contempt for weakness that once upon the time formed the breeding ground for racial biology, Nazism, concentration camps and gas chambers. There are new self-appointed master races in both Sweden and Europe today the reviewer thinks (and yes, that’s actually true, but they look differently than older times’? And see what the Swedish journalist Maria-Pia Boëthius writes about narcissism).

Now a new edition of this book comes, and Andersson establishes with distress that the content in his book still is valid. No, the development has changed even more to the worse.

The simple black-and-white conception of the world begins to see its chances again.

In those musty mud puddles the extreme right is growing once again.

Profiting on a powerlessness and frustration among many of the exposed people – not least among young unemployed men.

But it’s not the patriots' hate that frightens the reviewer most, but the widespread drowsy indifference in the broad middle class. He thinks that Elie Wiesel is right when he says that

“The opposite of love isn’t hate. The opposite of love is indifference.”

Yes, it was this with the back leaning indifference.

A not dysfunctional relation...

After watching a Swedish TV-programme: How would a not dysfunctional relation be? How would a relation be where you don’t try to fill early unfulfilled and thus perverted needs, neither in the other person nor in yourself? Where you don’t use the other person? Where you are two equal persons really?

How many people are driven by a need, or even lust, for revenge? And what has such drives caused in the world?

Click on the arrow in the box down to the right to get the English text.

Outlook on knowledge and man, insecurity, neoauthoritarianism…

Yes, what sort of outlook on knowledge (what you learn about yourself besides plain fact knowledge) do the ones governing* the schools today have (are they denying that you are also learning things about yourself, and others, besides the "fact" knowledge, facts somebody maybe have chosen too**)? And what outlook on man?

*(read: the ones with the highest power, in this case the politicans, whom the people have voted for. Today maybe in a sort of request for "strong" leaders, father-figures? Wanting simple solutions in a complex society and world, a world with many confused young and grownups. In a confusion that's very often denied too? And those, the denying, are probably the most dangerous!? More dangerous the greater the denial is about these things and the more power they get and are given).

** And maybe that doesn't have to be wrong or harmful, if you declare that you (or somebody else) have chosen those facts. You can encourage the child or student to search for more facts and knowledge in parallel or something in that style.

There are neoauthoritarian winds today everywhere in the society it feels. Obey and keep quiet.

Obey and don’t think yourself. As the old time’s upbringing.

The Swedish pediatrician Lars Gustafsson writes in one of his books, with the title that would be something in the style "Guiding Chldren" ("Lotsa barn"), that it’s the history’s own irony that authoritarian limit setting seems to have become highest fashion once again.

Even though most people today aren’t for earlier times abusive, and by inclinations to violence characterized childrearing, you can wonder if a parent of the type being a plain authority is only good. And Gustafsson still meets people who are minimizing and belittling the effects of corporal punishment of children. Probably claiming that it didn’t harm them or other people.

“Look, they (people of older times) are functioning today!”

But how? What have they missed and lost? Would their lives have turned out maybe entirely differently if they hadn't gotten the upbringing they got?

Addition: But there are other forms of violence too. And physical violence probably still exists even though it's actually criminal. And corporal punishment co-exist with other sorts of violence and abuse and other sorts of lack of respect for the child.

A basic idea in all authoritarian upbringings is that the grownups know best. The children are seen as undeveloped and still injudicious or even foolish. It’s the grownups who have the experience and the general view and therefore it’s best if they decide. Children shall learn what the grownups have to say and obey their orders.

Words like order and consequence are strongly emphasized. Punishments are important (and once again punishments are much more than just corporal) and children have to learn the consequences of erroneous behavior. And it’s the adults who decide what’s right and what’s wrong. And where does the erroneous behavior originate from?

The drawbacks of an authoritarian upbringing are many. One is that the hierarchal decision order often is leading to bad decisions (both here and there I would add). If the grownup knows best everything’s so far so good. But this is in many cases not the case.

Sidetrack: And why doesn’t democracy work neither in small nor in big circumstances so many times? And is this proof that we should skip the whole democracy-idea, as some claim?

Another problem with an authoritarian upbringing is that it's neighbor with violence. As soon as a human being seizes power over another there's risk for abuse.

The big damage arises when we give us the right to lose our heads, for example because “we know best” and afterwards try to justify abuse with for example the words

“You have in fact deserved this, so that’s that!”

The risk for this is greater within the fame of an authoritarian upbringing.

But the absolutely greatest risk with an authoritarian upbringing is probably formulated by the American child psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim - and this I thought was interesting and probably very true - namely that an authoritarian upbringing leads to children lacking in independency and that this sort of upbringing makes it more difficult for the child to build both a capacity for decisions and an own inner norm system.

I would add that the other side of the coin can become the opposite; you know best (maybe try to convince yourself, sometimes unconsciously).

The result is now that we as grownups are confused now and then! Because of OUR early history (and things we haven't been able to process, because there's still a lot of denial about these things and their effects), where we couldn’t trust our feelings and reactions. Weren’t allowed to call things in question really or see them as wrong (blind obedience in a more or less authoritarian climate), because the way we were raised and treated was supported in the society and the traditional way of raising kids.

Which is no excuse for what we have suffered and missed, however. For the confusion we now struggle with because of the treatment we received. That have lead to that we don’t have contact with feelings which would lead, guide - and also adequately protect us.

And insecure people are on top often met and treated with contempt for weakness… We easily look up to and admire the secure, who “knows”, and down on the insecure!?