A Divine quote?

[Laird]

Though maybe not quite the right context for this thread. 

Though maybe not quite the right context for this thread. 

Music is almost always welcome in any thread. 

[Laird]

A more serious response to the Evelyn Waugh quote in the OP:

To know all is to forgive all.

I wonder how compatible this is with the view - held by quite a few members of this forum - that evil exists or at least is permitted because it is a corollary of granting beings genuine free will, i.e., the ability to choose to commit evil as well as to commit good?

What I mean is that if one's choice to commit evil is a genuinely free one, then, in a meaningful sense, it is one which is not determined by external and even, to some extent, internal factors, whereas that - "evil" choices being consequences of understandable external/internal factors - it seems to me, is the basis on which being "all-forgiving" is predicated.

So, what if somebody is in a position to do good, and is not under any significant psychological duress or conditioning, and simply freely decides with their genuine free will to commit the most horrific act of pain and suffering upon another person or group of persons?

Knowing as much, should we forgive as much, as the quote in the OP suggests?

I am sorry, but I’m not going there. Again. 

If I was able to mind meld with you, then perhaps I would do so, but for now, I have ‘said’ all I’m about to say. 

For me, it’s a most meaningful quote.

[Laird]

Totally understandable. I just felt the Woolley Stannoth's thread deserved a serious comment after my musical interlude. Happy to leave it at that.

Only two? That’s an improvement!   



Does having a definition matter? The ‘feeling’ that many NDErs experience can’t be defined by them, yet they all know it as Love.





But we know that everything is not love, so where does that leave us?

It matters if you want to draw any sort of conclusions or even come up with any theories the way you are. Love has  pretty specific meaning and connotation as a word. At best all you can say is people experience some generic good feeling. Why they get that feeling or if it can even be trusted isn't known. I know from experience and experimentation that feelings can be induced in others via energy and its entirely possible to spoof energy signatures and hide/fake your identity, even from people who should know you very well. So the "love" people feel emanating from the beings they encounter could just as easily be faked for reasons as simple as trying to keep the person calm or get some other reaction from them. Since most people aren't exactly familiar or experienced with energy sensing or any of its characteristics, they likely would have no way to tell if its fake or not. That doesn't mean it would be malicious, but it certainly would mean it's not real.

Where it leaves us is that the most likely explanation is pure neutrality, since everything is very clearly not love, If you can't even define it, that's no different than saying it doesn't exist.

If you can't even define it, that's no different than saying it doesn't exist.

If I experience something, I don’t have to define it to know, for me, that it exists. 

Even if some love experience is a hoax, carried out by an alien for nefarious reasons, if I experience it, fake or not, it is real. If we can’t even believe our own experiences, surely nothing can be believed?

If you take all the situations where you use the word love (except for the colloquial use of "liking a lot") and you strip them of all the things that are unique to those individual situations and if you remove every sense of "being in love" and anything else that is more to do with your own pleasure than with the other person, then you are left with only one feeling that you can refer to as "love" - caring deeply.  This is the feeling that remains between you and your spouse when the fireworks are over and is what keeps you together.  The sense of "love" you get from peak experiences is more akin to "being in love" than to actual love.

[Laird]

If I experience something, I don’t have to define it to know, for me, that it exists.

Even if some love experience is a hoax, carried out by an alien for nefarious reasons, if I experience it, fake or not, it is real. If we can’t even believe our own experiences, surely nothing can be believed?

So, if a Microsoft representative calls you on the phone, and tells you that he wants to help you to get rid of the virus on your computer, then, even though he's a scammer, your experience of that scammer as being from Microsoft is real. And if we can't believe our own experience of a scammer as a Microsoft representative, then what can we believe?

Hmm. I'm not sure how useful that is.

[ETA: Or maybe, Steve, you're saying simply that the "substance" of love which the scammer provides is the same as that "substance" of love provided by a genuine friend/lover. Well, no, I don't think you can say more than that the experience of that substance is the same, even though in one case its actual effects are like a drug whereas in the other its actual effects are like nourishing food - so...]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...155244.htm



""This internal elixir of love is responsible for making our cheeks flush, our palms sweat and our hearts race."

Levels of these substances, which include dopamine, adrenaline and norepinephrine, increase when two people fall in love. Dopamine creates feelings of euphoria while adrenaline and norepinephrine are responsible for the pitter-patter of the heart, restlessness and overall preoccupation that go along with experiencing love."