Sta Hungry Stay Foolish

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

A blog by Leon Oudejans

I have faith in you. I believe in you.

The ancient Greek had (at least) six words for Love, being agape (divine love), eros (romantic love), philia (friendship), philautia (self-love), storge (familial love) and xenia (hospitality). These words are all connected to my concept Faith, Beliefs & Willpower. When you love someone, you believe in them. You have faith in them. Both give you the willpower to accept their flaws and mistakes.

When you lose faith in someone then you no longer believe in that person. That situation is beyond repair, regardless of how hard you try to make up with that other person. Trying is another word for expecting failure.

For some of the six types of Love as mentioned above (eg, xenia), it’s easier to lose faith. In these cases, other belief systems are stronger than the belief system Love (eg, xenophobia). Examples: Philosophy and white supremacy, Politics and nationalism, and Religion and political islam.

There is one type of Love that is extremely strong: storge or familial love. It’s very hard to break the bond between parents and children. Most parents tend to accept nearly everything from their children. Sometimes, parents are fed up with a child’s behaviour and cut her/him off. In rare cases, children sue their parents (eg, India, USA). This is likely to fail following the parent-child immunity doctrine.

Of all the six ancient Greek words for Love, the most intriguing one is agape (or divine love) because – during our lifetime – we will never know whether a Supreme Being exists. The French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that the downside (or risk) of not believing (eg, in God) is far worse than the upside (or reward) of believing (eg, in God). This philosophical argument is known as Pascal’s wager.

I think, feel and believe that the hardest love of all is self-love (philautia). Self-love requires accepting yourself for who, what and why you are. Narcissism appears to be an extreme type of self-love. I use the word ‘appear’ as I’m less and less convinced of that. Overacceptance isn’t even a word.

I’m not sure what faith is. I like to see it as (“white”) energy supply to (“white”) matter (eg, humans). Interestingly, in physical cosmology and astronomy, there’s also dark energy and dark matter.

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” A quote by Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), an “Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist”.

Faith (1987) by George Michael
artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2, Wiki-3

Note: all markings (bolditalicunderlining) by LO unless stated otherwise.

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