Love, Trust, Kindness, and Money

Love, Trust, Kindness, and Money

-Like some wise guy recently remarked, after food and shelter, what matters in life are the relationships, not money, power, fame, or success. At the end of the day, we all want to be respected and loved. Roberto, I don't think you are really loved by a woman if she put her needs and money above yours, if she says and does things that hurt you. Romantic love is, deep down, no different from parent-child relationship.  We either want a living and caring parent back in our life or we have a child on our hand to protect and care for. Love between two emotionally independent grown-ups is rarely intense. The emotional needs are not there.

--Omar, thanks for telling me about love and all that shit, but right now all I feel is sadness and loneliness after watching a video posted by the ISIS. Human depravity seems to have no bounds. But then I wonder if given the right circumstances, I probably would do no less, as the ISIS dudes did, to the ones I hate and despise. Like Love, Hate is a very strong energizer. I often think about the dynamics of Hate? Do I hate certain assholes and scumbags because they did me wrong or there is another process at work? One thing for sure, at least to me, is that those assholes and scumbags I hate are different and inferior to me, morally or intellectually, and they are all fearful of facts and truths. Yes, I'm sounding petty and unenlightened, but the human mind, mine in particular, is a minefield of conflicting desires and feelings. 

"After the farewell is the heavy silence 

That's hanging in my heart and on my mind

I truly have no wish to see or talk to thee ever again.

My contempt is immense; my disappointment profound.

We must be at least honest to ourselves 

And smart enough to know our ground:

Where we stand in relation to others.

Frankly, thou art too dumb even to know that.

Thou fancy that thou art fine and not a miser...

And have a nasty and childish bent to self- project thy thoughts 

On me. As I said above, thou art dumb and foolish

And brazenly unaware of that. I regard thee a big naught.

But how did I know how thou think and what kind of a creature that thou art?"

The answer lies in a contrast between behaviorism and Descartes's view about Mind. 

Descartes thought belief was a private matter. This thinking had two consequences. First, that you know for sure what you believe. Second, that only you know for sure what you believe. The trouble with Descartes' view of the mind is that it makes very difficult to see how we can know about other minds. 

For the behaviorist, on the other hand, belief is a disposition to act in response to your environment. If you respond in the way that is appropriate for somebody with a certain belief, that!s evidence that you have it. Since your response is public---visible and audible---others can find out what you believe. Indeed, as the English philosopher Gilbert Ryle argued in his book The Concept of Mind, we sometimes find out what we believe by noticing our own behavior. But all this talk about mind and behavior would not mean shit to dumb asses anyway. They all think they are okay and their existence does have a meaning. That's the irony about them. Meanwhile normal folks (non-assholes but non-accomplished either) are getting sick and dropping dead like flies. Life is like that for most humans: eat, shit, sleep, believe in fairy takes, get sick, and then die, while fancying that they are okay and will go to heaven in an afterlife! 

(To be continued)