Compete name Zindane Moujahidi

Course: Seminar I

On Love and Hate

Love and / or hate are subjects that preoccupied the minds of humans since their appearance on

earth. And these two aspects of human beings had shaped and had carved the human condition in

many ways.

Concerning the presentation of Souhail Meftah, I can say that there some points on which

I agree with him while there are others on which I do not agree with him. In his presentation, he

refers to a quote by Bukowski which says Find what you love and let it kill you and at the

same time there is a picture of a man smoking and drinking alcohol. Basically, I dont agree with

him for stating this point and referring to love at the same time, simply because loving material

things usually involves a sense of attachment, dependency, and possession to the point that the

one who is in this state of mind becomes slave to the same thing that he or she loves. In other

words, whenever we tend to possess we become possessed

Moreover, Souhail had included in this presentation a quote by Confucius which states

that when one hates a person, then, he or she becomes defeated by them. Honestly, I do not really

understand why in the first part of the sentence there was included the hate of only one person

while in the second part the defeat is inflicted by them what is meant by them ? However, I

can I agree with this quote if its meaning is if one hates he becomes a person that is defeated.
 Since I think that when one is internally unstable, meaning, that he or she has many

internal conflicts which usually emanates from a self that is full of fears. Then, I think and I

believe that hate and fear are just two faces of the same coin. Moreover, I think that the more the

self fears and/or hates the other(s) the more it weakens the person who is carrying it, since it

consumes the energy of the carrier.

Thus, when one is internally weak and unstable, he is more prone to be stimulated by the

other (s). And in case this person is experiencing an undesirable external conflict, and if this

person sees the other as a threat or an enemy he or she may start feeling hatred towards the other

this could lead him or her to destruction. Moreover, it is important to mention that the feeling of

hatred is very tempting and it is very hard, especially, when one has not a deep understanding

and deep insight of the self that is inside him or her and each one of us.

Furthermore, Souhail had mentioned in a diagram that intuition or emotions contains God

and reason. Where reason contains only a part of God. And I think that he means that one can

experience the existence of God by surrendering to his or her intuition/emotions way better than

if he /she uses just reason is used. Also, I would like to mention that I do not really understand

what Souhail means by God. Probably, he is implying an ineffable experience. And I do not

understand the exact relationship between intuition, reason, and God. In addition, I think that

intuition could be some sort of a hidden mental model that was constructed in our early years,

and that this hidden part can make us feel some sort of mysterious feeling which we tend to be

true but not always. To clarify my point, I think that intuition is a hidden algorithm which is

based on past experiences in our early childhood which we are not aware of, and that we can

only get some hints from it in the form of feelings. Thus, one needs to be very precocious,

because sometimes this intuition can be erroneous, since it may stem from a wrong interpretation
of a past experience. However, I may agree with Souhail that intuition can help us to reach truths

that conscious reason alone cannot reach, but under the condition that this intuition stems from a

clean source, meaning, a source that is not affected by wrong beliefs and ideas.

In addition, at the end of the Souhails presentation he had asked two important questions which

are whether reason is limited or not ,and if it is the case what makes it limited. And I think that

the answer is that indeed reason is limited. Because in order for humans to conceive understand

their surrounding they need inputs where these inputs come mainly from the external world

through sensory inputs which are five/ six senses. And knowing that our sensory inputs are

limited in capacity and that reason depends on perception it would be quite absurd to say that

reason is unlimited. Plus, even in the case where perception could be unlimited our mind could

be flooded with many data and even if we assume that these data depict reality and that they are

not merely some sort of illusions it could be very hard if not impossible to arrange them in a way

that lead us to apprehend the reality of this world (in case there is one).

Concerning Hoors presentations, she had concluded her presentation by stating that love is

before reason, reason can lead to justice, and Justice leads to ethics.

First, when she says that love comes before reason, in a sense that when we fall in love in

somebody blindly our reason just shuts down I think this could be true, but it cannot be

generalized. Since, it each one of us has its own personality. And I believe that if one is

precocious enough, and if this person is constantly aware of his/her inner thoughts, he/she could

avoid this trap. And the reason why I think that this is a trap because when we are young we tend

to make many associations that affect our choices. And usually these associations are based on

false stories that we get from society. Hence, one has to be able to understand the decisions that

he/she makes even if it is about love. Moreover, I do not agree that love is just about a feeling
that emerges when the right person is meant, and that the simple fact of surrendering and

accepting this idea is enough to make us experience undesired experiences.

Moreover, Hoor states that reason leads justice. I think that I had been always struggling with the

meaning of justice, and how can we be so sure that our reason is enough to lead it knowing that

our reason is limited and unable to comprehend any situation in full terms. Also, the most critical

part is that we are vulnerable to our environment, and it is very easy for us to be biased. Hence, I

am wondering whether we are even in the position to judge any given situation, and the proof

that we are really ignorant about what justice is, is that we tend to make a lot of reformations in

judicial systems or what we call ethics, and history is full of such events.

Last but not least, I think that what my classmates had presented was very important,

though I do not agree with some points. Then, I would certainly understand why such

disagreement or in more gentle words diversity of perspectives exist. And probably it is because

we have different mechanisms of understanding our environment, and we are constantly

bombarded with tremendous and different data which certainly diversify our interpretations

about a given situation.