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13 July 2006
Hope is the opposite of hate; greed is the opposite of love.
Apathy is the opposite of hate and love. In order to hate or love something, you have to care about it or have it affect you. The fascination one finds in something they hate can be as equally as powerful as that which they love, like the double-edged sword or the two-sides-of-the-same-coin thing.
IMO, natch.
I like Hugh's take better, actually. Apathy is the absence of love or hate, but I think it's an interesting idea about freedom and worldviews to define greed and hope as their opposites.
Greed is the opposite of love if greed is the desire to take from the world for own you gain and love is the desire to give of yourself for the world's gain. But I think that gives greed too much credit and makes love too ambiguous.
The greed/love juxtaposition makes me think of generosity, and how true generosity is inspired by love. Your heart is filled to the point of breaking, and that joy spills over so that you can (and want to) share it with the world.
The hope/hate juxtaposition seems like if there's just a little bit of that joy still left in your heart, deep down at the very bottom, you'll persevere; once that goes away, your heart becomes empty and you hate.