Maybe I am on the wrong path...

[paradox777]

EDIT: parts of this x-posted.

I feel a need for transcendence. Excuse the cliche, but I feel stuck on a hamster wheel.
I need to move ana and kata. All these classes and essays about the fourth (spatial) dimension are leaving me claustrophobic.
I need more. I need more substance. I need more feeling. I need more life in my life

Comments

[janerella]

Every person needs to hear these things sometimes. Why do people have such terrible self esteem? Why do we beat ourselves up every day? Why don't we ever learn from our mistakes?

[paradox777]

I think that the problems with the world can all be summed up in that people aren't nice to each other. And I think that most of that comes from people not being nice to themselves.
Self-esteem is the starting point, I think.

make babies with me

[perdypain]

I love you! Will you marry me?

[yinprana]

that's not entirely true.

i hate myself but can still care-for/love others. i love people in the way i wish i could love myself.

[paradox777]

In one sense, your Dad loves Adam. In another sense, he doesn't. The second sense is the sense in which you can't love anyone if you don't love yourself.

Do you really want to limit yourself to that first sense?

[hugged]

♥

If only everyone were like you.

[paradox777]

Thank you so much :)

It would be a crazy world though. If you mean if only everyone was a compassionate humanist -- I agree, I wish they all were.

[yinprana]

Well, I may not love myself but I at least respect myself.

that's more thatn a lot of people can say.

Besides... you CAN love someone with out loving yourself, they just CAN'T love you.

[paradox777]

Respecting yourself is good. It's at least a start.

But you have blatantly ignored my example. It's not that Rick can't be loved -- I know that people love him. It's that he can't love them. In the sense that is obvious. (He may think he does, and there is a trivial sense in which if you think you love someone, you do. But I'm talking about a non-trivial sense of love.) The man certainly respects himself -- too much, I think.

Think of assholes. Think of why anyone is an asshole. It's because of an internal thing; a problem they have with themselves. If they loved themselves, they would be kind to others. It doesn't logically follow, but it nomalogically follows (in the "uniformity of nature").

In other words, if you know how to love, it will attach to you first. It must. It is the nature of love. Loving yourself is how you know that you love. It is how you feel your own love and know it. Loving yourself is a prerequisite for loving others in the same way that being able to see is a prerequisite for driving. :P

[ironed_orchid]

I'm not sure about this, I think someone's we see something worthy of respect in someone else, and love them for it, and then we can learn to love ourselves.

Which isn't to say that there aren't a lot of narcissists out there in the world, although I could get picky and say that narcissism isn't the same as self-respect.

[paradox777]

I am equivocating with an ambiguous use of the word "love," I will admit. Unfortunately, I'm neck-deep in hyperspace material right now, so I don't think I'm up for a proper analysis of love of each case.

I will say love-w and love-s for the weak sense and the strong sense, respectively, however. I think that we can see something worthy of respect in someone else, and love-w them for it, and then we can learn to love-s ourselves. But I deny that we can love-s someone before we love-s ourselves. It may be more common, or even necessary, to love-w someone else before loving-s ourselves.
Love following respect of a trait is like admiration. True love is different, and need not accompany or be accompanied by admiration (though I think it needs to be accompanied by respect).

I'm not pretending at all to have included an implicit argument for my position. I may do that eventually... :P