Universal love? (moral, Earth, paradise, elder, myth)

[GeneCosta]

Is it possible to love everyone on this Earth as much as you might love your family?
Is it immoral to do so?

Mo-Tzu said: [Calamities] arise out of want of universal love. At present feudal lords have learned only to love their own states and not those of others. Therefore they do not scruple about attacking other states. The heads of houses have learned only to love their own houses and not those of others. Therefore they do not scruple about usurping other houses. And individuals have learned only to love themselves and not others. Therefore they do not scruple about injuring others.
When feudal lords do not love one another there will be war on the fields. When heads of houses do not love one another they will usurp one another's power. When individuals do not love one another theywill injure one another. When ruler and ruled do not love one another they will not be gracious and loyal. When father and son do not love each other they will not be affectionate and filial. When elder and younger brothers do not love each other they will not be harmonious.
When nobody in the world loves any other, naturally the strong will overpower the weak, the many will oppress the few, the wealthy will mock the poor, those honored will disdain the humble, the cunning will deceive the simple. Therefore all the calamities, strife, complaints, and hatred in the world have arisen out of want of universal love. Therefore humanists disapprove of this want.

[Scarlett Wampus]

Um, not sure I'm understanding you here but maybe you're reading 'want' as implying 'desire for' rather than 'lack of'?

I suspect it is possible to love strangers as much as family, just unusual.

[GeneCosta]

Originally Posted by Scarlett Wampus

Um, not sure I'm understanding you here but maybe you're reading 'want' as implying 'desire for' rather than 'lack of'?

Yes.

[Sunstone]

What did Mo Tzu mean by "love"?

[Willamena]

Originally Posted by GeneCosta

Mo-Tzu said: [Calamities] arise out of want of universal love.

I thought they were made through a process of mineralization... oh wait, that's calamites.

What does Mo-Tzu mean by "love"? What do you?

[Fluffy]

I feel that Mo-Tzu is correct but he is really simply stating the obvious. If everyone loved everyone, and if love provides a drive to do good to those we love, then it is fairly evident that we would all do good to everyone.

Love seems to simply be a way of making our connection with other people seem more appealing. It is a specific way of looking at human interaction. When 2 people communicate, their meeting will be either positive or negative. Over time, positive interaction will reach some arbitrary threshold at which point it is termed love.

This implies that sufficient contact is a prerequisite for love. In that light, it appears that it is not possible to love somebody who we have had no contact with and that if we say that we love a stranger, we must be using the term in a difference sense to how we mean it when we say that we love somebody that we know. In fact, the underlying mechanism must be so completely different as to make using the word for both emotions very confusing.

I would say that when we feel emotions for strangers, we are actually empathising with whatever situation they may be in and then replacing their identity with our own or somebody that we know. Any emotion we feel for them is incidental via association and we are not attached to them as an individual.

So to answer the questions:

Is it possible to love everyone on this Earth as much as you might love your family?

No. Either the love for stranger is describing something other than emotion or it is not actually elicited by the individual. In each case, it is very different to what we are talking about when we say that we love our family.

[Viconia]

For many centuries -- particularly those during which many people have existed in civilized cultures -- the myth of unconditional love has served as a salve for the otherwise unlovable, the inept, and the weak of mind. It is a human construct that trembles in fear when reality intrudes upon it, and crumbles when met with a truly rational mind. Like the God religions that propogate this myth, its only real purposes are to pacify, enforce, and distract. Church of Satan Magister Matt Paradise, Love Is A Many Conditional Thing. Not Like Most magazine, Issue 15, page 4

Fluffy was spot-on. The word-symbol "love" when proported to be universally applied by a person usually amounts to the person saying, "I 'love' everyone. I'm a good person and I want respect for that.", even though the word is said with no emotion behind it.

[Scarlett Wampus]

Fluffy yes granted the love for family is going to be different to love for strangers. Nevertheless I think these two can be more of less equal in intensity. The kind of mind it takes is highly unusual but it is possible. The trouble is when love/compassion brings about the strongest responses to those most obviously in need rather than those we have special relations to as close friends, family and lovers then its likely we would become distanced. There really are people in the world who have that kind of love & compassion for strangers. Not surprisingly they are also very rarely married.