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%BASIC RULES OF LOVE 801016
We humans seem incurably prone to try to devise
general rules to guide our conduct, and the conduct of
those around us. Usually the rules which we devise point
to important truths. Experience indicates that most all
of them fall short of being the whole truth, even though
we are often prone to regard our favorite formulation as
being the whole truth.
Consider for a moment how most formulations of rules
have been used: The Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule in
its various versions, the Love Your Neighbor Rule, etc.
Too often they are used as the grounds for passing
judgment upon those who break the rules, and so serving as
the grounds for feeling superior to those who have broken
the rules. The truths to which such rules do point are
violated when the rules are used in such ways as to
occasion alienation. The value of such rules is called
into question by the alienative behavior of people who
value such rules. If the rules were genuinely helpful in
all situations they would guide people's behavior in such
ways as to promote open and honest dialogue, rather than
to promote alienation.
The essence of the law of Love is to promote mutual
understanding and dialogue. Mutual dialogue in all forms
of communication is the essence of love. The essence of
evil is the inhibition of such mutual dialogue. Love
would guide us to maximize mutual dialogue. Rules which
occasion self-righteous judgments are evil to the extent
that they inhibit the work of Love. Rules are the fruits
of Love's work only when they---on the whole---occasion an
increase in mutual understanding and honest dialogue
relative to their absence.
The rules of Love cannot be reduced to a legalistic
code which prescribes proper behavior for each situation.
The purpose of Love is not to provide the means for
judging whether or not specific people are acceptable.
Such is the purpose of legalists and their rules of good
conduct. The purpose of Love is not to promote
conformity, the fulfillment of conventional expectations.
The purpose of Love is to renew life through all forms of
mutual dialogue, to form and evaluate all different kinds
of new combinations.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
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