It's Valentine's Day & I can't shake out of my head the words of that great Southerner Andrew Nelson Lytle: "The opposite of love is not hate but power." Long have I turned that over in my mind, & the more I turn, the deeper Lytle's insight drives.
The essence of the tyrant is that he wants to be God and make everyone over in his own image. He hates the reckless variety a generous God has lavished on creation because it is The Other -- not himself.
The lover, on the other hand, desires not to make over his beloved after his own image. Far from it, he only wants his beloved to become more & more herself, more and more what she and she alone is, ever fresh, ever astonishing, ever OTHER than himself.
In the tyrant's tight monistic world, love is impossible, because there is no "other," only The One -- the self. Love is only possible where an Other is.
Lytle was right. The opposite of love is not hate, it's power.
Argentum et aurum comparanda sunt --
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