In Book two, chapter twenty, Locke is describing again, yet in more detail, of how our mind distinguishes pleasure and pain. He says that it is explained like good and evil. Pleasures which are good are those like love, desire, rejoice and hope. Pains which are evil are those like hate, fear and greive. He says that there are two passions, envy and anger, that do not come from pain or pleasure but of mixed emotions from within oneself and other things around in the environment. This makes sense. If one is envious, you envy something about another or what another has. If you are angry, some thing has made you feel that way. When you experience pleasure passions such as love, desire, and hope, they are feelings within that you have created yourself. You have created love for someone such as a boyfriend. No body created the love for you. When you experience pain like hate or fear, it is you who creates the hate or fear in whatever you are fearing or have hatred for. This is kind of a hard concept to distinguish because you can say for instance well so and so bought me flowers and cared about me which is why I love him but what I think Locke is saying is that, inside you are the one who created that love. Also, you can say well if someone fears clowns (like I do), you create that fear yourself.
Also, a good point Locke makes is that your mind remembers pain and hurt rather than it remembers or clings to love. Think about it. You may fall in love with somebody so there is the love. Then, they do something to cause you pain like lie to you or whatever, then you fall out of love with them. From this point foward, it is much easier to hate the person for what they did rather then love them again because that pain (that hurt) will always be in the back of your mind.
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2 comments:
This is a good one.. and yes your fear of clowns was created by you, yourself. lol Which I have witessed myself, but regardless of how or why it is there, it is there and you do fear clowns. AS for the love/hate toss up it is soo true, and soemtimes really unfortunate. After a fight it's so easy to remember how terrible that experience was and hold it agianst that person forever, but how hard it is to look past that one bad experience and look to all the good ones before that. In my opinion, it is impossible. I hate to be this way, but I am and there is nothing I can do to change that. I will be the first person to hold a grudge on someone, and I do believe this is unfair to that person. People make mistakes.. hopefully just not around me...ha ha..
omg i hate clowns too! haha... but your post is awesome.. i wasnt really sure as to why Locke would say you would remember pain rather than love, but the example that you left off with was a good one. Its true that you were never "trained" to love or hate or just have different emotions, but in all individuals, you create it, and you remember those emotions when ever the pain or love it triggered.
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