But to the meat of this essay.

I have read it several times and for reasons that partially escape me, I can’t engage with your words as I so frequently do. It’s not that I disagree with your premise, it’s more to do with my sensing that love can not be just about intellect.

So I won’t blather on any more, just leave it at that. Mind you, I would be curious to hear from more of your regular followers to see if they have any idea where I am coming from!

What Roger Henry was saying precedingly was that hate, like love, requires high emotion. Passion, like in the “passion of Christ”. So love and hate have something in common, they share. Love and indifference share nothing.

Here is an example that may appeal to you. Better a screaming CO2 denier than someone who really could care less whether you are blowing with the wind, or not. The denier can see some of his logic denied. The one who really does not give a hoot whether everything explodes or not, there is the worst enemy.

By the way I noticed Paul’s silence on the subject. I guess dogs are never indifferent (differently from cats).
PA

I think the opposite of love is most certainly hate; whereas the opposite of indifference is infatuation. Discuss?

Now the opposite of love is, indeed, indifference. And, indeed, those capable of indifference to others are, fundamentally, prone to ignorance.
This has practical consequences. First indifference and ignorance ought to be integrated prominently to the “Dark Side”, and not just be viewed as innocent bystanders. All the more since…

Nowadays, there are laws against hatred (“hate crimes“). They are a consequence of thinking deeply about what brought Nazism (the Nuremberg trial played a crucial role there; as Hermann Goering pointed out, “they have ruined everything with that movie”: the argument against hatred was reduced to showing an extermination camp movie).

The murderous racial hatred in Nazism was allowed to thrive and grow, because of a form of tolerance. Tolerance, indifference to colossal hatred against the Jews, which came from respect for idiotic creeps such as Luther, Saint Louis and Saint Augustine. Tolerance, indifference to hatred, for 16 centuries (from 320 CE, say, to 1945 CE).

These anti-hatred laws are excellent, and should go further. But, they are not enough. As you point out, the Dark Side rests heavily on the opposites of love, indifference and ignorance. An excellent example is the Immoral CO2 curve.

It’s quite a bit like the position average Germans had under Nazism, or more exactly the question average Germans refused to ask, and OUGHT to have asked: let’s suppose the worst happens, what would that be, if we keep on supporting the Nazis?

Contemporary Germans have learned that meta lesson, and this is why Germany has made tremendously successful efforts towards sustainable energy (although Merkel has been deviating recently in her panic). However the USA citizens have not integrated that meta principle. And thus have led the effort against reducing CO2 reduction (although Obama has, somewhat subterreaneously done a few things). They have been indifferent to what could happen, ignorant of the situation, and its probable consequences…
PA