Love, Altruism, Philanthropy, Compassion, Empathy, Friendship -- and Imagina

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Kneasy wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_
old_crowd/message/1747 :

<< Pandora was provided with Hope as a comfort in a world of
 troubles. >>

Or some versions say Hope was the last and worst torment of all,
causing people to keep trying and expecting success and being
surprised and hurt by failure, instead of just becoming resigned and
lazy.

Kneasy wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_
old_crowd/message/1752 :

<< Now you seem to class this as a species of 'love'. I disagree. It's
an in-built altruism, not uncommon in social animals and it is an
evolved survival trait - help others of your kind and the species has
an advantage over those that don't. Co-operation pays in the natural
world. >>

For that to be a disagreement, it would have to be proved or axiomatic
that 'love' is not another word for 'altruism'.

Neri wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_ol
d_crowd/message/1767 :

<< But I don't know of any working model in current Darwinist/
Post-Darwinist theory that can explain a person (or any animal)
risking his life to save a non-kin that he has never met before and is
not likely to even live to return the favor. By all logic, any gene
supporting such risky and pointless behavior should have disappeared
from the gene pool millions of years ago. >>

But -- how often did people millions of years ago get a chance to meet
(let alone save) a conspecific who was neither a member of their own
band (mostly relatives) nor a member of an enemy band? The trait of
rescuing kin and the trait of rescuing non-kin non-enemy conspecifics
would have resulted in the same behavior until people invented living
in large unrelated groups (cities). I feel confident that 'kin
selection' also explains altruism to non-kin. (Let's not go into what
I've felt confident of in the past, shall we?)

Eloise wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_
old_crowd/message/1764 :

<< call it philanthropy, call it love, it's the same thing. >> 

Y'now, I once went to a lecture on how studying a group of novels
called the Greek Romances can shed light on the meaning of some words
in the Gospels (because the Greek Romances were written at the same
time in the same language as the Gospels). Of course, IIRC all the
lecturer's examples also used a third set of texts: orations written
in the language at the same time. 

Anyway, one of these words was IIRC 'philo-anthropia'. Which describes
a person who 'loves all mankind' by doing the following: 1) A greeting
to everyone he encounters, 2) hosts and attends many dinner parties,
3) gives his own best food & clothes & bed to and spends his own money
on the best medical care for shipwrecked people and travellers who
have been mugged by bandits. (Characters in the orations as well as
the novels did that all the time, including IIRC a funeral oration for
a man so famous for succoring travellers that bandits had disguised
themselves as needy travellers to gain access to his home and murder
him & his family and steal everything.)

The lecturer said that, being so wide and shallow, philo-anthropia was
very different from IIRC philos (translated 'love or friendship')
which is narrow and deep: philos is a feeling for a specific person
for whom you will do most anything, not just greet him, dine with him
socially, and succor him when he gets mugged or shipwrecked.

Joywitch wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1759 :

<< Seriously, though, I've never understood this love for Snape thing.
He is a horrible person, who loves to humiliate the very children
whose education is his responsibility. Harry and Ron and Hermione have
all been driven close to tears by the meanness of this so-called
Professor. How can you reconcile loving those kids and, at the same
time, being a fan of someone they loathe, just because he has an
intriguing personality and some dark secrets? >>

In real life, I like and treasure my friends (I have few friends
because few people are worth spending my time and attention on 
*disclaimer*) and have repeatedly had the unpleasant experience of 
one of my friends and another of my friends hate each other. Several
times I have caught myself in the midst of what I know to be a 
useless effort: trying to talk one friend into seeing the good side of
and making allowances for the bad side of someone heesh hates but I
value. While so doing, it is easy to alienate a treasured friend by
carelessly replying something like "Oh, yeah? And you should hear what
he says about you not replaying loans!" (or, in the Snape case, 'about
you beating up on children in your power instead of people who can
fight back').

I put my re: Joywitch after my re: Eloise so that I can mention that
forgiving my friends for doing things that I could hardly forgive
*myself* for doing (let alone someone I disliked!) is a small example
of doing 'most anything' for a friend (altho' I am not THAT good a
friend; I will not lend more money than I can afford to people I know
are not going to pay it back).

GulPlum AKA Richard signed off
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1773 with:

<< who's just noticed that he's spent the last four hours scribbling
the above, and is horrified by this effort-to-outcome ratio. >>

It was worth it! What a beautiful post ... it deserves to be
professionally published e.g. as an opinion piece in a newspaper, or
at least turned in for a good grade in a college class, if only there
were a suitable newspaper or college class for its topic.

Neri wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_ol
d_crowd/message/1783 :

<< So if I were writing HP, the power in the locked room wouldn't
be "love", and not "life" either, but "imagination". But I quite
agree with the Goat that it's most probably love, and JKR is just
trying not to be too fluffy. >>

Your description of the power that made Kneasy stop to rescue the
truck driver was Empathy. Empathy requires the ability to imagine, or
at least what I think is called 'theory of mind' -- the comprehension
that other beings have their own things going on in their own minds,
such as they don't see things you see that are screened from them, and
also it requires caring about it. (Voldemort clearly has 'theory of
mind', as he has the concept that he knows stuff that the Ministry
hasn't found out yet). The caring-about-it part can be called Love.

But taking Imagination in general: I cried out happily at your
suggestion, shocked that I'd never thought of it myself. JKR is a
writer, it is not impossible (altho' not hinted at by any of her
interviews) that she views Imagination as the greatest and most
powerful mystery. Not just imagination to put oneself in another
person's shoes, but imagination to think up gadgets and to get the
idea that some distant place might be better than here, so let's go,
and to make art and tell stories. So okay, does Voldemort not have
Imagination at all?