DAILY THOUGHTS
(collection)

Sentiment and emotion breed cruelty

One can see that neither emotion nor sentiment has any place at all where love is concerned. Sentimentality and emotion are merely reactions of like or dislike. I like you and I get terribly enthusiastic about you I like this place, oh, it is lovely and all the rest, which implies that I don’t like the other and so on. Thus sentiment and emotion breed cruelty. Have you ever looked at it? Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor...? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love is not. It is emotion and sentiment that breed the cruelty of like and dislike. And one can see also that where there is jealousy, there is no love, obviously. I am envious of you because you have a better position, better job, better house, you look nicer, more intelligent, more awake and I am jealous of you. I don’t in fact say I am jealous of you, but I compete with you, which is a form of jealousy, envy. So envy and jealousy are not love and I wipe them out; I don’t go on talking about how to wipe them out and in the meantime continue to be envious I actually wipe them out as the rain washes the dust of many days off a leaf, I just wash them away.