The Problem with Religious Moderates

[tama]

91. From your link

This is interesting:

One major difference between love and hate appears to be in the fact that large parts of the cerebral cortex – associated with judgement and reasoning – become de-activated during love, whereas only a small area is deactivated in hate.

"This may seem surprising since hate can also be an all-consuming passion like love. But whereas in romantic love, the lover is often less critical and judgemental regarding the loved person, it is more likely that in the context of hate the hater may want to exercise judgement in calculating moves to harm, injure or otherwise exact revenge," Professor Zeki said.

"Interestingly, the activity of some of these structures in response to a hated face is proportional in strength to the declared intensity of hate, thus allowing the subjective state of hate to be objectively quantified. This finding may have implications in criminal cases."

"Scientists prove it really is a thin line between love and hate," The Independent, 29 Oct 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-pr...

It is not very surprising, as e.g. many novel writers testify that it takes a huge amount of hate of cold rage - and a creative and difficult ego trip - to produce a good novel from the chatter of inner dialogue. Without rage, they can't write. Maybe it's the same with creation of a new scientific theory, a physicist friend of mine says that cold rage gives much of his creative energy.

On the other hand meditation etc. practices to let go of or silence the inner dialogue is connected with non-judgemental compassion, and zen monks usually don't write much more than short poems.

Quite likely also musicians playing in state of flow - "knowing" as praxis and sofrosyne instead of episteme to use Aristotelian concepts - have their cortex and inner dialogue inactive for their full body to be more open and participant to the vibrant flow of music.