TinyBubbles
anarchist
- MBTI
- ^.^
- Enneagram
- .
History books describe the lives of deceased people in somewhat dramatic ways. sometimes they're well written enough to make you seem like you know (or knew) the person. This is probably true for fictional works as well- a good novel can make you forget that a character is the figment of someone's imagination, and can make you care about them as much as you would a living person.
My question is this: is it possible to love someone you've never met? Someone in history, or some long lost relative you've heard about but never actually talked to, or a character in a book, or even celebrities - aren't you in fact falling in love with the idea of the person rather than the person themselves? If they're deceased but you could somehow reverse time and get to know them directly, and they turned out to be different to what you thought, would you still love them or would you definition of who they were change so much that you couldn't - at least not in the same way?
I think people idealize others, especially those we don't really know, such as politicians and historical figures. people quote Mother Teresa as a saintly figure, but unless you knew her personally, how would you really know? Second hand repeated accounts can only tell you so much. For that matter, even if you did know her you wouldn't know all sides of her - under the guise of a good person she could have been committing atrocities. It might be a defamation of her character if untrue to even suppose such things, but since there's no conclusive proof either way (only substantial circumstantial evidence) you have to acknowledge that it's possible.
It all comes down to probability, doesn't it? Or perhaps seeing what you want to see. If you want to believe that Stalin was an evil dictator, then that's who he'll be -to you- that's who you'll profess him to be and that's what will color what he did in your eyes; how you will perceive how his actions influenced the world. And if the odds are that he was, then that will be used to back up your opinion (or perhaps substantiate it, to begin with). But are there more than odds at play here? In relationships, I don't think people are very logical - we go by instinct, right? What we intuitively sense of the person. So if your instinct is that someone you've never met or someone you couldn't meet (eg. if they were deceased) was a wonderful person and you felt like you loved them, then are you actually loving them or merely your concept of them? Is there a difference (in practice)?
My question is this: is it possible to love someone you've never met? Someone in history, or some long lost relative you've heard about but never actually talked to, or a character in a book, or even celebrities - aren't you in fact falling in love with the idea of the person rather than the person themselves? If they're deceased but you could somehow reverse time and get to know them directly, and they turned out to be different to what you thought, would you still love them or would you definition of who they were change so much that you couldn't - at least not in the same way?
I think people idealize others, especially those we don't really know, such as politicians and historical figures. people quote Mother Teresa as a saintly figure, but unless you knew her personally, how would you really know? Second hand repeated accounts can only tell you so much. For that matter, even if you did know her you wouldn't know all sides of her - under the guise of a good person she could have been committing atrocities. It might be a defamation of her character if untrue to even suppose such things, but since there's no conclusive proof either way (only substantial circumstantial evidence) you have to acknowledge that it's possible.
It all comes down to probability, doesn't it? Or perhaps seeing what you want to see. If you want to believe that Stalin was an evil dictator, then that's who he'll be -to you- that's who you'll profess him to be and that's what will color what he did in your eyes; how you will perceive how his actions influenced the world. And if the odds are that he was, then that will be used to back up your opinion (or perhaps substantiate it, to begin with). But are there more than odds at play here? In relationships, I don't think people are very logical - we go by instinct, right? What we intuitively sense of the person. So if your instinct is that someone you've never met or someone you couldn't meet (eg. if they were deceased) was a wonderful person and you felt like you loved them, then are you actually loving them or merely your concept of them? Is there a difference (in practice)?
