Do you label your emotions?  At least with regards to other people, can you define your emotional response to someone with a single word?

"I like her."

"I hate them."

"I love him."

"I dislike you."

Get the gist?  Are you able to summarize your emotional response to another person through the use of a single word?  Apparently I am unable to do so, and I will readily admit that I am happy with that.

Labeling my emotions with a single phrase is objectionable to me.  I do not believe that what I feel for a person can effectively be summed up in a single, simple phrase flippantly tossed to the masses for consumption as though it ingrained some majestic truth.  Truth is what it does not contain.

"Ah, Jason, but you are a writer.  Such uncomplicated declarations are beyond you."

Verily, that may well be true, but allow me to offer this timid assertion for your consideration.

Love and hate are two sides of the same coin.  I will not quote from The Prophet on this, as many of you would assume I intended.  What I will do is speak from my heart.

If you care about someone enough to hate them, it is equally within your emotional purview to care enough for that person to also feel love.  I know that I have never loved a person who I did not also hate on occasion.  This is true of all forms of love, whether it present itself as familial, platonic or romantic.  The same can be said for all other emotions: like and dislike, admire and loathe, joy and sorrow, anger and calm…  Need I go on?

Whether it be that I notice something within a person that previously I failed to see, they do something out of character which I find to be unexpected, or my own emotions play tricks with my relationships, I never have felt a single emotion about any one person.

No one is perfect.  I therefore find it impossible to summarize how I feel about someone with a single catch phrase.  My emotions are too complex to be simplified in this manner, and my relationships are too multifaceted to be so easily defined.

Am I arguing semantics?  But of course!  I am also stating a truth which is profoundly important to me, something that helps me understand the multifarious sentiments which engulf my mental images of those in my life.

How could I ever be expected to condense my feelings for someone into a one-word answer?  How can I define the Byzantine affects of human interaction with such primitive language?  It seems laughably preposterous even to try.

I am more complex than that.  My relationships are more complex than that.  You ask me how I feel about someone in particular?  How much time do we have?

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

— Blaise Pascal

I meant to include these in the last sundries post, but I then came to realize they could stand on their own.

Carnival of the Cats #88 is up and running over at IMAO.  Fun to be had by all, I assure you.

Friday Ark #62 is brought to us by the Modulator (Steve).  If you don't know what Friday Ark is, Steve describes it as "links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles)."  They're always a cool experience.

On the wrongdoer and the wronged who are not as separate as many would think…

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.

[…]

And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts:
The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder,
And the robbed is not blameless in being robbed.
The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked,
And the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.
Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured,
And still more often the condemned is the burden bearer for the guiltless and unblamed.
You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked;
For they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white thread are woven together.
And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.

Carnival of the Godless #28 is online.

Skeptic's Circle #22 is online.

Philosopher’s Carnival #21 is online.

Congrats to PZ Myers for a great article over at City Pages.  Even if you aren't "into" science like me, I think you'll find it a fascinating and enlightening read.

Amazing!  FOX News has a rather good article about evolution.  Despite starting with Darwin's theory of whale evolution (now considered erroneous and speculative), they eventually get into the modern evidence for whale evolution, and the article stands out as a shining example of Republican common sense.  Could this mean they're distancing themselves from the religious war on science?  Not likely, but one can hope — and this certainly appears to go against their fundamental base.

I have to agree with former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi.  The human rights violations in Iraq, perpetrated by Americans, Britons, Iraqis and a host of others, are frighteningly reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's rule.  I thought our intention was to make things better…

The Japanese landed a probe on an asteroid to conduct scientific studies and to collect rock samples.  Very exciting… and an historic accomplishment.

We've had this discussion before.  Did anyone pay attention to 200 years worth of records that show we're in a naturally occurring heightened season of hurricane activity, a planetary cycle that lasts from 10-30 years?  Bah.

The United Arab Emirates arrested two dozen gay men.  "Because they've put society at risk, they will be given the necessary treatment, from male hormone injections to psychological therapies," says an Interior Ministry spokesman.  Actually, they face forced hormone and psychological treatment, up to five years in jail, lashings, public humiliation, and a host of other backward-thinking approaches to solving the "gay problem."  What planet is this?