Nothing if your neighbor deserves your love but you must find out for yourself whether or not your neighbor is deserving. The default position is that your neighbor is neither for or against you. You have no built-in obligations towards your neighbor and conversely your neighbor has no built-in obligations towards you. Common sense and the common law mitigate against any wayward tendencies to hurt other people. Indifference towards other’s is another harmless default position but busy-bodies are not indifferent. They exist to find out about other people and while the default position is indifference, people judge because judgement is a survival obligation. Judge and prepare to be judged wrote or said Ayn Rand and she was correct in that and a great many other things. Rand was a philosopher who wrote one of the greatest novels, “Atlas Shrugged” that contains a complete real morality within a fictional story. She begins with “Existence Exists” and “A Is A”. the beginnings of judgement begin with the basic facts of existence which is that which exists is real. No one doubts that but most people add something spiritual into their version of metaphysics. Spiritualism in based on Mysticism. Mysticism is not reality and only reality exists. What about thoughts? Thoughts come because you talk to yourself in your head. Are thoughts real? Certainly. But… The but is that no one can share a thought. They can describe it but the description is what is shared, not the thought. Therein lies the beginning of the process to accept the mystical and a great many people make a great living by using the mystical. Mystical beliefs that don’t comport with reality is where the car leaves the road and that’s why it doesn’t pay to just accept your neighbor as either indifferent towards you or as someone who wishes you harm or benefit. You don’t know. If you don’t know you cannot make a correct judgment and since you cannot it doesn’t pay to love that which you cannot know.
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