“If this really is one powerful basic emotion, love can replace hate when I can bring myself to nurture it with hope, and with faith in the inherent goodness of another human being.” (ODAT, 22 April)
The job is not to replaced entangled hate with entangled love. All hate is entangled; entangled love is just as poisonous.
Proper love is personally indifferent: wishing someone well and acting in their benefit.
I can do this with no personal interest.
As soon as I have a dog in the race, I’m using someone else’s welfare as a proxy for my own, as a second-hand lever for my own happiness.
In that case, I don’t love the person, I’m exploiting them.
My statement of love is a statement of dependence and—simultaneously—subordination both of myself to them and of them to me. That’s entangled love.
The more detached from others, the more indifferent, the less entangled, the less dependent, the less subordinating of them and me, and the more genuinely interested and appreciative I can be.
If you have a dog in the race, it’s only the progress of your own you watch: you miss the rest of the race and everything else going on outside the race.