Passion and Anger, Part 2

Eric Mysterious Norlin counters my counterblog of his metablog about the nature of passion. He writes that I am

trying to enlarge the word *too* much. I would argue that one does NOT feel passion toward their children — unless their children are threatened. They feel love and enthusiasm and joy, but not passion. Passion occurs upon threatening because suddenly anger is thrown into the mix.

By this path, one *does* feel passion toward one’s spouse, but this treads onto the always dangerous ground of Senor Freud — passion towards one’s spouse does involve mixing anger and love, just as passionate sex *always* (don’t lie to yourselves kiddies) involves sublimated violence.

As for compression algorithms, etc: I would argue that those things fall more under “enthusiasm” than “passion”.

So, yes, we are using the word differently. Let sleeping semantics lie. I don’t know what exactly Eric would count as examples of passion other than the ones he gives — passion towards a spouse, passion upon a threat to one’s children — but it seems to me that the word applies wherever feelings are strong and — except in the case of “making passionate love” — persistent; you can have a passion for art, but not if it lasts for thirty minutes. Anger isn’t the only strong feeling. Let’s hope.

Passion = (Deeply caring about something) + (time)

As for whether passionate sex “*always* involves sublimated violence,” well, maybe in the Freuds’ household it did, but there is a possibility of mutuality (not the same thing as simultaneity) which is the opposite of violence. (Do really have to talk about this in public?)

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