Would you rather be loved or feared by others? a question Coolio asked his fellow housemates on Celebrity Big Brother, but one that made me think - it was a question that was first put to him by Ice Cube: who wanted to be feared, and Coolio chose loved.
Strangely enough, if you take both love and fear in their purest and most complete sense, I donāt think what other people would be willing to do for you would change much between complete love and complete fear.
Itās easy to fall out of love, especially when oneās own interests are at stake. It is hard to fall out of fear. Off course you can raise the stakes for what it means to love someone, but then that type of love becomes too high strung for the purposes of this conversation. Weāre not talking about the relationship between a mother and a new born child and whether it is best for the mother to be loved or feared. Weāre talking, I hope, about the relationship between leaders and their constituency. If the conversation is about friends, then what sense does it make to say that itās better to be feared by your friends than to be loved by them? But, I suppose here again the definition of friend can be ambiguous. By friend one could mean a person one can count on in times of crisis but with whom one has only minimum contact with, or one could mean a person one cares about and hang out with. With the latter definition, the choice between fear and love is not a problem at all, since one canāt be a friend with someone they fear. With the former definition of friend, I suppose that it is better to be feared than loved, because the only purpose for the relationship is the hope that they will be there in times of crisis, and as Machi said, one has less trouble offending or letting down someone they love than someone they fear.
ā¦only if you take your definition of love to be the only one. And even then, so also is fear in any degree of purity about the giver and not about the receiver. The point is whether it is better for someone to influence fear or love in the mind of the giver whenever they think of the receiver. Meaning, is it easier, more efficient, more reliable, etc to get some sort of service out of someone when they love you, or when they fear you. This isnāt about whether it is better for the receiver to be loved or to be feared when these emotions are the whole of whatās being transacted. If it was, youād have a point, and a good one at that. Iām reminded of a quote from Goethe from the signature of some poster (I donāt remember who). It says, roughly, āIf I love you, what business is it of yours.ā
Well, as it was my answer, it was the only one. I donāt consider love to be other than that.
And fear is actually the opposite, ultimately itās about the receiver. Because the choice to fear is theirs, not the giverās.
If the question is about how either one serves as a means of persuasion, then Iād say different techniques work with different people/groups in different scenarios. And leadership isnāt really about either āloveā or āfearā, but more about buy-in and common interests, although I think that sort of view of leadership is closer to love than it is to fear.
I like the Goethe quote, it fits my idea of the subject at hand.
Love and fear degrees of the same thing. They are degrees of āBeingā. Fearfull people are conniving, self centered, egotistical, and easy to manipulated. People that love are non-judgemental, respectful; but not followers of imposed. You can live in the company of either, but in one youāll be happier and and suspicious in the other.
Going on the premise that it is I who is fearing or loving someone elseā¦
I think in a way it would. I would probably, if I feared someone, be more prone to do something even though I didnāt want to do it since there would/could be a fear of repercussion. If I loved someone, I could more likely, depending on the circumstances, say ānoā since I would most probably be comfortable and secure in myself making that decision, knowing they know they are loved. Or whether they do or not, there would be no compulsion āto doā as there would be with fear.
Complete love doesnāt necessarily mean that you will always do for the person you love and it is an absence of fear. With fear, there is no real love, for yourself or the other person.
Honest answer: I wouldnāt want anyone to do something for me out of fear (perfect love casts out fear, and favors from fear are not genuine). But, if they didnāt love me, then I would want them to fear doing something against me/mine. Mama bear mode.