Friends and Enemies: Our Need to Love and Hate. Dorothy Rowe

      Friends and Enemies

      Our Need to Love and Hate

      DOROTHY ROWE

       DEDICATION

      To the memory of my dear friend

      Hilary Surman

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Dedication

Preface

CHAPTER 1 Friends and Enemies

CHAPTER 2 Learning to Become Ourselves

The Meanings in Our Brain

Your Meaning Structure

Forms of Thought

Others – The Necessity and the Threat

CHAPTER 3 Belonging to a Group

Defining Yourself and Your Group

       Owing Allegiance to Your Group

       Is Your Group Your Friend or Your Enemy?

       CHAPTER 4 Belonging to a Family

       Becoming Part of the Family

       What Are Family Values?

       Family – The Tie That Must Bind Us All?

       CHAPTER 5 Belonging to a Place

       Losing Your Place

       You Can’t Go Home Again

       CHAPTER 6 Strangers and Enemies

       The Necessity of Enemies

       The Leaders We Deserve

       The Meaning of Violence

       The Pleasures of War

       CHAPTER 7 The End of Enmity

       The Satisfactions and Failures of Revenge

       Who’s Responsible?

       Becoming Reconciled

       Is Forgiveness Possible?

       CHAPTER 8 The Art of Friendship

       Living in a Peaceful World

       Can Your Lover Be Your Friend?

       The Art of Friendship

       Notes

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       PREFACE

      Friendship is our greatest invention. No technological construction, no work of art, can compare with the art and skill of friendship which takes us out of the lonely world of our own individual perceptions and puts us close to another person, linked by feelings of love, trust, tolerance, sympathy, generosity, kindness, joy and humour. We can set ourselves the greatest tasks and achieve them, we can become rich, famous and powerful, but all our achievements will be mere dust and ashes if we are friendless. We can have lovers, we can have family, but all these relationships will bring us nothing but misery if they are not imbued with the qualities of friendship.

      Friendship has always been of supreme importance in our lives, but today it has taken on a new urgency. Changes in society and in our expectations mean that many people turn to friends to supply what in past years they would have looked for in marriage or family. A businesswoman in South Africa said to me, ‘If I had to choose between my husband and my friend I’d choose my friend. She and I talk every day. We tell each other everything. My husband is all right, but we don’t talk.’

      Moreover, while nations no longer engage in huge wars which mobilize many thousands of troops, across the globe we see conflicts which, though they involve smaller numbers of people, inflict terrible violence and suffering on everyone caught up in them. It is essential to resolve these conflicts if we are to overcome the ecological threats to our planet. Enmity is as old as friendship, yet we seem unable to understand why, when friendship is so glorious and so precious, many people choose to be enemies