Proposition:

[kitchen_kink]

Having good friends that love you and whom you love and can trust is one sign of a life being lived fully. But having no enemies may be a sign you are doing something wrong.

Discuss.

ETA: See comments for some clarification of the above.

Comments

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

To begin, define "enemy".  If I start with the definition "a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another" (first one at dictionary.com), then I wonder why "doing something right" includes "inspires hateful feelings in others", and would argue a whole lot against that.

If "enemy" is more used to mean "someone who doesn't like me, for most likely a good reason" (thus excluding the "I just don't!" people, temporarily), then I'd get vastly annoyed at the watering-down of language.  Those aren't enemies, those are non-friends.

It's likely I need more coffee.

[dda.livejournal.com]

There is a pithy quote (that I can't find right now) that basically says that if you have no enemies, you're not living your life to the fullest; the idea being that you don't hold any belief or idea strongly enough to have someone actively dislike you or that you haven't done enough on the side of {good|evil} for those on the other side to want to remove you, perhaps permanently.

Those aren't enemies, those are non-friends.

I disagree. There are ~6 billion people on the planet; 99.9999 are non-friends in that they don't even know I exist and, if they did, they wouldn't care one way or the other. An enemy is someone who not only knows of your existence but isn't very happy with it and is willing to do something about it (to some level).

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

Regarding your last sentence, I said that already.  Non-friends are people who are indifferent to me; I could've picked a better term for "people who don't like me".  What I was getting at was people who don't like me =/= enemy.

I know people who don't like me.  I really sincerely doubt they're willing to do much more about it than not talk to me.  And not talking to me because they don't like me doesn't mesh with my definition of an enemy - that being, someone who is actively* planning to cause me harm.

* For my definition of 'actively', which is "It's in the queue".  It doesn't have to be an always-active application, but it's likely running in the background.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

I think what I might mean by "enemy" is something between "actively wants to do me harm" and "just doesn't like me." Something like: something passed between me and that person, and now they don't like me and are fairly active about expressing it, either to me directly or to others; or they attempt to discredit me to others (which could be a form of 'harm'). Not someone who just doesn't like me for whatever reason, but someone who doesn't like me for a *specific* reason. Or, I guess put simply, someone whom I have wronged, or who perceives that I have.

I guess I just think that if I don't have any of those people, it means I've never taken a risk, made a mistake, loved too hard, fucked up. Been human, essentially.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

So, kind of a social enemy - an enemy if one includes in one's definition of "harm" things like harm to reputation or social cred or suchlike.  I can see that.  I'd still add the "social" to the "enemy", but I'm an intermittent purist about language like that.

As in many things involving definitions of huge abstract concepts, it entirely depends on your values and desires and things like that.  [snip]  And then I get all tautological, bah.

Using the definition there, I likely have some social enemies.  They're kind of lazy, but they're there.  The feeling I have about that isn't "Well, clearly I've done something right, I've lived true to myself and some people just can't handle it", it's "This makes me sad, because within the realm of mature adults, it should be possible that two people can disagree and not hate each other over it".

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

well, i don't have *that* particular sign of doing something wrong... :/ I am probably doing *other* things wrong, though.

[madbard.livejournal.com]

Perhaps in the sense of potential enemies, people who wouldn't like you if you systematically explained your point of view to everyone in the world. But I take great pride in keeping the forces of evil somewhat confused as to my particular coordinates.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

I think what I mean here is more people that I've wronged in some way, people I have nasty history with. Not people who just don't like me; people who haven't forgiven me for doing something stupid and human (I like to think I rarely if ever do anything deliberately cruel or vengeful).

Hm. It occurs to me that perhaps I shouldn't have used that word. It just seemed pithy. No wonder I usually write so much - I need more words to be precise!

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

I think it's entirely possible to have no enemies in that sense - not from having not lived fiercely enough, but from having the good fortune of good judgement to have been surrounded by people mature enough not to hold occasional moments of stupid or human agaisnt you.

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

Define enemy. I know at least one person who despises my existence. It's like that debate of infamy over obscurity.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

Describe this debate you speak of!

I think by "enemy" I mean someone who thinks poorly of me because of something that passed between us or between me and someone close to them. It's not like I want to have such people, but it seems to me that if you've never had a serious conflict with someone that can't be fully resolved, there are huge life lessons you haven't yet learned.

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

An example of the debate between obscurity and infamy is "Amadeus". The character of Salieri would prefer to be known as the man who killed Mozart rather than be forgotten as a musician. Being a viewer of certain reality shows, I wonder if it is better to be remembered as a "villain" or be anonymous in life.
In the case of your original question, would you prefer to have people who think nothing of you or have that one person (or few people) who think of you with utter contempt?
As for conflict, this is an example of things I learned from Babylon 5. If you believe that growth comes from conflict, you have to first wonder how you grow from that conflict. The conflict must have meaning.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

I know many people who would disagree with me on many points but I count none of them my enemy. So, I guess I strongly disagree with your statement! If you agree with it, well, I won't count you an enemy either. Ha! Take that!

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

O, I am slain! ;)

I'm getting clearer on what I mean by enemy; basically, it's someone I've been through something ugly with, or someone close to that person, who feels strong negative feelings toward me because of it. In some ways: the kind of enemy that can only arise from intimacy. Such enemies, I propose here for discussion, are often the result of difficult choices, taking of risks, making of human mistakes - things that, if you're not doing, you're not fully living.

I'm just spinnin' ideas, here.

[cos]

Personal enemies? I think that's partly a matter of luck and circumstance.

General enemies? We're all born with them, just based on who we happen to be - our nationality, race, class, location, family, religion, etc.

[underwatercolor.livejournal.com]

Nonsense, I say. :)

[catling.livejournal.com]

ROFLMAO!!!!!!

By that definition I am doing very well indeed. When I am love, you all love me with great devotion and tenderness... but oh how I am hated by some!

[concrete.livejournal.com]

Let's try another cliche:

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

In my interpretation when you try to affect change and influence people, you have a chance of creating dissonance (action begets reaction).

So they are trying to say that you should do something with your life apart from just fitting in.

I find it crude and unapologetic; I prefer a more diplomatic approach to life.