Dark Eros
Thomas Moore

Sade - aggression, power, selfishness are legit objects of desire. By not admitting them, they erupt as unplanned evil
-we lust, dissemble, flatter. By denying this, we develop impossible ideals and repressed shadow.
-Eros - caprice/ chance, not relationship, unstable, destructive, arises from chaos, originates in gloomy part of soul (Erebus), young Eros rejuvenates
-Love (Symposium) - offspring of plenty and want
-innocence generates shadow, potentially evil figure, often projected -> scapegoats. "No matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition... Only a fool is interested in other people's guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt."
-healthy soul "aggression remains in touch with sensitivity; innocence abandons its hubris." p42
-self-analysis - play the libertine on yourself. Torturing examination. Abandon self-worth based on (false) innocente puer -> new attitude where honesty of intention and genuine power co-exist.
-institution based on high and innocent ideals -> radical sado-masochistic polarizing
-excessive self-discipline -> soul feels battered by spirit's demands. He "makes a religion out of x"
-pain can ripen the soul, acquaint it with ways of nature
-scapegoating, assuming pain comes from without (other person, past trauma, social ill) really just turns the screws of the (inner) pain
-"A monk takes to the monastery to protect his virtue, the libertine to safeguard his vice." p79
-if you don't isolate yourself at times, you may lose affection for life and suffer masochistic loneliness. People obsessed with communalism find isolation a moral fault, yet these same people may be incapable of intimacy, cold and distant
-Sade's hatred of convention and sentimentality is positive recogition of the dangers of pleasantness taken to the extreme and made into a rule" p85. Conventional world "handcuffs a life"
-ugly fact that a parent has to be strong, at times depriving, sharp
-re fantasy violence "3 Stooges rise again and again... They survive, as we all survive the Sadeian pains we give and receive in ordinary life." p102
-"that shadowy love and pleasure, that dark Eros, can initiate the soul and extend its perimeters." p162. Need appreciation of shadow.
-innocence that sweeps over our c when it projects shadow blinds c to its own cruelty
-Sade perverts (deconstructs, exposes shadow, reveals dark Eros) all religious ideals
-"Repression maintains the church of the dark God" p174
-education - hierarchy, mastery, principals, discipline. Enlarge our fantasy of learning to acknowledge dark truth (s/m) -> bring soul to education
-therapy for cultural s/m is same as for personal - expose shadow/eros, redeem innocence (split off from shadow) -> ease conscience/ guilt -> social justice
-stop projecting shadow - transform 'evil', refine into fantasy and feeling instead of projection and emotion
-must be open to influence, vulnerability -> creativity, confidence and security
-only allowance of failure breeds moments of success
-"whatever Nature has ordained to be possible for human life is legitimate and valid" p186
-re dark fantasies: 1/ don't act out - only fantasy OR 2/ take these images into deep reflection, see yourself in them, find ways to invite them subtly into your life
-not 'get rid of evil' but 'let it in'
-if we live more sexually, if our culture were more c erotically motivated -> redeem repressed soul
-if our morality embraced the vagaries of sexual passion (vs enemy of eros), it would favor desire, passion, love, pleasure, while struggling towards social ways of embodying and structuring those erotic values
-need to discover forms of sex that nuture that passion AND give it place. Need sense of occasion, ceremony, language
-re porn/violence in film - picture defends us against (represses) image; emotion - feeling; intellect - insight; dark pessimism - soul's unmanipulable shadow; psychology - psyche
-to cut out corruption of heart is to lose soul altogether
-need lifetime struggle with the dark passions -> fullness
-good and evil influence each other, not sentimentalized. Evil is corrupted by desire for innocence (and vice versa)
-sex-> vitality but demands continuous stretching of structures of life and understanding
-"poetic appropriation of these vices" p193 -learn how to be aggressive without literalizing and identification
-react to Sade's art with more art