From International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 11 - November 1993
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Classic Comment

by Terry E. Scott, England

Affinity

Ron chose to use the word 'Affinity' to describe the A in
ARC. Maybe it seemed a good term at the time - and, remember,
his description of Affinity-Reality-Communication goes back to
the very early days.

Affinity is defined in my American Heritage Dictionary, that
good repository of American and British English, as An attraction
or attractive force.

Early on, LRH talked about affinity in relation to the Tone Scale,
whose lower emotions are far from a state of affinity: antagonism,
anger, fear, grief and so on. So, what are we looking at?

Back to basics. To raise any corner of the ARC triangle raises the
other two corners. It increases Understanding too. When we are in
good communication, reality is up and affinity tends to be high. There
is affection or at least a liking for the other person.

I suggest the basic on the emotional aspect of Affinity is: Love.
And that all other emotions below it are Love, filtered. Ron probably
felt uncomfortable with Love. After all, it was promoted heavily by
the Christian churches, which he also seemed unhappy with.

But look at Love and you get into a whole realm of other terms that
center on the same basic concept that we call Affinity. The root words
are Bless, Beauty, Love, Happy. From which we get blessing,
blessedness,
beautiful (aesthetics), loveliness, happiness. And admiration. Under
the aesthetics side come colour, sound, music, art generally, dance
and much more.

These come under the aspect of ARC that Ron called Affinity, yet that
word is far too limited. What are we going to do about it? Astrologers
and pagans call it 'Water,' a term suggestive rather than
literal.

Affinity as a word will probably linger in Independents' minds for
a long time to come. But it is as well to get a clearer idea of what
we are really talking about when we use that term.





Mon Jul 17 19:09:03 EDT 2006