Fear vs. Love

Is it better to be loved or to be feared?

According to Machiavelli, when in a position of power, it is better to be feared than loved. I wonder how true this really is. I think that in any true relationship, it is better to be loved than it is to be feared because there is a very faint line between hatred and fear. After long time of fear, people tend to always realize that they should not fear, and that if backed by others, can stand up to you. That is when fear changes to hatred. I think tat for most, fear starts as hatred and slowly becomes something more intense, and as intense as hate it self.

In a perfect world, people would never turn on you, love would exist forever, and those who loved you would always remain at your side. That is usually true, that is of course, if they actually loved you, and were not pretending to. If that is truly the case, than you are lucky. Actually being loved is being liked for exactly who you are. You can’t call genuine love something 'similar' to it because no such thing exists. I mean, actual love, is in my mind, almost impossible to achieve. Usually those who claim to genuine love you can easily turn on you if you do something that reaches their limit, or something related to you cause them to reach their limit. I think that in most relationships, say in positions of high power, for example, in a royal family, sure. Many of your family members love you, but say you are next in line to be prince, there always tends to be someone who thinks themselves better deserving of it, may it be the throne or any other important position in regular life. There is always jealousy, resentment, lack of belief, and all those sentiments/ emotions related to the relationship between someone in a slightly more successful position, than the other. So being loved is almost quite impossible since jealousy is a big factor. But if truly loved, the people with such emotions towards you would decide to not act upon their feelings. So is being feared really that much better than being loved?

I mean, hatred could just as easily be masked with fear. In most cases, fear is cause by the need to dislike, to be constantly scared, being intimidated, and all those emotions related to fearing someone tend to be somewhat linked to hate. There is no person, or if so, a very small amount, of people who enjoy feeling bad. Fear is not an emotion often enjoyed and when people don’t like things, they begin of ways to change it so that they like how things are.  I disagree with what was said in class, fear is not forever, fear is temporarily and dangerously close to hate. If power is to be maintained, hate is not something that helps keep it. Fear has the same problem as love, people can fear you and be jealous of, making up plans of ways to get rid of you, but never really thinking they ever could because they are scared of you. But in tough times, it leads people against you, even if they fear you, people do crazy things in brave moments, things that would in other circumstances not be done due to their fear of it.

So in conclusion, I think that neither is actually very good. But I think that if one had to be chosen, it would have to be love since a drastic change must be made by those claiming to love you, in order for them to turn on you, while with fear, its relatively close.