This is an extremely incomplete group of thoughts on a single aspect of what is love. I offer it for consideration and comment.
There is no way one cannot show approval/disapproval in any experience with another person. The longer the relationship, the greater the opportunity for patterns of approval/disapproval to appear. This process occurs not only as conscious acts, but also at the unconscious level where facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, etc. are part of the communication process. In each contact experience, both parties consciously adjust their behaviors and demeanor as expression of approval or disapproval. Performing from a set of cultural expectations and/or emotional reactions, expectations of both self and other are acted out as negative or positive responses. Therefore, it can be said that all love is conditional -ie- no matter how small, the slightest expectation of performance by self or other creates a ‘condition’. In this sense, it could be said that expectation is the definition of a conditional love.
Some further thoughts to consider:
Unconditional love is an ideal, not a reality.
There is no way to avoid having expectations>conditions>conditional love.
Accomodation can loosen or strengthen the bonds of relationship.
The longer a relationship exists, the more conditional it becomes.
The potential inside a relationship is directly correlated to the conscious and unconscious intent of both parties.
The limits of a relationship lies in the capacity of each person to trust self and other.
I want to question some of the presuppositions which appear to underline the way you are describing the human dynamics involved here. Specifically, I will try to pull apart, or at least qualify, the connection you have established between conditionality and love - by suggesting that conditionality is no less “ideal” than unconditionality. I also wish to question the way you correlate conditionality with the passage of time, and will do this by suggesting an alternative description of the kind of “dialectical” relationship that emerges when two people are in a close relationship together. (This will be pursued in the process of proving my first thesis.)
Response: There is already unconditionality in expectation, and therefore love is always more than conditional.
First of all, a surface-level criticism. If my loved one fails my expectations, I do not cease to love her. It would have to be a systematic and continuous failure for that to result, and in this case I would argue that, as such, it is not so much me who ceases to love her, but her who has failed to love me. (Or rather, love “itself” has failed, so to speak.)
Love has a complex enactmental character. Each instance of expectation-fulfilment, or lack thereof, is an opportunity to re-enact or affirm the reality of a condition which in the past connected you with your loved one. Importantly, it (“ideally”, but perhaps not always) possesses this quality whether or not the expectation is fulfilled. For each instance, in other words, there is often a choice to be made about how to react to it, which is why a failure here or there need not be fatal to a relationship. It is important to note here though that all along during this process, both people grow, and part of love involves considering the other’s expectations: even, perhaps, making them primary. There is a give-and-take dynamic here between difference and identity, which is plainly evident in the absurd absolutization of the above, where each person says to the other: “I want what you want, honey”, around and around in a circle that spirals to infinity. But my main point stands, which is to emphasize the role of choice and negotiation, not so much on the level of pre-existing preferences in a kind of static economic exchange, but more on the level of identity itself, where preferences emerge and evolve together dynamically, between two people who love one another, and for whom love itself is this ‘between’.
Now for the main part of my criticism. When we talk about conditions we usually mean to refer to something which pre-exists that for which it is the condition. Assuming for a moment the validity of your description, there is a point at which you know another person well enough that you could be said to love them as individuals, rather than applying, in an almost literally impersonal manner, the “structure” or “comportment” of one who is in love at a time/place where the conditions of this love - the qualities of the object that qualify it as an object of one’s affections - are insufficiency narrow to warrant the exclusive claim one allows it to hold over said affections. Or such would seem to be the line of thought which you present above.
Allow me to restate and elaborate the above paragraph for the sake of clarity. At the beginning of a relationship with someone, we immediately begin a process, the goal of which is to know the other person as an individual. Now although this process involves a certain “narrowing down” wherein we try to identify the constituent qualities of the other’s uniqueness, what is “unique” is not this or that quality, nor in the final analysis the sum of these qualities as they are embodied in a given individual. If there is any uniqueness here (and it seems that it is uniqueness or “conditionality” that grounds your account of love), then it can only exist on the level of a shared history which emerges between two people who share their lives together. However, this shared history involves a continuous and shared development, where the identity of each person is affected, and where the structure of love directs this development in such a way that, ideally, points of tension are relaxed and points of affirmation are multiplied. What is unique, ultimately, is not so much the individuals, as such, but the relationship itself.
Two people develop together in such a way that they could almost be analyzed as a single entity. At the very least, the relational nature of this development, and indeed of love itself, is exactly what I think allows for the concept of “uncondionality” to become unhinged from that of “generality”, in the space where, as Hegel says, the absolutely particular becomes synonymous with the particularized absolute: or in other words the Event. (And perhaps this occurs, as I said above, at the level of the relationship rather than that of the individual.)
But this does not mean that, all of a sudden, we have access to completely unconditional love after all. (At least not, it seems, based on the definition you have provided.)
So what then does it mean? The structure of expectation is here I think crucial. In a relationship we see not just the emergence of new qualities (each person finds out new things about the other, and responds to them), but also the reemergence of old ones. Because of this fact - that “conditionality” is temporally spread out across the length of a relationship - it is impossible for love to be absolutely conditional, because otherwise the condition would always be a point in the future, a point yet to come. (Such is the nature of “conditionality” as it appears here, that it is always incomplete.) Love would be incomplete if it were entirely conditional, as we would always be waiting either to see if the things we don’t know about our loved ones would be acceptable to us once we discover them; or whether our loved ones would someday fail in the re-enactment of past conditions (“she has always been honest, but what if she lies to me someday?”).
It is within this framework that I locate your above account. My contention then is that, to the extent that unconditional love is an unrealizable ideal on your account, so is genuine love itself, unless you allow for a compromise between your conception of love as being tied to the conditions that “warrant” it, and a second kind which would have the structure of a kind of “willful leap” or “decision”. This is a point about the temporal structure of love: your account defers the point of “enactment”, the actual beginning of love as such, to some ideal point in the future. In reality though we begin with the leap, a mixture of blindness and the beginnings of what you call “conditionality”. I propose to refer provisionally to this second “kind” of love as unconditional, though I feel that there is still something important here which has eluded my analysis. For now at least, though, I am unable to see what this might be, other than to point back to my first paragraph;
It is this relational nature of love which is so difficult to conceptualize, but it is the key I think to understanding “conditionality” and “unconditionality”, and also temporality and the universal/particular dialectic. In a sense there are no individuals when it comes to love; it is this sense in which Aristotle’s famous maxim rings true. “What is love? One soul living in two bodies.”
I was rather hesitant in starting this thread, and for the obvious reason: say too little, and it says nothing. Say too much and it says nothing. I opted for saying too little assuming any interest would add on as it went along.
I would agree with almost all of your statement with the possible exception that failed expectations are of necessity a continuous failure. I would suggest that it is entirely possible for a single failure to point back to a flawed beginning set of expectations. That what was first considered love, even in several months or years of reciprocal reinforcement, can be discovered as illusion from the outset, and a single failure can be the pivotal understanding. Love may be blind, but one single event can open eyes.
Agreed. A couple grows together in choice and negotiation. Differences may be ignored or accomodated. But there is no guarantee that they will grow closer together in this process. It may be that they will grow apart. Love, in the ideal sense, is oneness, but reality contains two individuals inside that, and whether expectations or conditions, love can either be strengthened or weakened.
Agreed again. But much of what can develop is controlled by those pre-conceived ideas brought by each as to what ideal love can, or should be. Differences and disagreements can and should slowly ‘even’ themselves out. But there is no guarantee of such. Some, many couple grow apart.
I would have to agree that it is possible for a form of unconditional love to develop over time -ie- evolving expectations and accomodations that finally transcend the individuals.
It is difficult to discount the ideal, because we have seen those couples. But I’m reminded that with a marraige failure rate of almost 50% in the U.S., love is obviously a bit more fragile than ity would appear.
Love of others is an extention of love of yourself. Because you love yourself, you also love your brother, because he is like you. You love your mother and your father because you are their rejuvinated self. You also have a need to make more of yourself, and you know a woman like your mother would give you a child like yourself, so you want a woman like your mother. Because you know only a person like your father gets women like your mother, you strive to be like him.
I never understood how a person can love then not love.Or hate then not hate. How do you shut off such intense emotions? It makes no sense. Sure someone can harm you repeatedly but, it does not mean they have the intent of harm. I can see removing them from your life if too much harm comes from them or they intentionally harm you,but how does love stop?
If you actually love then you will always love. Is it not better to say that you are fond of this person if conditions in this relation actually exist. It can’t be love if conditions are put there.Love and hate are not ambigous. The emotions between are ambigous, those can change much easier or change at all.
Love and hate are unconditional. I think most people confuse fondness for love. If you want a person to act a certain way, then they don’t and it hurts you, then how is that love? Love has no boundries if it is love and reciprocated, the same could be said for hate. If both love then no expectations should exist. If only one loves then it is an unreciprocated emotion that becomes bastardized and twisted, therefore that is not love. A parent’s love is held up as unconditional. We know that while that is ideal , many people have been cut off from family due to conditions their parents put down. How is that love? It is not, it is merely ambiguous emotion.
Love and hate do not have controllers. Ambiguous emotions have controllers or conditions
Yes, if we name an emotion it is just what it is without condition, but the definition of that naming and how we actually use the word is more what I’m asking about. You’re calling them ambiguous emotions, and perhaps that should be the main thrust of my statements. Would you like it better if I said that ideal (unconditional) love is tempered by expectations and on-going experience(with the attendant ambiguous emotions)?
I agree that having loved, love never goes away, but illusive expectations and failed performance can allow one to say, " I love you, but I don’t like you very much".
Is not expectations and on- going experience conditions? Unconditional love is acceptence of the wrong and annoying crap that another does. It is loving the bad as well as the good. Is that not unconditional love?
Perhaps. Loving in spite of the bad… There are any number of reasons why one would choose to close their eyes to the ‘bad’ in a relationship - and love (unconditional) could possibly be one of them, but something as obvious as fear of being alone can masquerade as ‘loving the bad’. And there are any number of variations on that theme. I’m not suggesting that the ideal can never happen, I just don’t see it functioning very well in most relationships.
I suspect that few fall in love in the sense of uncondtional love. I would venture that most simply fall in lust, and if “unconditional” love follows, it is just blind luck.
The insistence upon love – especially the myth of the “unconditioned†kind – is typical of a human mind wanting to find care in a universe of indifference and conditions.
The circumstances that the mind perceives as necessary for its emergence and well-being are considered valuable, meaningful or holy.
Love is always conditioned by the need to find, in the other, what we need or believe we want for ourselves. (Want and need are not always synonymous.)
If the other fails to live up to our condition of playing the role we require them to play, in exchange for us playing this same role for them (And if the cost to benefit ration is adequate for us), the love dissipates.
Maternal love, the symbol of “unconditioned love†is no more than self-love projected beyond one’s limitations as a mortal being.
The offspring becomes a carrier of the individual’s expectations and hopes and dreams and self, for a being that cannot carry them “eternally†itself.
A mind is sometimes attracted to what is not like itself, projecting its need to be more and to find completion in a union with the other (opposites attract) or it is attracted by what is like itself, finding a new avenue towards self-appreciation and wanting to be more of what it is by uniting with the other (birds of a feather…) - but mostly a combination of the two is present in every infatuation.
Love, essentially, is an inebriation of individuality so as to facilitate certain goals made necessary by individual restrictions.
The sense of self, made possible with reason, is sacrificed for the sense of a greater-self which is irrational to a mind evolved to serve a specific unity.
This distraction from individuality is perceived positively as an expansion or unburdening of self from its own constraints.
Fear, anxiety, misery is escaped by allowing the self to project its hopes forward into spatial/temporal possibilities which it will not be present to as a unity, but in parts.
The self, thusly, forces some of the weight of its own existence upon the other(s): nationality, racial identity, family, offspring, ideology and is relieved.
Jeez well forget me ever getting married and having kids I think I will stay single and become a Prima Donna.
It sounds like a lab experiment the way you put it. Can I be there when you explain this to your mate or future mate I wanna bring popcorn and beer it ought to be interesting to watch. I could learn something. Do I get to ask questions during the procceedings Cuz I could really learn things then.
You must read between the lines and study Satyr further. He has some unique perspectives in human relationships. He isn’t as cold as he comes off and you need to go to his website and spend an evening reading.
Love. It is about monogomy and commitment. Commit, don’t turn back or stray the course. I believe in my heart that you can fall in love with many people in the course of a lifetime - one man at a time of course.
True love has no conditions. A maternal love is unconditional - and this sort of adoration may be found between a man and a woman but it is rare. People marry for convenience, looks, power, cultural similarities, shared family values, socio-economic expectations and just for “completing oneself.” But, I need to mention maternal love because if you experience it you understand the selflessness and power of it. I never got true love until I had my babies, and then - only then - did I begin to correlate what a man and a woman need to do to make it unconditionally loving. It is about giving and not about having one’s needs met. As a matter of fact, it is not about being “met” at all. It is about giving. Period.
this almost looks like a formula for operant conditioning… tehee
at a cognitive level, i’d have to agree with most of the associations. being a humanistic psychologist (i’m a sucker for perls, frankl and rogers), i say that this is all rational thinking and discounts the validity of the human spirit… or something like that. unconditional love can never be something like that because the prefix “un” mean nothing or no… so unconditional love is basically love without conditions - which can only be possible if the conditions are “proactively” overlooked. an excerpt of a popular poem, to exemplify what i am thinking:
love knows no treason
loves knows no lies
love defies all reason
love has no eyes
but love is not blind
it sees and doesn’t mind
Why is the idea of conditioned love so disagreeable to us?
It’s simple premise is that one loves one’s self before anyone else.
Is it because we’ve been conditioned to feel guilty when we place self above anything else?
Is it because we feel our feeling is tainted when it possess motives and when it gains a return for its investment?
If you cannot love yourself, above anything else, as the one thing you will know with some degree of intimacy, then you have no place pretending you love something else, because even if your emotion is honest and pure then you are inadvertently exposing how little you think of yourself when you place another before it.
But I suspect most declarations of ‘selfless’ love and of ‘unconditioned’ love are mostly hypocritical displays trying to live up to a cultural and moral standard or it is a plea to receive from the other unconditioned gains because one fears he/she cannot live up to the conditions.
The ensuing failure to do so only causes the accompanying feelings of guilt and self-loathing to reinforce the desire to flee from one’s self.
The circular effect is complete as the self is made, by another, to feel ashamed and then to flee from this shame into the other: emotional dependence.
This is not a question of foolish pride, it is a question of generosity.
A person can be a little bit helpful, or they can be very helpful, but does that guage their self-worth?
Fear? Hypocracy?
Please…
More like: Joy, brotherhood, cooperation, unity.
…?
Shame does not bring people together, it forces them apart.
But, if someone feels beautiful, open and shameless they give to eachother more freely and offer more unconditional love then before.
Your “argument” here only applies to the dogmatic “What you should have done”, guilt-based-motivator, not the “What I know is best for us all”, understanding-of-social-health-based-motivator.
Pride has become a dirty word in our time.
It is now, mostly, accompanied by negative adjectives that are supposed to make us less proud and more humble.
But “generosity†is only pure when it is a product of overflowing, not when it is needful.
I love the other best when my self-love is so abundant that it overflows and encompasses another.
When I give of what I do not have enough of, my gift is accompanied by resentment.
Maybe you should be more sceptical about what each of those terms means and what underlies it.
Not always.
Hate can also bind.
And who decides “What is best for us all†if not a collective belief….a dogma?
I might think that “What is best for us all†is to do what the Spartans did and kill all infants born with defects, will the collective accept my assessment or will it guide me through education and morals into acceptable and non-acceptable assessments?
One is made to feel guilty for thinking certain things when they confront popular beliefs.
People are diposable, feelings toward people are disposable. We don’t depend on social lives to survive anymore. We can put conditions on love more now because we do not need a person to help us survive.
When I commented on satyr post about love and a lab. experiment it meant that Satyr description lacked feeling and lacking feeling when describing the most trying of all emotions is like trying to do surgery on a brick.
Love has long since become a toy word. People play with it, dissect it and really never know it. Love is the bogeyman of all our emotions, when it is supposed to be our fairygodmother. We all want it but, when faced with love we tend to run or tear it apart. Conditions are put on love for self protection so that we don’t feel the pain that goes with love. Love is yin yang it has to be balanced for it to be real. With conditions you do not get the full effect of love. You are removing an essence of love.
Love is pain and joy, it is acceptance and heartache, It must be felt with all its points with out conditions or it will not be love. It may look like love much the way glass can be made to look like a diamond or plastic to look like an opal. But it is not love, It is fondness, caring, like, lust, need, happiness. The oddest thing about it is: In this day and age when need for survival is not an overriding necessity for companionship, we should be able to have the luxury of finding and knowing love, yet love has become a toy and disposable. truly odd
To be emotionless, even when speaking about emotions, is a sign that one is attempting to be objective and not a blubbering idiot allowing his feelings to dictate his thoughts.
Furthermore, I am convinced, that underneath all emotions lies fear.
Fear is the fundamental emotion. All others either are derivatives, compensations or methods of coping with it.
Anxiety, is inherit to all living organism that become conscious, all the more so when they become self-conscious, and are faced with the unknown and the worlds indifference and many challenges.
I opted for saying too little assuming any interest would add on as it went along.