Is our general conception of love simply a desire to fulfill unsatisfied childhood longings is there something deeply spiritual to it?
Please provide your input on the meaning on love. Tks.
None of the above.
I don’t like your poll choices very much.
I think that love (real love) and feelings of it are rooted in some kind of desire to escape and also to invite someone into our skulls with us. A male and a female can share their bodies and their minds and friends can simply share minds. Love means that you are more than just one single person. There is a free flow of give and take. By knowing the other person you expand you mind.
I know so much about my loved ones that I kind of am them in a way. Frequently people that you love are easy to predict and sometimes you can almost think like them and complete their sentences.
When you sacrifice yourself for strangers or a group you then become part of the whole group. Knowing that you helped people means that in some way, even if no one knows that you helped, they carry a bit of you with them. The Jimmy Stewart film It’s a Wonderful Life has a bit about this.
Sometimes you love people that are unpredictable and may be because they add on to you. You can say, “I never thought of that†and afterwards you start “thinking about that†and have been refreshed and added to by that person.
I think that love has to do with the creation of the intellect and its unfortunate position.
Anyway, the way to kill love in a person is to be so routinely mean to them that they would prefer to stay locked away in their head than come out.
Can’t a childhood longing be deeply spiritual? – or at least spiritual?
What is “spiritual” though?
Spirit is a non-material form. (?)
Spirit is that which tends away from itself. (Hegel)
Right that’s what I thought you meant. It’s just figuratively sometimes. Anyway, I just don’t believe in such a thing, so I could not support love as coming from, or having anything to do with such a construct. However, I don’t know what the author is getting at.
You see the first definition being a construct of the second definition? Surely a materialist psychologist must at least acknowledge the second definition. (Though I wonder if it’s not a function of the first definition.)
What makes sense in the author’s question is that tending away from yourself only comes with living – which a child does not have much experience in. Would you agree with that, doc?
Love is a psychological and physical dependency.
Best drug in the world.
Sing – gift of the gods – love’s praise!
Saving, destroying.
mrn
I’ll grant psychological, but not physical.
Romantic Love is, in general, a maladaptive idea, promoted (for centuries) by those in control of symbolic production to forward their own agenda.
We are selfish creatures; we don’t love altruistically, we cling selfishly, and feel sorry for ourselves when the attatchment is broken.
The concept of romantic love is a waste of time, IMHO.
We grow used to the presense of those around us, and miss them when they are gone, nothing more.
I voted “Childhood longings”… how many times has a sultry Marilyn Monroe cooed to her man by the name “daddy”. This is true for me as well- sometimes it’s totally oedipal.
I think you may mean Electra Complex, rather than Oedipus.
You’re right, sorry about that… a hint of bisexuality will do that to you.