In the thread marked below, we got off on a long tangent about the meaning of love, its aspects, what qualifies a set of emotions or bonds as being of the ‘love’ variety, and so on and so forth. So…in hopes of bringing the other thread back to its basic idea without losing this wonderful, wonderful discussion, lets set this up as its own topic:
What is love? What qualifies a set of emotions as loving emotions, or loving bonds, and what sets those of lust, or of liking, apart?
A final note: I expect this topic to be tangental. Lets let it go on whatever tangents we may take it, and just explore to our hearts contents all things that hit upon this topic in some fashion or another.
Well for me as we discussed. Love is more of a sense a part of your physche or soul or self, it is not an emotion.
Love can cause emotions but, emotions do not cause love as a result.
Lust is pure emotion it is often confused with love because like love you can get powerful emotions.
Emotions are results of an idea, action, thoughts or senses etc. They cause action and reaction activities. Emotions are a temporary result of actions, ideas, thought ,senses etc. Emotions are results.
Love is not a temporary thing. It does not fluxuate. It can stop cold. But it does not go up or down. It is not a result, it is a feeling ,a sense.
Lust is a temporary emotion. From lust you get negative emotions or rather what are thought of as negative. Possessive, greed, envy, jealousy, anger, hatred. towards the object of lust and towards those that may threaten your lust.
If you love someone truly love, you may get angry from personal disagreements but, you wont have any of the other emotions involved unless rare certain situations arise. You don’t want to ever possess the person, if you love them you could never be envious, or be jealous of them giving others attention, if you truly love someone you will never hate them even should they hurt you.
Now you can truly love someone and lust can appear in the form of erotic or a desire to spend more time with them or give them something etc…
Lust is not a purely sexual emotion. You can lust after cars, property, jewelery, any object , creature or human but, you do not not have to have(most are not having) erotic desire for them.
Well this is a start. It is not complete nor detailed, just a start. And I may have some seemingly conflicting ideas but, cut me some slack I have only had one cup of coffee. I will flesh out and clear up as we go along.
Hmm…something occured to me, while reading your post, Kriswest: You say love and lust are often mistaken with one another, and that love can not have hatred involved, but can have anger.
Well, what about hatred and anger? Can these be confused as well? And if so, how can we qualify them as defining factors?
A definition by exclusion usually works alright…however, what can we exclude? Hatred, but thats mixed with anger…Lust is inclusive, not exclusive…hmm…what then, disqualifies something as being love?
I know the definition of the bond being talked about, and that works as an inclusive definition, which is the first half of an operational definition. what about an exclusive counterpart? Any ideas?
Do you have any thoughts or even emotions about strangers as you pass them by? No, unless they emit an oddity or abnormal something that affects your senses, Or unless you are contemplating people. You don’t think about them or possibly even really see them. We actually have no interaction or reaction to the vast amount of humans we see. They don’t really exist to us, they do, but, they are not a part of us, our circle. So they are not thought of. We don’t think of them. They are existing nonentity part of the scenery type of thing. Trees for the forest situation.
Ambiguity? Is that the right word? What is total sensory deprivation? If you can’t sense you can’t react or act or think about an action taking place. The word nothing or ambiguious pops into my mind.
Lets start with that.
Here is a question,and thought: We must love ourselves before we can truly love, so goes the saying right? Well( ow this hurts my head) What if Love is an internal reactive protective sense to guide us.
We have external senses. Would it not make sense to have an internal sense.
Look there was an experiment we kids did with ants way back when, during a long hot boring summer. It was an exhaustive experiment for kids.
Ants fight ants from other colonys. Red ants will fight other red ants if they are not from a sister colony. So in an attempt to figure out why, we took a bunch of ants and a new queen from one colony in one neighborhood far from ours. We brought the ants to a colony in our neighborhood. We set a few ants near that colony. The resident ants attacked them.
No surprise there.
Now what we did was try to acclimate the new ants. slowly, by taking dirt from the area and some from the existing colony, we set the visitors in an ant farm with this dirt. we fed them the exact same food the colony ate. We even changed the dirt for every couple of days to refresh it with the colony’s natural odors. At the end of three weeks. We put some visitors near the colony. They were attacked.
During the three weeks we would at intervals put visitors near the colony.All were always attacked. While we were doing that we also had seperated ants from the colony. Fed them different food kept them in different dirt and changed their dirt. They were always accepted back in. Even at the end of 3 weeks. We even looked at the ants for external markings under a microscope. No different patterns. We also tried putting visitor ants with a colony queen. she attacked or they attacked I disremember which, we tried acclimating the queens to their opposites nothing exept fights.
So it appears that an internal sense might have been at work. Possibly, maybe, hell we were dumb bored kids. but, it did make us think about internal sense. What do you think?
I seen this in many forums, many times over and there is one common thread to them all.
Every single poster (IMO) way overcomplicates Love, they talk more about the affects then they do the source or a simple idea to explain how it operates.
First off, I believe Love has a Source and that source would literally be Love and I believe that Source is the creator of all life, or God if you prefer that word. Love is impossible in a vacuum, you cannot give or receive Love without another, so whom or what ever the source of Life is, is also Love. If life was a product of accident or chaos then there is no such thing as Love as I speak, then it must be a human construct and is purely relative with no defined parameters which makes it nothing in the big picture since it could have no purpose.
Now for my simple working definition:
Love is very simply putting someone else before yourself, nothing more. It is the opposite of selfishness, it is perfect charity in that you give it freely without trying to control what is done with it by the receptor.
In my opinion the reason why so many misinterpret or done understand Love is because they don’t know the source.
Hmm…no offense meant by this, but the whole introduction of god brings a fallacy into the argument (especially, as pointed out in the original discussion, since this is posted under psychology). Thats not to say that God, or a Source, could not be involved: Simply that we have to work around that hole, since such a creation is not falsifiable…we have no way to prove or disprove its existance.
I think the main point of a definition is to have something tangible, and workable in a dissectory fashion.
As for the selflessness…I still maintain that love can be a highly selfish emotion, even in terms of a pair-bondage definition: Pair bonds, though expressing a connection between people, are often formed by the necessity of the people…the need to be loved.
This brings about, of course, the idea of selfish selflessness, or altruistic objectivism…which, though seemingly paradoxical, resolves itself easily when one realizes that a person, when joined to another via a pair bond, becomes a part of the other. Not more or less important…but connected completely.
In evolutionary psychology terms, this form of mate selection is for protection, and yada yada yada.
In mysticism terms, this is because we all have a second half. (and its called a second half, rather than a master or mistress, for a reason).
In objectivist terms, its because we find the person to be a direct equal, a full compliment to ourselves, and cherish them as such.
My proposal, then, definition-wise:
Love is a link established between a set of people, creating one social entity from the union, that is indivisible at its most minute point.
…s’not a very good one, I know, but its all I could think of, in terms of stripping it to the most basic of definitions.
No offence taken. However, if Love is what I claim then there can be no definition or understanding without a source. I used the term source in the most generic way as to sidestep the problem of God that you bring up, this source could be anything you choose, pure energy could fit the bill and I think there is some scientific evidence that creation of this universe was caused by some form of energy. I just happen to believe in God and put forth that notion to better show my thoughts, if it is a major hang up then use any source you wish or you can always debate the entire idea of Love having any source of any kind, but then you will find that Love has no real solid definition and would be purely relative to the beholder.
I agree, that’s why I gave a simple definition of selflessness.
I must disagree there. Test this yourself, its not hard. If you are thinking of your self and put your feelings before your significant other, ask them if they feel loved afterwards. Then reverse this if it hasn’t already been done to you, do you feel loved when someone only does something for you if it helps them out or makes them feel good. Consider charity, is it from the heart if you try and control the gift you give or tell the person how to spent the money you gave them? You got to ask your self, is it for me or for them, Love is selfless.
Hate to sound like a fortune cookie but this can only work if one is doing for the other and vise versa. This criss cross alleviates any tension and perfectly cancels out any lonely feelings or disconnection. If each is serving themselves there is no way to keep together as you wont know what the other needs or wants and technically you cannot give to your self or it becomes empty and meaningless. What good feelings do you get from serving yourself, and what good feelings would your spouse have if you were living like platonic roommates completely separate about emotional needs? IOW, how can you know what the other needs if you are thinking about yourself?
You cant pat yourself on the back, it has no meaning and Love is always about others, not self, the two are polar opposites. Selfishness drives out and kills Love, they cannot abide together, their respective cousins are Good and Evil.
If you don’t see that Love is always about others then try this acid test, try and practice Love all alone.
This sounds like your talking about animal relationships that are all about survival and procreation, hopefully you can tell that humans are different then the rest of the animal kingdom concerning relationships. If not then we can never agree on anything concerning the human condition as I believe that we are apart from all other animals in that we have choice and awareness of our existence and that leads to many differences.
Love…
in order to give love, one must love himself first. Then when one knows how to love himself then one must do unto others what you want others do unto you.
Love is the golden rule.
I don’t see how the two are mutually exclusive. If you love yourself, your are in a state of selfishness, which is the opposite of Love even by your definition of service, the two oppose. I will have to stick to respect in your statement; it makes much more sense and does not break the rule.
By the way, Service and Selfless are mutually exclusive so we are on the same track in our definitions.
First: Recipricol Selflessness IS selfishness. Basic game theory: The Prisoner’s Dilema.
Second: I hate to say it, but we are animalistic in our relationships. To think otherwise is to be filled with arrogance. The only difference is, we can use rational that is apparent to us, while any animal rational that exists isn’t necessarily understandable.
This doesn’t mean that a higher connection doesn’t exist, simply that it exists in ALL relationships, not just those of human to human.
You’re right though, love can’t be a singular thing. Thats the whole concept of pair bonding, as explained in the initial post: Love exists between people. As was noted in the original thread this topic started in, one-way love is merely a DESIRE for love…not love itself.
But…just to get back to the recipricol selflessness for a moment, because my mind keeps nagging me about brushing it off:
If you know you’re going to be reciprocated, of course you can be selfless. However, if you’re completely selfless, you get no respect, and no return: You act as an AFC, and’ll get treated as such. You need to have an ego, to polarize the relationship: If everyone bent to a lover’s needs all the times, everything would be filled by the irrationality of want. Or worse still:
“What is it you want, love?”
“I want you to be happy…so what is it you want, dearest?”
“Not fair…I wanted your happiness first. Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to be happy, nothing for me…just for you…”
“but I want things for you, not for me…”
…And yes, I’ve heard the above conversation…from a couple that lasted a total of two months.
Emotions are a result of action, thought or sense. They are 99% of the time short term. Hate and lust are possibly about the only non short term emotions that I can think of right now.
Emotions arise from us, parts of us that exist already. Emotions are reactive, defensive, protective, aggressive or relief, there might be other categories. I imagine we could list emotions and decide what category/ies they fall into. Hate and lust are the only two that may be base classified as active I think.
Now, I don’t mean the emotional part (what I am feeling) but the behavior part (how I act toward the person). The expression of love is not really love it if is conditioned on something. And most people always want something from you, so it isn’t always an expression of love if they are doing something for some type of consideration in return. That is more like bartering.
That is not love but many people do behave that way, especially parents who can teach their children this. “If you are a good little girl Mommy will buy you a present.” Meaning: If you do what Mommy says, Mommy will show you some love or affection.
The emotional part (how someone feels when in love) is more about lack of fear, I think. Love is the opposite of fear. When you are not afraid to open up you can “feel” love. So feeling love, really feeling love, is about intimacy. Intimacy is about letting someone see you naked, warts and all. That can be empowering sometimes because we all want to be loved -we all want to be accepted (but are usually too afraid to try). So love (the emotion) is letting yourself be totally honest and naked and candid with someone, some ONE special person. Love is about just being yourself with no facade at all.
And, yes, being able to open up to someone or be intimate does require the ability to fully love YOURSELF, otherwise that person would not be able to be truly intimate with another person.
So love, true unconditional love, would have to start with self love first.
You are pretty correct Love has no conditions. Once conditions are set it is not love. It is just emotional. Lust in its Possesive form if you will. I will keep you as long as you do this and don’t do that.
You can’t stop loving a person even if they hurt you bad, if there is true love that binds. Love is a part of our mental hardwiring it is bonding.
Love is always reciprocated. Think about the saying “Love is a two way street”. That is true.