Why do folks want to make emotions sound like a Lab experiment or punishment/reward or even worse something to disregard and write off as a by product of hard core facts and actions. Have any of you actually had a long term positive loving relationship? that includes mates and family.
To equate love with selfishness is simply throwing the Dawkins blanket over the question. - ie - Anything we do is “selfish”. Everything in the world is pink. The easiest argument in the world is to lock up all of the possible conclusions in the definitions. A straw dog painted one color. There is no discourse, just boring diatribe.
Kriswest: Personally, I don’t feel comfortable attributing my emotions to any mysterious forces outside of my control or understanding. If there’s a chance that I could make sense out of “love,” or anything else, it’s worth becoming conscious of those feelings, their origins, and their effects.
And as for the original statement, which I apologetically failed to address directly, PhilosophyGirl: Loving other people may be through selfish means, though it may also be natural and only disguised as selfish. Have you ever just been in a good mood and desired to share your love with others? Maybe you woke up one morning really happy and gave someone you loved a hug, just because you appreciated them enough to do it and weren’t desiring to be loved back? Maybe you can think of love as a gas tank–one that you can fill yourself, but it’s much easier to get others to fill for you.
I hate to say it Thought, but the force you speak of may just be your subconcious…
and Dan, that was a bit… well, anyway…
There are no mysterious forces when it comes to emotions. They are merely tools for us to use and to grow with. We have emotions because we need them for survival and growth. We need to learn control and use of the tools. That is it.
So many kinds of love, so little time. Your family, children, your dog, your friends, your lover… even yourself, your home, money or power… it exists, but if you really want to experience the kind you are talking about, you need to learn to give it and then (only then) will you understand it, and the language of this love will overwhelm you and every part of your being.
No, marriage is just two agendas agreeing with each other. Love is something altogether different.
xo,
The Bester
Kriswest: Naturally. The point of my post was to imply that I don’t accept “mysterious forces” as the source of my emotions. I don’t believe that emotions are beyond our understanding or scientific investigation.
My response to PhilosophyGirl was an attempt at being optimistic. How many of us had parents that encouraged us to to have so many of these selfless qualities only for logic and psychology to imply that we’re incapable of doing them? It may not be that “love” of any form can truly meet any fictionally-inspired expectations we have, but when perceived differently, we may be able to dispute it being solely based on personal benefit.
When it comes to love or any emotion, the hard, scientific, behaviorist perspective isn’t enough. In this view, emotions are meaningless because all actions can be predicted by history of reinforcement: the accumulation of all of your rewards and punishments to different degrees. The example that I gave with being in a good mood sort of raises questions about this theory, particularly why love and support generalize to all areas of life and why you would be more willing to tolerate stressful situations cheerfully, with a more optimistic perception, based on how you happened to feel at the time.
Carl Rogers, the Humanist, for example, believed that loving others was something humans did innately. Children require unconditional positive regard while growing up, which is a demonstration by thier care-givers of love and attention, and if they don’t receive it, they learn to perform in order to obtain it. He called this conditions of worth, and this learned pattern of behaving a particular way to earn love can remain throughout life. In this view, if children have a loving foundation established firmly, they will give love to others naturally; conditions of worth bring forth other , more selfish motives.
He’s just one theorist that makes this argument. Other examples include (and correct me if I’m wrong):
Freud: the excess need for love comes from the unsuccessful resolution of the Oedipus Complex due to overwhelming castration anxiety.
Adler: children can develop an insecurity if their families create unreal expectations.
Ainsworth: Loving others comes from the ability to attach securely to the mother figure.
The point of all of this rambling, hopefully, is to emphasize the importance of perception and interpretation. Every theory has valid criticisms, including that which states that we are a bottomless pit of selfishness and reward-seeking.
Thanks Spock, but I doubt we will be any more able to control our emotions than our subconcious. We can certainly come to understand them more, but control? No.
I think most people would agree that the best way to capture ’ real-pure-love ’ in a single
photograph would be to take a shot of a mother cradling her new-born baby in her arms.
I also believe that the early (lovey-dovey) stages of a romantic relationship are basically
nothing more than a test being performed by each partner… a test to see whether their
‘chosen-one’ is capable of being a loving parent.
This love, or love-testing, fades away fairly quickly once the ‘results are in’, and unless
there are now some children ( or maybe a dog or cat ) the relationship will, no doubt,
soon become boring… and die.
Jesus Ebrum, that’s a bit too coldly evolutioanry for me.
What about the old folks whose children have all left the nest? Are we to look at them and declare they can’t be in love?
Just coz the kids have left home doesn’t mean they’re not a part of their
parents lives anymore.
My mother still won’t leave me alone and I’m 32 !!
My parents also now have two dogs AND two cats, whereas when I was
growing up we only ever had one dog… so it ‘adds up’ in MY book.
- I’m going to sleep now *
Love :
it burns like acid when it’s really water - to a vampire.
it creates a blackhole and a wormhole into or away from the “after life”.
it holds you like a stake that must be released for freedom.
it is a villian and a hero of many origins.
True enough.
I hate it when people put poetry on the board…
Anyway, Ebrum, I agree that shared responsibility can certainly help hold a couple together, but I don’t agree it’s the sole reason.
In that case, how do you account for divorced couples with children?
As I am a witness to the madness Love induces, the irrationality is creates; I feel that I may have some authority on the subject aswell. Perhaps this input will enlighten this subject a bit.
As TheQuestion put it so delightfully in the beginning of this discussion, Love is madness. And I don’t use this word lightly to enforce my opinion or even share with you ignorants whom have not witnessed what it means the impossible incomprehensability of it, I use it purely out of the irrationality is forces a human being into. The sheer blinding euphoria, you might say, is just an exaggeration of the common happiness one might feel when winning the lottery. But there is one defining deviation that sets this emotion apart: the pure altruistism towards another. Human nature is not easily homogenous with such absolute belief. The Will is naturally egoistic, acts only upon the need to satisfy the boredom that fills the hole in our guts every time we’ve gained what we need. We suffer as such, never really experiencing happiness, but mere neutrality, a distance from suffering which in turn yet again turns to boredom. It is this Will that makes us strive. But is it is also this contrast that makes Love so remakable. The strive here is not to fulfill anything of substance, it is to empty oneself of irrationality. The absolute care and altrusim shown of Love is beyond any describable context, hence whatever I write here will in the end serve as nothing.
Yet, Love is so compelling, so unbelievably strong that silence about this matter would be for the madman, the man in Love: a mad action to follow. So I must turn yet again to TheQuestion, as he pointed out something relevant. That he found Love in Van Gogh. The one whom does not understand the subtleties of art cannot comprehend Love. Since the medium of writing is far too crippled and “narrow” so to speak to describe this with any success; artistry is the closest depiction of this phenomena we have. My advice is if you want to witness pure undefiable Love, see the Louvre, walk in St. Peter’s Basilica, feel the Love in Hagia Sophia or anything from Raphael Santi. Listen to Mozart, Tchaikovsky or even Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I am aware, however, that I am no closer to the truth than I was at the beginning of this argument. Yet, the sense of accomplishing something is upon me.
I finally get my goddamn dues around here.
Love is a human construct . Love , is only a certain level of empathy for another . And that empathy can wane and die . Even from parents . The romantic ideal of Love does not exist . We choose to stay with a certain person because it is more conveniant for us to do so than with somebody else . Even if we choose to save our own children , it is only kin related altruism being mistaken by the superstitious as “love” for another . We are very much alone in the world , a creator God is an impossibilty , and this is,nt neccesarily a bleak thought . We should embrace the fact that our lives mean nothing , that our emotions are temporary , and will die in the ground with us , along with all memory of this place we inhabit now . Accept it
.
[ sorry… this is a bit late ]
TheQuestion wrote :
They divorced because of their foolish [media influenced] expectations of a ‘life-long love’. In days of old, and still in some cultures today, marriage is first and foremost a ‘partnership’… A man and a woman becoming a ‘team’ with the sole [soul?] purpose of starting a family.
Have I ever suffered from the ‘madness of love’?.. Yes… when I was younger.
Perhaps it’s just a ‘juvenile phase’ ? [ overly anxious about lots of things ]
Or maybe I’ve ‘loved and lost love’ too many times [3 times]… and now I’m a broken man.
.
I think it might be more probable that what we percieve as love is in fact an emotion that serves as an aid to our instristic desire to procreate.
Love however can be mistaken for many different things, and true love is something that is achieved in a completely stable emotional state. And you must know that it is more than a silly crush. Otherwise you might be fooling yourself indeed as you have stated PG.
But if this feeling results from neither of which has been forementioned, then it must be something very important, something that is as mysterious as our sense of humor. Something that might result from something like a soul.
I have hope for the latter…
Yes, yes. I agree; love may have started out as a evolutionary tool but it has grown, like so many other of our earlier evolutionary baggage, into something so much more.
Anyway, SirEbrum, once again I must disagree with the media-enforced thing. The notion of romantic love has been around a great deal longer than the modern media. Think back to the legends of Tristan and Isolade, Dante and Beatrice, all those old tales of romance from Middle Eastern lore. What then do you propose this notion springs from? A need to make meaningful our primal urges? Perhaps, but like so many things involving the mind there are many layers to this. Deeper, I think, is a subconcious need for wholeness, (a trait romantic love shares with relegion,) a need for recognition in an opposite that which you are beyond opposites. Jesus, I’m getting borderline mystical here, but I beleive this a psychological truth, one that has exsisted since we evolved an operational conciousness and that will continue with us into the future.
And about you past “madness”, remember that the pendulum swings both ways. What was true for you then wasn’t negated by what is true for you now.