Where Does Love Come From?

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Where Does Love Come From?

Occasionally when reading I run across a phrase or sentence or paragraph, which really rings a bell for me. The bell may be recognition of the compatibility of the point to my own conclusions or perhaps the point caused an epiphany, or other reasons. When I encounter such a point I often copy it and store it in a file for later analysis. One such point is as follows: “Platonic idea that the giving and receiving of knowledge, the active formation of another’s character, or the more passive growth under another’s guidance, is the truest and strongest foundation of love”.

My analysis of this sentence led me down a long trail over an extended period of time to an understanding of the meaning of the statement and to an agreement with the meaning of that statement.

When studying philosophy I had read some of Plato’s work and had a slight remembrance of one of his Dialogues in which he dealt with the subject of love. After some study of the particular Dialogue in question and some further study of Plato’s general philosophy I realized what was meant by the point made in the sentence I had saved.

I often watch the Discovery Channel on TV. As you probably know this channel often has a great documentary on animal life. Their audio/visual presentations give the viewer wonderful insights into the life of animals. Often the animals in question are large mammals such as lions, gorillas, monkeys, etc.

Plato wrote, “An unexamined life is not worth living”. I find this a bit hyperbolic but nevertheless agree with the general point. Plato also argued that the giving and receiving of knowledge, the active formation of another’s character, or the more passive growth under another’s guidance, is the truest and strongest foundation of love. Plato judged that the basis of love is centered upon the mutual struggle for truth.

I would not attempt to explain why Plato’s Idealistic philosophy leads to this conclusion but I think one can find justification for this point of view by considering the nature of the parent to progeny relationship. Considering the nature of evolution one might easily discover that the origin of love could be observed in the obvious relationship of present day mammals. The educational relationship between the animal mother and their progeny are evident to the most casual observer.

Evolutionary Psychology is based on the theory that all human psychological traits, such as love, must be traceable to our evolutionary ancestors. The source of love in humans is evolved from the mother infant relationship in early mammals (perhaps).

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Love does not come from a place. Love is.

Love just IS. And thank ? that it “is”.

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I think love, like all human emotions, are, at their most basic level, chemical reactions to stimuli. We often control (or at least affect) those stimuli by how we interperet them. The human mind is a powerful tool, and whether subconcious or concious, there are a million mental factors that will affect our opinion of someone.

So, while love is a reaction to stimuli from another person, there is no one answer to what love really is or what creates it. A prisoner with Stockholm Syndrome may really love her captor, but for reasons quite different then a mother loves her son, or a groom loves his bride. You cannot capture love in a simple phrase, it is shaped and formed by our genetics, our experiences and even our own will.

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OMG- no

Love is sense.

Not a physical sense.

To understand what im getting at, first you have to know that i believe the soul and body are two existing parallels with the mind as a bridge…one analogy that i often use is that of a train track. Two parallels that are only conected (aside from proximity, which is relative anyway) by the mind/

When you feel love, a sense felt by your soul, your parallel existence “the human body” may be triggered into sensation aswell…the key is to draw the distinction between the two sensory levels. Earthly senses and Spirit senses.

We really are the masters of being two places at once, the weird thing is that we think we are in one place…every human being is omnipitant. We are everywhere. The fact that your physical body might be in Iraq for example only adds to this. I hope you understand. By this i mean…I AM EVERYWHERE AND JUST HERE!

thankyou

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Spirit

I agree that the emotion ‘love’ results from a DNA induced chemical action that we have evolved. The question I am trying to answer is what might serve as the fundamental reason that evolution found it to be useful for our survival. I would think that even though love is ‘triggered’ by many situations that there must be one source for it becoming a component of our existence.

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Projectile

I find that trying to develop a reason for something is difficult when speaking with someone who holds a mind/body dichotomy. I cannot argue the evolution case because I assume you do not find evolution to be persuasive.

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Love is a chemical, or rather, a cocktail of chemicals. Just the right mix of serotonin, (nor)epinephrine, and others and BOOM, you have what we know as love. It is the firing of neurotransmitters.

Where does it come from? Evolution. Stable mated pairs tend to produce fewer offspring, but offspring of higher quality. In a social animal, that is a really good combination since the tribe/pack has limited resources.

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Love is psychological and that’s it, but that’s not bad.

Love is when you believe something to be close to an ideal, and even if it falls a little short you can still see the ideal.

A silly example might be pizza. I love pizza. It seems like the ideal food in many ways. It’s got great texture and (if the right cheese blend) a great taste. Now, I must say, that even a not so good pizza is still pretty good. It’s hard to ruin.

So, the pizza represents an ideal food for me (This of course is just an argument, but I’m sure you know what I mean).

So, love is more a cognitive thing based on ideals than any other type of experience. Whatever we love approaches a state of “how things should be” in our personal experience.

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please dont further compress my theorys on triality into an ambiguas combination of words like “mind/body dichotomy”. What on earth has evolution got to do with this?

Ofcourse i believe in evolution…id like to know what would make you “assume” otherwise

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Statements like those of Xunzian and Coberest are all well and good.
But they’re only “useful” to a certain point to me. It’s true that emotions are basd on neurological/ chemical reactions, its true that love may aid us to survive. But i don’t think these answers are SATISFACTORY. They give a scientific explanation as to why emotion x is generated by phenoman y - they don’t really psychologically or philosophically say where love “comes from”. Sorry if this sounds mystical - its not necessarily. I respect the reductionist, scientific explanation as plausible but not very satisfying emotionally, psychologically or philisophically… ]

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I think love is maybe a search for completeness. We look for the love which we don’t have.

It is also the thing that makes us truely exposed as ourselves. A tearing down of the things we hide behind. So in a sense perfect truth.

I’d also call it the selfless emotion. The thing that drives us to do things that have no self motivation.

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The evolutionary purpose of love is to increase the chance your offspring get to reproduce, thus insuring your gene’s survival for another generation. Lifemates are more likely to have successful offspring, that is to say, offspring that reproduce, because the parents are more likely to protect their children, prolonging life.

Basically, love has survived evolutionarily becuase since it promotes successful offspring, it is in turn passed along genetcially.

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Your comment about body and soul in a parallel universe led me to believe that you believed mind and soul to be part of the spiritual world and thus you did not accept evolution as valid.

Evolution is important because if one accepts Darwin’s theory then the logical place to seek the source of human characteristics is to look at our non human ancesters.

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We speak of love in many ways. I love pickles. I love my children. I love April in Paris.

If we take all of our loves and removed all contingencies it would leave us with the abstract concept that is an emotion. This emotion started somewhere in our non human ancestors.

Plato seems to agree with me that the source of love is in the mother progeny relationship as it displays itself in the teaching process. Me and Plato claim that the source of this emotion we call love is–The source of love in humans is evolved from the mother infant relationship in early mammals.

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Evolution as the only explanation for love is stupid.

Love is phenomenological in nature. Some people might love things that have nothing to do with anything. One could love the clouds, the gravel on the walk home, a sign above a store that one sees frequently, or only occasionally. There are a myriad of things to choose from.

In the German movie Wings of Desire, which you should all rent (I mean it), there are two angels in the first half of the movie that wander around observing humans. What they enjoy the most is comparing notes on little things that people do that help them to notice life. It might be something like, “ I saw a man today that was making coffee. He dropped the cup; it shattered and spilled coffee everywhere. The man cursed, and then laugh,” then the angels would shake their heads knowingly and laugh.

The beginning of that movie makes me cry every time. Whoever wrote the film knows a lot about love.

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Blah Blah Blah…such language games…read some Wittgenstein you Platonist. There is no core meaning for love and no matter how many theories you throw out there you will never find it’s essence. Sorry…

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Just because love can encompass more than is evolutionarily beneficial does not mean that evolution is a poor explination. Becuase we have intellect and can think, we can apply what we have gained from evolution in other ways. We are complex animals, and find, whether concious of it or not, myriad purposes that features were not evolutionarily designed for. For instance, our ability to create tools, an evolutionary beneficial task, can be used to create art, something that has little, if any evolutionary benefit. Similiarly, we can love things that do not help with reproductive success, even though love was not designed for those purposes.

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In my experience, i have never met anyone that didnt believe in it, as far as i know, im not getting onto this one…

quote

“Your comment about body and soul in a parallel universe led me to believe that you believed mind and soul”

I do believe the soul is in a parallel universe from the point of my physical form…as for the mind, well thats where things get confusing for me. heh

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Maybe love, is conception of soul…maybe sould reproduce parallel to our bodies…so while on a physical level we produce offspring, belongings, objects etc. on a spiritual level at the same time we are producing the soul to parody that offspring…

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When evolution is spoken of it should refer to a built in function. For instance, most people find fatty foods to taste good. The taste is the built in function here.

However, the cognitive element kicks in here because our minds associate the good tasting food with events and objects in the environment that we enjoy, thus the power of the food increases dramatically.

So, evolution provides a template for us, but metaphysical explanations are really where it’s at.