Hello. I am writing a research paper on love, and I need some new points of view. The wells of written words are starting to dry up; I need some conversation to keep this topic alive. What exactly is love? (how would you define it) What are its implications? What would happen if everybody loved? I would appreciate any input, especially if it’s good.
Cordially,
Streyhorn
Love is desire, the motivation that drives one to one’s desire, whether agape or eros. Love can also manifest itself in charity, where one ceases to see the corporeal boundaries that typically define us and instead sees the other as the other me.
Love is not desire, want is desire. Lust is a closer relation to desire.
Welcome to the forum Haud_termino. I think a lot of love may be sublimated sexuality as many like Nietzsche, Freud, and others have seen. If we were asexual beings perhaps love would not even exist. Love certainly evolves beyond these themes, but i believe there is where it gets it’s start.
I think defining love is very difficult as different people use the term love differently. For example, my love for my boyfriend is clearly different to my love for Snowy - a little white bear i was given on my 1st Birthday. Some people are happy to declaire their love for someone after only knowing them for a few days, while for others, to say ‘I Love You’ can take months, even years. I believe feelings of ‘love’ can often be confused for feelings of ‘liking lots’ or ‘caring for lots’.
Thank you marshall. You state love may be sublimated sexuality, that leaves a lot of loose ends. Parental love, love for a pet, love of an art or way, love of a moment in time etc etc etc…
LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient. ~Ambrose Bierce (cynic)
Despite the cynical definition, i feel there is some validity to Bierces claims. I dont know…maybe im just another crack-pot floating in a sea of false profets and imaginary emotions.
And that is where the “…evolves beyond these themes…” part comes in. I wouldn’t go as far as Freud and say that all art, politics, etc is sublimated sexuality, but it certainly plays a role. There is also the fact that the golden rule is just a good pragmatic rule for living, so maybe love would have come to the fore that way, but it would probably lack the added force that sexuality can lend to it.
I define love as an intense appriciation, usually followed by curiosity and desire.
I think love is more broad that sexual or romantic types, or at least thats how I define it.
Even though science can describe and delineate love, chemically. That really does little to explain the complex gestalt (something that is greater than the sum of it’s parts) of love in social relations.
Love is a powerful description of great feelings to a person or thing.
I love that girl
I love my playstation
to find out if your in love you do some math:
x= time you think about you
y= time you think of someone
if y-x= a positive number, your in love!
Sex is just a great benefit. But think, would love suck if there wasn’t any sex? Maybe love is nature’s way of tricking us into reproducing. Or maybe it’s a disease? Holy hell, I know nothing.
Love will never be explained by a mathematical formula.
I thought it was a nice way to find out if your in love or not…I didn’t make it up i read it some ware else.
any answers to
Sex is just a great benefit. But think, would love suck if there wasn’t any sex? Maybe love is nature’s way of tricking us into reproducing. Or maybe it’s a disease? Holy hell, I know nothing.???
Yeah, i’d be inclined to agree with you that love probably is natures way of tricking us into reproducing, but damn it’s helluva trick!
Some interesting quoats from economist.com/printedition/d … ID=2424049
So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. We are literally addicted to love, Dr Young observes. Like the prairie voles.
Drugs such as Prozac work by keeping serotonin hanging around in the brain for longer than normal, so they might stave off romantic feelings. (This also means that people taking anti-depressants may be jeopardising their ability to fall in love.) But once romantic love begins in earnest, it is one of the strongest drives on Earth. Dr Fisher says it seems to be more powerful than hunger. A little serotonin would be unlikely to stifle it.
This independence means it is possible to love more than one person at a time, a situation that leads to jealousy, adultery and divorcethough also to the possibilities of promiscuity and polygamy, with the likelihood of extra children, and thus a bigger stake in the genetic future, that those behaviours bring. As Dr Fisher observes, We were not built to be happy but to reproduce."
i dont think god loves us, because we are now starting to learn what love really is.
but God is love