Love?

[stormcloud]

attachment
positive feelings
identity with someone's mental image of the ideal lover

nurturing (file under positive feelings)

also biochemical delusion
desire
greed/possessiveness

Im sure someone will want to discount those as factors of love.

[Cuchulain82]

@Frogus, Stormcloud

I think that you are both onto the "truth" about Love. It is a linguistic construct, and english is particularly limited in this specific regard. I speak a little spanish, and there are many different ways to say "love" in spanish- te amo, te quiero, te gusta, etc. In english there is only "I love you" and "I like you". Kind of a limited vocabulary A Colombian friend of mine once told me that, in Colombia they have a saying about some of the many different languages of the western world- "If you want to talk about love, speak French. If you want to write poetry or talk about art, speak Spanish. If you want to curse someone out, speak German. And if you just want to talk, speak English." Here we are, talking again

Just because we need linguistic constructs to identify Love, does that invalidate it? Society, patriotism, equality, pride... these are all linguistic constructs, but they are just as real to most people as the air we all breathe. Is love that real too, even in different facets? I think that everything Stormcloud identified is part of love (well... some to greater extents than others ), but that the "Love" that DW talks about is much narrower than Stormcloud's biochemical Love...

Well, here I am babbling again- I just wonder about this kinda thing.

[Adahn]

Woah, I'm not touching this question with a ten-foot pole. I believe in love, I love my girlfriend, It dosn't have anything to do with physical attraction, that's all I know ^^;;.

[dragon wench]

[QUOTE=frogus23]The feeling of love that Magrus, DW (and other romantics ) talk about is a quite precise or small set of feelings. They will not allow many feelings to be defined as 'love', only a few, which perhaps are those which seem more mysterious because they are less easily recognisable as physical processes? [/QUOTE]

And I used to be such a cynic too! Tina Turner's song, "What's Love Got to do With it?" was practically my anthem!
Alas! For I have been corrupted!

Somewhat more seriously, yes, I agree... I probably am something of a romantic.. and indeed my definition of love is narrow. Let's just say much is based on personal experience.

I'm curious though...
How many people here actually have experienced that kind of a deep, spiritual connection with somebody else? The sort of connection where two people give themselves to one another completely and allow themselves to be utterly vulnerable..... where every thought and feeling lies naked and exposed...


I'm not suggesting, btw, that people divulge details or anything. This sort of thing is extremely private and, in some cases, very emotionally sensitive.

[Magrus]

In my honest opinion, until you've found, and truly experienced "love", as in the sense of loving your partner, not your dog, or your sister, or your mommy. There's a difference, until you have honestly, truly fallen in love with another person and want to spend the rest of your life with said person you will not, and cannot accurately describe it. It's hard enough for me and I've dealt with it.

The problem I've seen, is most people mistake what love is, or aren't willing to work at keeping the love they have for another person. "Love" is alive, it's a living, breathing thing IMO. If you don't nuture it, and work to keep it alive, it will die and leave you alone and miserable.

I'm 22, and I've both loved, and lost. I don't think you can truly understand love until you've done both. Why? You cannot grasp a full understanding of what something is until you've experienced it, and then had life without it after it's gone. It's when something is taken away from you, that you truly grasp the impact it has had on your life. I say that because I've loved someone and had to deal with her being buried after realizing that. I didn't have a high school sweetheart and have her run off to college and cry my eyes out over puppy love, I've LOVED, and had it irrevocably taken from me.

Anyone who decides to say love is a chemical reaction, or a simple method for breeding I'd have to say hasn't experienced it. Yes, emotions are caused by chemicals interacting with your brain and nervous system. However, that one single emotion happens to defy essentially everything else I've found in intensity and depth. If it were just a simple chemical reaction in my brain in order to produce offspring, I wouldn't still be hung up on someone who's stuck in a hole somewhere would I be? I can't breed with a corpse, yet I love who that person was, and I'm not sure I can ever match that emotion with any person I will happen to meet.

[Cuchulain82]

I've loved and lost, through probably not to the extent that you have Magrus. (it just sounds so sad )

The first time I really fell in love it was... earthshaking. I was physically, emotionally, and in all other ways changed. (Unfortunately, it didn't work out) My current girlfriend and I are in love, but it is different- it is the kind of love that has snuck up on me. Before I knew it, I was in love, and that was an unexpected way for it to happen.

[frogus23]

To believe love is a physical process is to glorify the world and humans especialy, not to cheapen love. To declare that something must not make sense in order to be beautiful betrays this world and human nature IMO.

[Magrus]

Yeah, people say you can't experience love more than once. In that sense, I'm unsure. People continue to grow, and change throughout life. You may fall in love with someone when you are twenty and change and fall out of love with them later in life because you've grown too far apart. However, if you should fall in love again, it will be a different kind of love, because you happen to be a different person, wanting different things.

I know that I cannot simply fall in love with another the way I did that person. I may be able to fall in love again, but I just have this feeling that she was that ONE someone who no matter where I was in life, she would have fit. If that makes sense at all. No matter how I grew, and changed, she would have fit somehow. THAT kind of love, is incredibly rare to find.

[C Elegans]

People feel an existential need for companionship/love- do you think this is societal?

No, I think that is strongly genetic, since, as I said above, a lonely human being would not have survived for long. Then, this innate need has also been strongly socioculturally reinforced in many cultures, not surprisingly since a society per definition needs individuals that collaborate in some ways.

I certainly have, although I would never describe it using the words you do. I assume this reflects basic differences in personal history and experiences. Whereas I agree that this type of close and totally open relationship with other people also has the consequence that one is totally "vulnerable" and "exposed" I personally would view it as a much more vulnerable and exposed situation to be isolated in oneself, alone and deprived of the wonderful gifts another human being can give to you.

In any case, contrary to you and Magrus I do believe it takes anything from love to understand it from a biochemical and evolutionary view. Why would it? On the contrary, I would view love as less important and certainly much less personal if I thought it was not human, it was not in us, but it was a phenomena connected to some god or some spiritual world.
I've heard some people say they believe that children can be in awe over things in a way adults can't, because children lacks the knowledge of certain things. Personally I think it's utter crap that lack of knowledge and understanding increases the sense of awe. I think it's a question of different personality traits. Some people feel awe that the natural world is as fantastic as it is, other people prefer mystery.

Anyone who decides to say love is a chemical reaction, or a simple method for breeding I'd have to say hasn't experienced it.

I think it is presumptious to claim that a certain view of the causality and mechanisms of a phenomena implicates something special about experience of it. Personal experience is not a more valid or more "correct" way to gain knowledge or understanding of this world.

Would you claim that a person who is an expert in anaestethics has not experienced physical pain? Would you claim an astrophysicist has not experienced gravity?

You, as well as DW, may hold the more romantic or mystical view that being able to explain the mechanisms that mediate a phenomenon takes something away from it, but this is not necessarity true. Is the macrophages less fantastic and wonderful cells because we know how they work?

The idea that you need to keep mystery in things, that there must be an aspect that is not possible to understand, not possible to gain full knowledge about or not possible to relate to the material world, is a worldview. To claim that people who don't share your worldview have not experienced love, is also equivalent to claiming that if they did experience love, they would start to share your belief system.

Yes, emotions are caused by chemicals interacting with your brain and nervous system. However, that one single emotion happens to defy essentially everything else I've found in intensity and depth. If it were just a simple chemical reaction in my brain in order to produce offspring, I wouldn't still be hung up on someone who's stuck in a hole somewhere would I be? I can't breed with a corpse, yet I love who that person was, and I'm not sure I can ever match that emotion with any person I will happen to meet.

So you are saying: because this emotion is so intense and deep, it cannot be an innate drive to preserve the species? Now, if something is really, really important for a species, it is survival. Survival of the individual and the species must be the most important, the highest priority if a species is to survive in the long run. So why do you find a contradiction between intensity and depth in emotion, and biological function that has been selected for because it was adaptive in successful survival of the species?

And what is your motivation for claiming that a "simple chemical reaction" would not cause love? Does the underlying causes and mechanisms of an emotion have to be complex because the emotion is strong?

Now, all biological systems are complex, but just for comparison: Fear of death and struggling for survival when confronted with immediate death threat, is a very strong emotion and response pattern. Yet, the mechanism behind the essential so called fight-or-flight response are among the least complex we know.

I am sure you love that person who is dead still, but you are 22, if you live long enough you will love others as well. Beside, that we can love people although they are dead is hardly evidence against love as drive for reproduction, group living functions and taking care of our offspring.

[Adahn]

Personally I believe that there's only one true love for each of us. I don't know if I've found mine yet, I mean scientifically speaking a man is only half of the whole, the woman is the other half. When both are united, they become one. The soul is complete, and the bodies at rest along with the mind which is given peace. There are so many cultures that have stories about gods creating creatures with four arms and four legs, and splitting them appart, and thus separating the soul. Others that believe that the soul always has it's twin. I don't know what love is, but I think - personally it's feeling completed in every way by the other person.

[C Elegans]

[QUOTE=Adahn] I mean scientifically speaking a man is only half of the whole, the woman is the other half. [/QUOTE]

Scientifically speaking? How do you mean science is related to your view of love?

Scientifically speaking, there is 49% men and 51% women on earth. Homosexuality is equally frequent among both genders. Is there an explanation for this inconsistency in your worldview?