Is love a universal truth?

[Bamboo]

*And I'll add this in regards to "Is love a universal truth?" even though it's already been touched on by others.

What we experience as love is unique to our biological make-up. Barring abnormalities in neurology, love can be called a human universal truth. Some sort of interplay with the limbic system and the rest of our brain which I don't fully understand.

If our brains were set up differently, than love might be a totally different thing, or not exist at all.

A hypothetical alien race from across the universe might not have "love" like we do.



*Any answers regarding the universe should probably include that our (my) capacity to understand the universe is limited to only a few puny senses ('sight', 'sound', three dimensions etc.) and some theories, and for the most part, nobody has a clue.

 

[Billy]

Why?

Because we are all the same lifeforce beaming in from the same source into different bodies, as a whole organism we are just brains and limbs, the concept of self is pretty superficial when you look at us from far enough away. So that being said we are all the same, we are all an extended family, we deserve love, its what flourishes us into better beings.

What does love have to do with being connected to others? Is it necessary? People who fight wars feel love all the time. Are they really connected? Do you think if we just had more love we would be a Utopian society?

Love IS being connected through positive energy. IMO Love is coming to terms with the fact that we are all plugs and require other people to plug into so we can learn and bond and grow. People who fight wars may feel love for some people, but they certainly don't feel it for the people they kill, and soldiers also suffer innumerable mental health issues and emotional stress issues after combat, killing people is not natural to our higher selves and its why so many struggle with it. Deep down everyone knows that life is special and beautiful and killing is wasteful and unjust.

If MORE people thought of all mankind as a single organism and saw how unique and special our existence in the cosmos is I think there might be a little less war and violence. Not saying it would end, but if it slowed down war or violence, then its good enough.

Feeling connected is essential for love, real love, the kind of love that humans should feel for humans not based on sexual gratification, if everyone felt connected to everyone else, there wouldn't be nearly as much pain and hurt going on between us all.

What is universal love?

Can you be passionate and have compassion without it being about love?

I think of universal love more as a higher ethics type of love. A thankfulness for life and existence, that we can even think and have this conversation is so rare and so unique of the universe that it makes me feel appreciation for it all, my life, my parents, my ancestors, your life, your parents, your ancestors, those who invented computers, those who came before us to create what we have so that we can have this off chance to speak to one and other across time, space and distance with electronic technological telepathy. Its gorgeous and beautiful how it all works together and it makes me feel universal love. for all of it. just to be alive, and that love makes me want to spread it around and make life easier for others, encourage life, plant a tree, give a homeless person 50 bucks, kiss my niece. Universal love is like being tapped into everything and seeing both the good and the bad but choosing to try and spread good even though it will never be more then a ripple in the pond of history. But at least we tried. we loved and we tried, right?


And I dont think passion could exist without some form of love, even if its just curiosity, you have to love yourself enough to want to stimulate your mind.

 

[Arthur Schopenhauer]

This conversation is difficult for me to grasp so I might need someone to guide me back on topic or define things in a way that I can easily comprehend. So, be warned that I may stray into my own little world.

Personally, I think that if love were a "universal truth", it would be found universally. Now, someone of a religious backing could say that 'god is love' therefore love is everywhere, etc., but I am strictly scientific in my beliefs. I believe that love is limited to the individuals capable of experiencing it and that it has no supernatural 'hippy' existence.

Secondly, the question of "should love be adopted as a universal value" was brought up. I think the idea of love being the ultimate driving emotion is a good one, but in the context of reality, I think it's both undoable and possibly unhealthy. I believe it is impossible to love in such a lovey-dovey way because we are beings of consumption and self-fulfillment; love itself is a fulfilling thing (I don't want to say it's selfish but it may be.) When you place love within those lines, to me, it loses some of it's Disney qualities.

Also, I think that sometimes life forces us to become monsters of a sort, that is, it might be more beneficial to the person to not love unconditionally. E.g., a fellow fighting in a war, people trying to overthrow a tyrant, etc.. It would be unhealthy for someone to say, "I love you so much, man" as his family was being beaten by savages.

I think in order for love to be an absolutely good value, the circumstances have to allow for it to be so.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

It exists for a reason and seems to give people and society an evolutionary edge. So you should put some stock in it.

And put the rest in science.

Being an NF and having my world view largely incorporated around the concept of LOVE, it is difficult to abandon that mindset so easily. What do you think about all the self-help books, songs, religions in the world that speak to love and loving more and loving better, etc.?

For your sake, you better be joking.

I think you made a leap here and I am not following.

Love is a bonding mechanism. It's a collection of irrational feelings that incline one to behave in ways that maintains a relationship to someone. This might manifest positively or negatively, since that could mean doing something like taking care of a person to keep them around, or attempting to possess them by force (as examples among many).

Since it seems to be in every culture in the world, and it is indeed a detectable biological phenomenon, I'm guessing it was evolved. Most of the time it doesn't last too long though. The most reasonable guess is that it would fascilitate serial monogamy.

I think it's even more important for child rearing. And not short term in that regard at all. Or is it?

I'm surprised at you here. I thought you didn't believe in bio deterministic ideals.

Is it a universal truth? I don't even know what that means. Whatever it could mean I'm almost certainly guessing it's not. I also don't care. While love does compel people to do some crazy crap sometimes, I generally think it's nice due to its impact and more of it would be better. So, from a pragmatic perspective, it's worth believing in.

I'm not sure it's love, per se, that makes life better. That's kind of what I'm wondering; where I'm heading. For every heady sensation I've felt with love, I've nearly always felt a difficult sensation emotionally. Sometimes love seems to win, sometimes it seems to lose, but overall, I think it evens out pretty well. Meaning I'm not sure it's not a zero sum emotion, whereas we always seem to assume it's a "gain" emotion.

Althought I have some specifics about how I think love should work. I do not believe in unconditional love. I do not believe in discriminatory love. And so on.

I don't know if I've ever seen another thread title on this forum that screamed "HIPPIE!" as much as this one.

I'd like to add a poll, if there is a moderator in the house:

Love is a universal truth:

ST---yes
ST---no
SF---yes
SF---no
NT---yes
NT---no
NF---yes
NF---no

Love is a fundamental element of life that defines our very being. This is a very complicated concept to define, so cheers to you for extrapolating the question out as you have.

ASSUMPTION:
Each person's definition of love is unique according to thier life experiences and genetic programming.

In short, all people are somewhere on the continuum of:

"Not a Loving Person<------->Extremely Loving Person"

They types of love all of us can experience are more generalized (e.g. romantic, platonic, familial, etc.); the real variation comes in each person's (a) definition of each type of love they have, and (b) their implementation of love overall.

So you think it's a human phenomenon, for the most part. Nothing that exists outside of us.

I believe as humans, we have love that is:

(A) spontaneously borne as a result of positive experiences (babies love their puppy dog because they are soft and nice and sweet, etc.) that occur throughout our lives, and also

(B) That love that is taught to us via being the recipient of another person's implementation of love (In other words, when someone treats us lovingly, and it affects us, and we appreciate it, and understand their motivation for doing so, we are thus empowered to wield that type of love later in our lives if we choose to).



The purpose of love is to serve as a vehicle for us to express our feelings for another entity, whether a person, place, or thing.

But we can express our feeling without love, and probably be more accurate accordingly. Love muddies things at worst; and can make us illogical when it involves a loved one. Surely you mean love is loftier than just for mere communication.

To me, unconditional love is implicit in (healthy) parent/child relationships, and relations among siblings.

I agree totally. Why siblings I wonder. I feel that too, to a degree, although it's somewhere between kids and mate.

Unconditional love in romantic/platonic relationships is a bit more difficult to conceptualize, because when a friend/partner does something hurtful, we are able to forgive them at some point, but we remember the pain, and the net effect of the experience (hurt, forgiveness, reconciliation, etc.) is a change in our overall perceptions of the person. Yes, we love them no matter what, but does that mean we will blindly allow negative behaviors to transpire on an on-going basis? No, hardly. At some point everyone wises up, and in some cases, it is necessary to love someone "unconditionally" but to never be in their proximity again. So, maybe unconditional love is not the right term for what I am trying to define here...hmmm....

It's sort of like pondering the size of the universe, isn't it? I remember arguing with heart and brain (i think) about unconditional love on some thread a long time ago, and being emphatic about loving unconditionally. Well, hello, here I am saying I think I bought into that notion because it was easy for me to do so being an NF. I don't think it's true though, beyond kids that is; and I'd hesitate to make any assumptions there, except that while you are caring for someone, the unconditional feeling seems to be fairly strong. If they move away and out of your life over a long period of time, I'm not sure what that would feel like in a love context. I'm not even sure about parents, as horrible as that makes me sound. But there might be a reason for that biologically, because we bring our children into the world and rear them, take care of them. It's intricately intertwined.

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by "both sides of love?"

Do you mean giving/receiving it, or something else?

I can better reply to this section once I better know the context of what you are looking for...

I mean the fluffy and the bad sides. The warm fuzzies and the cold hard side.

CONCLUSION:
I am a very loving person, but I do not traverse the landscape of my life blindly loving everything. As one matures, it is necessary to learn disgression in how we implement our concept of love. What is appropriate, what is not, when things should be able to feel a certain way, why we should feel certain ways, when there is a need to have a sense of caution in giving/receiving love, etc.

We get better at loving, and at being loved through experience. That is why I feel badly for being that did not have an amount of love/nurture in their formative years that resulted in them having a healthy definition of love, and some good examples of how to potentially implement it later on. If a person doesn't have this base of knowledge, I feel it truly impacts how one will go about pursuing interpersonal relationships. Once someone is closed off and avoidant, it is that much harder for them to experience positive, loving experiences.

Very well said. To play devil's advocate here, why does it matter? You are assuming that love is good. Why? Can't we be good parents, good friends, good citizens without tying it all up around love? I agree about nurture, and that nurture feels like love, and that it is important to be nurtured in the formative years, as humans need to be nurtured for full development. But why do we call that love? I'm not sure exactly all the nuances floating around in my head right now, so I'm sorry if I am vague or abstract. Should we focus on other virtues instead of love all the time? Like honesty, integrity, generosity? I think we focus too much on love. What are your thoughts here?

Finally, I think one very important concept that everyone should understand about love is this:

"It is impossible to love someone who does not love themselves.

If a person does not love themselves, then they are by definition unlovable.

They do not have the capacity to experience an emotion that they feel they are unworthy of receiving."

This is exactly the kind of propaganda spewed in self-help books and religions, including new age ones, etc. I can love someone who doesn't love him/her self. I've done it before, I'm sure I'll do it again. Why is it so paramount to experience an emotion like love? Can't good people exist without being so driven? Can't I exchange the word "self respect" in the above statements and have it be true? I can have self respect for myself and others, but does love really need to have anything to do with it?

I know you are not talking about romantic love, but it does fall under the Love umbrella. There are some cultures that have arranged marriages, and who eschew the idea of romantic love and still live very zen and happy lives. How about those kinds of people. How are they functioning without tying everything back into love?

I think we are obsessed with love and that it does us a disservice, that it has become a liability instead of an asset for many people.

REFLECTIONS:
Love is a precious resource. Unlike money, when you successfully express love your supply of it does not diminish, it actually grows, and the total amount of love in the world grows too. However, time is an extremely valuable resource too, and choosing to use one's time and other resources in the pursuit of expressing love to people that don't appreciate it, is a waste of one's overall life energy.

The point of love is to support positive, healthy, and happy experiences in life, so when people tell me how much they are hurting because of a lot of crazy dysfunctional shit going on in their lives, my first piece of advice is for them to make sure their definitions and concepts of love are appropriately and adequately defined. For if they are not, then it is very easy for a person to needlessly go through many cycles of various kinds of abuse, because unfortunately, to them, what they are experiencing is "love."

The first paragraph represents a very polyamorous mindset, and I'd tend to agree with you.

I'd disagree with the second paragraph though. I think the point of love is as Magic said; to entice us to nurture our children and pair bond. I think love can be as much an antithesis to being happy as hate. It's not that we are doing it wrong, necessarily, it's that we are consumed with this emotion that drives us constantly. I wonder if I couldn't support positive, healthy, and happy experiences in my life and those lives of others much better without the concept of love.

For me, it appears one of my Fi values is universal love for all creatures. This isnt romantic love, more the jesus/buddha variety. Everything deserves compassion, love and forgiveness, even if it comes in a tough love package. It appears to have a realistic flavor, but is universal with respect to who it applies to. Thus this "love" is the same regardless of if it is my child or a child in india.

(Overlaying that are the "loves" such as romantic love, love of my children, love for coworkers and teamates and other deeper biologically programmed modules of attachment)

The Te part of my brain says we must function in the logical world as we understand it. Thus I can only look to biology and chemicals as being the roots of love of all flavors described above. These biological gooey messes are built from building blocks that depend on universal laws, but are an evolved system to enhance survival.

I agree with all this. Everyone and living thing deserves to fulfill its destiny on earth as long as that doesn't hurt anyone else. We should be kind and respectful to others, and do them no harm.

Could we exist and exist well without the concept of love?

WAIT-an interesting thought though...Fe mirrors Fe. You can induce Fe in other Fe users. Fi mirrors Fi. I can induce Fi in other Fi users. In doing so we are using complex chemical soup to generate a communicative signal. The signal however generates emotions in another.

So if my love is mirrored by another Fi user, who subseqeuntly induces another Fi user to feel love-it isnt just MINE anymore. It is now something we all share-a universal emotion, a mode of communication. The medium of communication is humanity-but since it does not reside just in one person-but rather can be shared among a conglomerate via mutual mirroring-would that make it a universal truth? (Same sort thing for Fe of course)

If all the same biological organisms are capable of feeling the same thing, then I would think it would be considered a universal trait, which is what love is. What I'm really trying to get at is: Does love exist in the universe outside of higher living mammals? Is it an entity that exists beyond us, so that even if we did not exist, love still would?

 

[PeaceBaby]

EDIT: you posted your long reply one minute before this lengthy one from me. I will review what you have above and post following.

I think people attribute Godlike powers to love, and perceive it as a universal truth, when it in fact, isn't.

In the OP you're leading with a question, but since you already have a statement in your mind (above) I am curious as to where you are going. What are you thinking, aphrodite? What do you want, here?

I'm asking the questions here, Peace.

You respond to the questions already raised, then I'll answer yours, with pleasure........

No, you're making a statement. Again, I want to know what you are really saying. You're not really looking for something, you are looking for an affirmation of something, or a platform of sorts. You are searching ...

And, it may be your thread, but I am looking for the strands that compose it. I can pick away at it in my way, regardless of whether you wish to answer.

If YOU don't believe in universal truth, then, yes, the question, for you, would become irrelevant. Are you saying you don't believe Universal truths exist? How about the concepts of space and time? How about the concept of gravitational pull? How about any other physical or mathematical truth? If you do believe in certain truths that exist beyond our world, beyond us, is love one of them?

Is love a universal truth? Is hatred a universal truth? What is a universal truth? Since philosophers have argued about such things for centuries, I hardly think I can offer a definitive answer.

But if love is a universal truth, then so is the opposite. Then the choice is which way you become oriented, or orient yourself.

Love is an emotion. It exists for a biological purpose. It urges us to mate, helps us bond with our young, builds relationships around us for protection and tries to effect a positive outcome on the world around us. It feels good. It's not good just because it feels good though.

For your sake, you better be joking.

Fe aux + Fi dom = danger.

For me, it appears one of my Fi values is universal love for all creatures. This isnt romantic love, more the jesus/buddha variety. Everything deserves compassion, love and forgiveness, even if it comes in a tough love package.

I am going to play devils advocate here - so you love murderers, and thieves, and (heaven forbid) if someone stole a child ... would you be able to uphold that principle? Still love them? Think carefully; I am not trying to be a bi*ch here, I am just throwing out some stuff that is not so straightforward and easily forgotten by the churchy arm-wavers who talk about loving everyone and promptly start to gossip about them after they leave the building. (Not you specifically of course; just generalizing an attitude.)

When everyone wants to focus on joy & happy ... love can be the precursor of dark acts, and is twisted to justify heinous cruelty.

It's just not so simple, to me. Love is a choice, and no simple one at that.

It is now something we all share-a universal emotion, a mode of communication. The medium of communication is humanity-but since it does not reside just in one person-but rather can be shared among a conglomerate via mutual mirroring...

Nice ... more later on this perhaps, and on the other affirming posts by Billy.

Where are you going aphrodite? What are you looking for? I can't quite hear you yet.

 

[PeaceBaby]

OK I have read through that, and hear better where you are going.

In order to determine the answer to your question, one must first attempt to define love. Love after all, is just a word. The kind of connection it implies is what you are trying to define, and to examine if that connection exists somewhere beyond human experience and cognition.

Is love energy, is it existence, does it originate inside or outside of us? Is it always bright, is it desolate, does it have any more chance to makes us happy than any other emotion? Does one need to suffuse oneself and others with it in order to have expectations of a higher morality? Is love ... necessary?

Wonderful questions.

I'll wait again for some more of your thoughts and those of others; enjoying this journey.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Bible Guy, I'm sorry. I thought I quoted you in the last response I made, but I apparently flubbed it.

I have a hard time getting past the fact that men wrote the bible. So I think those men were biased or confused when they thought God was speaking to them. Unless I hear it from God himself or from scientists who say they've found God, I can't take much the Bible says with any seriousness, beyond an historical account of the life and times of man. That being said, it basically confirms that men have always considered the concept of love to be important and a lofty ideal to live by. Thanks for lending that historical context to the discussion.

If everything followed what was in it's nature to do, then naturally, there would be conflict.

It may be in my nature to build things, and it might be in a tree's nature to grow. But I'm gonna chop that down and build something out of it. And it very well may be an act of love when I use it to build something useful, or beautiful, or necessary.

It might be in a mentally disturbed person's nature to kill - and it's in my nature to stop them. Or in a less extreme example, one may like to walk and the other like to run and with limited resources you can only accommodate so much.

The only way there can be universal harmony is for everything to die. At that point, there would be no conflict. But barring that, conflict is part of the system. Conflict is part of existence. It's the price you pay.

Well, it's a bit off subject, but the world was in pretty good harmony before, well, before man got too smart I guess. Now we are smart enough to survive more easily, but not smart enough to see the error of our ways.......

Love is an important, powerful force, but "all we need is love" or variants thereof are overtly simplistic worldviews that are just as dangerous - or perhaps more dangerous, than violent ideologies. At least with violent ideologies you can see it coming.

Person's who refuse to accept that conflict is part of nature in favor of the warmer outlooks on life aren't immune to conflict. In fact, not if, but when conflict arises, they are frequently the least prepared for it, and most prone to posing a dangerous threat to those around them, because they don't know how to handle the situation - their thinking doesn't prepare them for that reality. And with the stress of the new situation, rash decisions are made and people get hurt.

So, you can see through the ideal that love is all wonderful and altruistic. That's what I'm figuring out. Not that we can separate out millions of years of ingrained programming--we can't and still be 'normal'--but being able to see helps immensely. At least for me; it may be nice to be part of the matrix, but once you know the matrix for what it is, it changes your perspective greatly.

I feel like Thompson when she ties everything back to Star Trek now.

And so - it's an act of love to prepare for conflict. And to prepare for conflict, you may have to change your nature. And to change your nature is a struggle - a conflict. But the struggle to refine your impulses is less than the struggle to clean up mess after mess after mess in human history that could have been avoided with some simple preparation.

But even then, viewpoint will pit itself against viewpoint, and there will be violence. It will continue this way for some time.

I think love and war are two separate entities that come from two separate places, for different reasons. But let's address war next.

*And I'll add this in regards to "Is love a universal truth?" even though it's already been touched on by others.

What we experience as love is unique to our biological make-up. Barring abnormalities in neurology, love can be called a human universal truth. Some sort of interplay with the limbic system and the rest of our brain which I don't fully understand.

If our brains were set up differently, than love might be a totally different thing, or not exist at all.

A hypothetical alien race from across the universe might not have "love" like we do.



*Any answers regarding the universe should probably include that our (my) capacity to understand the universe is limited to only a few puny senses ('sight', 'sound', three dimensions etc.) and some theories, and for the most part, nobody has a clue.

We have quite a few clues to how the universe is. And I agree with you, and so far, I don't think they've found love floating around in the stars.

Because we are all the same lifeforce beaming in from the same source into different bodies, as a whole organism we are just brains and limbs, the concept of self is pretty superficial when you look at us from far enough away. So that being said we are all the same, we are all an extended family, we deserve love, its what flourishes us into better beings.

I agree our life force comes from the same place. What does that have to do with love?

Love IS being connected through positive energy. IMO Love is coming to terms with the fact that we are all plugs and require other people to plug into so we can learn and bond and grow.

This reminds me of the avatar tree scenes.

People who fight wars may feel love for some people, but they certainly don't feel it for the people they kill, and soldiers also suffer innumerable mental health issues and emotional stress issues after combat, killing people is not natural to our higher selves and its why so many struggle with it. Deep down everyone knows that life is special and beautiful and killing is wasteful and unjust.

Yes. We've come to equate feeling human with our fellow man as love. Life feels sacred because every living thing (generally speaking) is infused with a will to survive, because of some great, as yet unknown, reason for the promotion of life.

If MORE people thought of all mankind as a single organism and saw how unique and special our existence in the cosmos is I think there might be a little less war and violence. Not saying it would end, but if it slowed down war or violence, then its good enough.

Maybe we don't need to use love lingo to get there though. Do we? It turns many people off. Not to mention getting it all mixed up with romantic love and sexual love, etc.

Feeling connected is essential for love, real love, the kind of love that humans should feel for humans not based on sexual gratification, if everyone felt connected to everyone else, there wouldn't be nearly as much pain and hurt going on between us all.

That is true. We've lost our connection to each other for the most part. How can we get it back? Work, money, living in nuclear families, etc. cleave us apart. I don't know that it takes love to reconnect us as much as a mindset of having consciousness about the problem.

I think of universal love more as a higher ethics type of love. A thankfulness for life and existence, that we can even think and have this conversation is so rare and so unique of the universe that it makes me feel appreciation for it all, my life, my parents, my ancestors, your life, your parents, your ancestors, those who invented computers, those who came before us to create what we have so that we can have this off chance to speak to one and other across time, space and distance with electronic technological telepathy. Its gorgeous and beautiful how it all works together and it makes me feel universal love. for all of it. just to be alive, and that love makes me want to spread it around and make life easier for others, encourage life, plant a tree, give a homeless person 50 bucks, kiss my niece. Universal love is like being tapped into everything and seeing both the good and the bad but choosing to try and spread good even though it will never be more then a ripple in the pond of history. But at least we tried. we loved and we tried, right?

That's really beautiful. It is good to be human sometimes.

What you describe there I think exists beyond love though. I conceptualize it in my own mind as a generosity of spirit-mind from me to everyone else. I cannot always be generous this way, depending on my physical life circumstances, but when I can, it feels ideal. That is why I have always bought in to the notion of unconditional love being a universal truth; The most important universal Truth. I think this spirit mindedness exists beyond us, and taps back into the life force of the universe somehow, but I don't think it is love because I think it is just energy (as a real physical entity which we cannot measure with instruments yet), which is more powerful than love. However, I do think people usually speak about love as if it were this energy.

And I dont think passion could exist without some form of love, even if its just curiosity, you have to love yourself enough to want to stimulate your mind.

I think when I feel most passionate, I am just fully engaged in all my faculties; my mind and body. I still don't think it need have anything to do with love.

This conversation is difficult for me to grasp so I might need someone to guide me back on topic or define things in a way that I can easily comprehend. So, be warned that I may stray into my own little world.

Personally, I think that if love were a "universal truth", it would be found universally. Now, someone of a religious backing could say that 'god is love' therefore love is everywhere, etc., but I am strictly scientific in my beliefs. I believe that love is limited to the individuals capable of experiencing it and that it has no supernatural 'hippy' existence.

Secondly, the question of "should love be adopted as a universal value" was brought up. I think the idea of love being the ultimate driving emotion is a good one, but in the context of reality, I think it's both undoable and possibly unhealthy. I believe it is impossible to love in such a lovey-dovey way because we are beings of consumption and self-fulfillment; love itself is a fulfilling thing (I don't want to say it's selfish but it may be.) When you place love within those lines, to me, it loses some of it's Disney qualities.

Also, I think that sometimes life forces us to become monsters of a sort, that is, it might be more beneficial to the person to not love unconditionally. E.g., a fellow fighting in a war, people trying to overthrow a tyrant, etc.. It would be unhealthy for someone to say, "I love you so much, man" as his family was being beaten by savages.

I think in order for love to be an absolutely good value, the circumstances have to allow for it to be so.

I totally get it. Totally agree with it. And totally love it.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

I think it's even more important for child rearing. And not short term in that regard at all. Or is it?

We might be thinking of love as two different kinds of thing. Anyhow, I do believe people bond more to their children early on than they do after the child's maturity.

I'm surprised at you here. I thought you didn't believe in bio deterministic ideals.

I believe in dual inheritance, and that is nothing new. If you believe that I have been in opposition to genetic psychology in its entirety, then you have never understood my position.

I'm not sure it's love, per se, that makes life better. That's kind of what I'm wondering; where I'm heading. For every heady sensation I've felt with love, I've nearly always felt a difficult sensation emotionally. Sometimes love seems to win, sometimes it seems to lose, but overall, I think it evens out pretty well. Meaning I'm not sure it's not a zero sum emotion, whereas we always seem to assume it's a "gain" emotion.

I think the impact it has averages out over-all as a more positive one, and I say that operating beyond the individual, but collections of individuals. I wonder what human beings would be like without it.

I'd like to add a poll, if there is a moderator in the house:

Love is a universal truth:

ST---yes
ST---no
SF---yes
SF---no
NT---yes
NT---no
NF---yes
NF---no

I think there's too much confusion over what that term means for a poll to be enlightening in any way.
[/QUOTE]

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

OK I have read through that, and hear better where you are going.

In order to determine the answer to your question, one must first attempt to define love. Love after all, is just a word. The kind of connection it implies is what you are trying to define, and to examine if that connection exists somewhere beyond human experience and cognition.

Is love energy, is it existence, does it originate inside or outside of us? Is it always bright, is it desolate, does it have any more chance to makes us happy than any other emotion? Does one need to suffuse oneself and others with it in order to have expectations of a higher morality? Is love ... necessary?

Wonderful questions.

I'll wait again for some more of your thoughts and those of others; enjoying this journey.

LOL. You and I are totally on the same wave length, no? Our posts are so similar. But you know how we Ni's are, right? We don't bring something up explicitly unless we already kinda know what/where we're going or how we believe about it.

I think of love now as how the T's in this thread have described it. I think it's a devilish biological creation to manipulate man into pair bonding and, predominantly, to rear children until they can take care of themselves. In a larger sense, to live together in tribes for protection from animals and the elements; or death would surely ensue.

It is so much a part of our psyche and way of being that it's largely invisible to us, and made more so by modern man and religion (of all types) romanticizing it and making it out to be a world view to be striven for. I'd like to consider things objectively for at least a moment outside of the emotion of love. What would life be like? Would it be bad? Would it be good? So many characteristics of being human we do not need anymore, yet we cannot escape them, because we are no more than mere multicelled organisms in the ocean that is the universe.

Sometimes, though, we tap into something larger. Larger even than love. We call it love, but I don't think it is. I think it's the energy of the universe......

I'll shut up now. I'm sounding like a typical freakazoid.

Feel free to carry on.

 

[Arthur Schopenhauer]

I totally get it. Totally agree with it. And totally love it.

Yay!

 

[Jaguar]

I'm asking the questions here, Peace.
You respond to the questions already raised, then I'll answer yours, with pleasure........

And, it may be your thread, but I am looking for the strands that compose it. I can pick away at it in my way, regardless of whether you wish to answer.

No, it is not aphrodite's thread.
This is not a personal blog.

There is no such thing as thread ownership in the forums. I verified it with a moderator last week.
Once a post is made in the forum, it becomes a public thread.

Posting comments such as, "I'm asking the questions here," is ridiculous.
Anyone can ask a question in this thread. No permission is necessary.

Feel free to carry on.

No one needs anybody's permission to "carry on."

 

[Halla74]

I'd like to add a poll, if there is a moderator in the house:

Love is a universal truth:

ST---yes
ST---no
SF---yes
SF---no
NT---yes
NT---no
NF---yes
NF---no

In progress...

So you think it's a human phenomenon, for the most part. Nothing that exists outside of us.

No, I think all mammals can experience love to varying degrees, but if you ever expect a rattlesnake to give you a hug on your birthday, then you will be disappointed...

But we can express our feeling without love, and probably be more accurate accordingly.

In some situation, yes, in others, no fucking way.

Love muddies things at worst; and can make us illogical when it involves a loved one. Surely you mean love is loftier than just for mere communication.

This kind of goes to T/F differences, as in the inaccuracies associated with "Feeling as being without Thinking." When you hear music, do you hear just the bass, and just the treble of a song, or do you hear the bass, mid-range, and treble frequencies all at once, and allow them all together to define what you are hearing?

I agree totally. Why siblings I wonder. I feel that too, to a degree, although it's somewhere between kids and mate.

100% agree with you.

It's sort of like pondering the size of the universe, isn't it? I remember arguing with heart and brain (i think) about unconditional love on some thread a long time ago, and being emphatic about loving unconditionally. Well, hello, here I am saying I think I bought into that notion because it was easy for me to do so being an NF. I don't think it's true though, beyond kids that is; and I'd hesitate to make any assumptions there, except that while you are caring for someone, the unconditional feeling seems to be fairly strong. If they move away and out of your life over a long period of time, I'm not sure what that would feel like in a love context. I'm not even sure about parents, as horrible as that makes me sound. But there might be a reason for that biologically, because we bring our children into the world and rear them, take care of them. It's intricately intertwined.

My brother's ex-wife was a reckless and irresponsible parent, and it took 16 years for my niece to figure out without a reasonable doubt that her Mom was a very bad mother. That is the peril of our inborn "love instincts" going against the particularly bad generalized implementation of love (or maybe just the actions of an entirely selfish person) of a given individual and their relations with their offspring.

I mean the fluffy and the bad sides. The warm fuzzies and the cold hard side.

Will work on this...

Very well said. To play devil's advocate here, why does it matter?

Because what I have experienced predisposes it to matter to me, I am not saying my views are right for all...

You are assuming that love is good. Why?

Again, because what I have felt of it has been positive and reassuring, and I equivocate both of those phenomena as "good."

Can't we be good parents, good friends, good citizens without tying it all up around love?

Yes. Thomas Jefferson was big on this, much like Aesop, ethical parables without the guilt of religion, without "good and evil." But, allow me to play devil's advocate, why would definitions of friendship and citizenship be better if love were completely factored out of them? Why is that better?

I agree about nurture, and that nurture feels like love, and that it is important to be nurtured in the formative years, as humans need to be nurtured for full development. But why do we call that love?

I don't know. It surely is not hate, or anger, or greed, so maybe love is the closest definition without needlessly splitting pubic hairs with electron microscopes over minutiae?

I'm not sure exactly all the nuances floating around in my head right now, so I'm sorry if I am vague or abstract. Should we focus on other virtues instead of love all the time? Like honesty, integrity, generosity? I think we focus too much on love. What are your thoughts here?

Again, if you bake a cake, and it tastes good, which parts of it made it taste good, the eggs, the flour, the butter, the sugar, or all of it mixzed up together and baked at once? Maybe all virtues are intertwined, like the unified ingredients of a baked cake, or a finished musical composition?

This is exactly the kind of propaganda spewed in self-help books and religions, including new age ones, etc. I can love someone who doesn't love him/her self. I've done it before, I'm sure I'll do it again.

I wouldn't know, I don't read any of that shit. All I can tell you is this, one's EXPECTATIONS of the OUTCOME of LOVING will be completely incongruent with ONE'S HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE of receiving the same kind of LOVE if you try to give it to someone WHO HAS A SIGNIFICANTLY DISSIMILAR definition of love than yours.

So, yeah, you've done it, and I have too, and how did it turn out for you? Good? Bad? Surely different than you expected. To me, that sort of thing is a waste of time. I value my time, and therefore I value my efforts at implementing love with the time I have to live, out of respect for myself, and respect for those who I love.

Why is it so paramount to experience an emotion like love? Can't good people exist without being so driven? Can't I exchange the word "self respect" in the above statements and have it be true? I can have self respect for myself and others, but does love really need to have anything to do with it?

You say POTAE-TOE, I say POTAH-TOE, does it matter?

I know you are not talking about romantic love, but it does fall under the Love umbrella. There are some cultures that have arranged marriages, and who eschew the idea of romantic love and still live very zen and happy lives. How about those kinds of people. How are they functioning without tying everything back into love?

It is proven that many participants of arranged marriages DEVELOP ROMANTIC LOVE later in their livevs. The experience is totally different than Western "free-spirited" romances, but it is not without similarity of implementation of love by humans.

I think we are obsessed with love and that it does us a disservice, that it has become a liability instead of an asset for many people.

If that works for you, that's great. I am not so cynical. I think IGNORANCE and APATHY are far more dangerous than LOVE.

The first paragraph represents a very polyamorous mindset, and I'd tend to agree with you.

I'd disagree with the second paragraph though. I think the point of love is as Magic said; to entice us to nurture our children and pair bond.

Again, different people, different definitions... It's all good.

I think love can be as much an antithesis to being happy as hate.

Being HAPPY has nothing to do with LOVE. Happiness is a mind set. I have been happy all my life, wheterh I was in love with another person or not. I love my life, and being alive, and that makes me happy, regardless of anything else to do with love. Just sayin...

It's not that we are doing it wrong, necessarily, it's that we are consumed with this emotion that drives us constantly. I wonder if I couldn't support positive, healthy, and happy experiences in my life and those lives of others much better without the concept of love.

Only your time and efforts in that direction can answer that question. And, the results of your experience will only be valued by those who have a similar life outlook, or at least open to reading the outlooks of others...

I agree with all this. Everyone and living thing deserves to fulfill its destiny on earth as long as that doesn't hurt anyone else. We should be kind and respectful to others, and do them no harm.

Yup, good stuff!

Could we exist and exist well without the concept of love?

I don't know, but I'm fine with love and all other virtues existing as they do in my life, in my world, as I am content and at peace with the universe as I understand it. Could we exist without greed? Could we exist without malice? Could we exist without lust? Yes. But the experience would be totally different.

Cheers to you A.G.A.!



-Halla

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

No, it is not aphrodite's thread.
This is not a personal blog.

There is no such thing as thread ownership in the forums. I verified it with a moderator last week.
Once a post is made in the forum, it becomes a public thread.

Posting comments such as, "I'm asking the questions here," is ridiculous.
Anyone can ask a question in this thread. No permission is necessary.



No one needs anybody's permission to "carry on."

Why are you always so threatening?

Peace and I understand each other (i think). She has oftentimes refused to answer my questions while asking me questions instead. I have indulged her. It is time she indulged me. That was what I was referring to there, predominantly.

Hey, the more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[PeaceBaby]

^ Well I haven't refused to answer your questions, but sometimes I do ask more without answering what's on the table.

Honestly, I had to take a second to consider what you were trying to say to me by not answering.

But, I didn't and don't take offense. I wanted to figure out what you were getting at.

 

[Jaguar]

Why are you always so threatening?

Silly. Lol.

 

[Halla74]

^Hey!!!


None of you bitches are reflecting on my recent commentary.

Hop to it!

You're not getting paid the big bucks to quibble over silly shit. :rolli:

SRSLY guys, SRSLY!!!!!



-Halla

 

[Jaguar]

None of you bitches are reflecting on my recent commentary.

I don't have a vagina.

 

[PeaceBaby]

Umm, Halla, that appeal doesn't really motivate me ... I am more of a "flowers and chocolate" kind of girl.

 

[Halla74]

I don't have a vagina.

According to the inmates of Cell Block Four, you do:

They've only been together for a few days, and already in counseling.

Umm, Halla, that appeal doesn't really motivate me ... I am more of a "flowers and chocolate" kind of girl.

OK, noted, Peacebaby = NO HUMOR but likes FLOWERS and CHOCOLATE.

 

[Kingfisher]

i don't think i would want love to be a universal truth, i like that it is real subjective and personal.
but as a force to live your life by, as an ideal to guide you- i think it is a good one, for me.

i think i didn't always used to live by love, or maybe i did but i didn't know it yet. but i think it is probably what i was always looking for when i was younger, not somebody to love i mean, but the love inside myself.


but i do think love is one of those things that disappears or falls apart when you look directly at it, like a mirage. so you kind of have to live with it naturally and let it just do it's thing- trying to understand love seems like it kills it for me.
whereas something like integrity feels like it intensifies and becomes clearer when i focus on it.