Is love a universal truth?

[Halla74]

I [finally] added the poll as requested...

This job thing, it just gets in the way, it's awful!

 

[Donna Cecilia]

Is it just me or this question doesn't make any sense ?

Not just you. It doesn´t make sense to me either.

And there is no chance for me to vote in the Poll.

 

[yvonne]

Honestly I dont know if I am left with much of a choice-I either forgive and let the negativity go-or I act upon the situation to find resolution. To carry hatred inside of me? It will well up and turn into an inferno of Ne amplification, contaminating everything I do with hurt.

i haven't really followed your exchange with PeaceBaby, so forgive me, if i don't make that much sense here... but i'll try to respond.

do you mean that you are hurt and first try to forgive without trying to figure out your feelings/ the other person's feelings and what really happened first?

what do you mean by "act upon the situation"? when does this happen?

Isnt rationalization/analysis of emotions one of the tasks of Fi? You feel something very strongly, so you seek into the mesh that is Fi rules/values/axioms to try and figure out what to do about the strong emotions you feel-to process them?

(^^I am uncertain if this is correct actually??? instead i typically quell emotions with pure logic. Even more strange-I think I value (using Fi) logic (which is the result of Te). So my logical answer is logical-and I feel very strongly about it-due to logic being so highly valued as an Fi value. I actually and somewhat offended (in an Fi sense) when logic is ignored. This is really weird and I dont quite understand it yet. I am kinda odd.)

yeah, it is... i don't quite follow what you're saying in the second paragraph, though? i think also that my Fi values are the result of using T logic, driven by F desire to learn about values...

This was kind of what I was poking at in Z's thread-as an extrovert, I feel driven to act upon the things I "value" to seek resolution. If those Fi values are extremely intricate and well defined, I will be endless acting upon them using tert Te. So instead it makes me think enfps may be designed to function of less well defined Fi rules-thus we can seem like little kids at at times but we use Te to help guide us on practical applications of rules and learn to reign in Ne as well.

I would assume as an INFP, you guys use Ne to perceive the situation and feelings differently or maybe Si to apply catagories of isolation? Thus the black/white dualism mentioned above? But please forgive if this is totally wrong as I have no idea, just tossing ideas out there.

yeah, good points... the dualism i mentioned is just a value idea based on my studies. i think science (as much as i am skilled to use T) supports this view...

 

[Xellotath]

How very intruiging.

Well, I think I am going to refrain from posting anymore of my thoughts about love, etc.. This thread is getting overrun by F's and I feel like a jerk who goes about snatching lolipops out of babies mouths.

W'an law've.

Uh.

No. Please stay. Precisely because you take the lolipops away.

But that might be a bias on my part, i'm more oriented towards philosophy than towards spirituality [its a mystery how they both have a common section.] For example, I think I understood less than 5% of what Synapse said... it sounded grandiose but to me it was completely incoherent and made leap after leap of logic. Again, might be me, and of course im not belittling either Synapse or people who got some deep meaning out of his post, its just that for me, you might as well be posting in braille or in the poetry section [if there is one].

There's a distinct lack of skepticism. Although to some, its a good thing.

 

[Arthur Schopenhauer]

Uh.

No. Please stay. Precisely because you take the lolipops away.

Well, too much sugar is bad for you.

But that might be a bias on my part, i'm more oriented towards philosophy than towards spirituality [its a mystery how they both have a common section.]

Agreed. I usually think of philosophy as the antithesis to spirituality, honestly.

For example, I think I understood less than 5% of what Synapse said... it sounded grandiose but to me it was completely incoherent and made leap after leap of logic. Again, might be me, and of course im not belittling either Synapse or people who got some deep meaning out of his post, its just that for me, you might as well be posting in braille or in the poetry section [if there is one].

Yes, I stopped reading his post after the first paragraph...

There's a distinct lack of skepticism. Although to some, its a good thing.

Well, my mind is apparently, a giant machination of untamed cynicism. It makes me feel like a downer and downers are never fun. Bah. They will get over it.

------

Also, I'm having some trouble distinguishing between romantic/fantastical opinions about love and the other, spiritualized opinion. They are both very similar.

 

[sculpting]

i haven't really followed your exchange with PeaceBaby, so forgive me, if i don't make that much sense here... but i'll try to respond.

do you mean that you are hurt and first try to forgive without trying to figure out your feelings/ the other person's feelings and what really happened first?

Actually yes. I will get offended, say nothing, assume responsibility and then forgive rather than respond as the response will typically be externalized. 90% of the time I think this is okay as the offense was unintended, was me being hypersensitive, was some odd quirk of mine they happened to stumble over, or can be dismissed as logically being okay, even if it bothered me.

what do you mean by "act upon the situation"? when does this happen?

By "act" I mean the typical enfp thing:

We seem to go through life searching for a cause to fight for. Often this is accompanied by a sense of rightousness and a sense of strength. I'd guess it is tert Te being used to harness Fi indignation over something. That's why I say we "externalize" Fi judgments.

On a much quicker timescale this can be a response ranging from a very gentle "oh, hey, not sure if you realized but that thing you said may have bugged somebody but I know you didnt realize it" to a rather loud bitchslap letting them know they crossed a value to a total emo spew.

 

[yvonne]

Actually yes. I will get offended, say nothing, assume responsibility and then forgive rather than respond as the response will typically be externalized. 90% of the time I think this is okay as the offense was unintended, was me being hypersensitive, was some odd quirk of mine they happened to stumble over, or can be dismissed as logically being okay, even if it bothered me.

makes sense... little things don't matter...

We seem to go through life searching for a cause to fight for. Often this is accompanied by a sense of rightousness and a sense of strength. I'd guess it is tert Te being used to harness Fi indignation over something. That's why I say we "externalize" Fi judgments.

On a much quicker timescale this can be a response ranging from a very gentle "oh, hey, not sure if you realized but that thing you said may have bugged somebody but I know you didnt realize it" to a rather loud bitchslap letting them know they crossed a value to a total emo spew.

i support causes, too. usually i do it in the quiet way, though. i do some research on the causes... it has been important for me personally to develop my value system. i suppose that's what i was trying to say. i don't expect others to share it and i usually don't even like to talk about it in depth... i just try to live by it. it's "wide enough" and "right enough" now for me to feel pretty comfortable with it. things can change though... but mostly it's just little things like feelings that come and go and make me do things i regret... i don't mind people questioning my value system, though.

 

[disregard]

I don't see how love could be a universal truth. Or even a truth at all.

Should it be the center of all that we try to be?

What does that mean?

Should you love thy neighbor?

If so, (love being compassion), I think one should aim for it if only because it is unnatural when it would be of the most aid.

 

[Mole]

Love, Hate and Dancing

Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. It is quite impossible to accept one and reject the other. But this is just what we do. We say God is love. And so we try and try to love and avoid hate.

But this just blocks our flow of feeling. When we can flow, we let love and hate flow within us, without blocking either one.

Love, we might say, is one foot and hate the other. And we need both feet to to walk, and we need both feet to dance.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Thanks, Halla, I appreciate it!

So I pulled out a book I bought a few months ago, but never read, called The Six Archetypes of Love. The author is a historian, so I've enjoyed reading his summarization of love in an historical context. I will paraphrase:

......the ancient Greeks had more than one word for love; they differentiated between love of friends, love of home, greed, and erotic love. A little later in history we see the romans, like the Greeks, differentiating between erotic love and mere sexual greed, yet their plays, and especially their comedies, seem to prefer to ridicule the lover. A man in love was a man who was no longer reasonable and therefore no longer truly a man. Virtue, a concept invented by the Romans, is a word derived from vir, meaning a man. Manliness was the same thing as Virtue to them, and had everything to do with getting ahead. It didn't have much to do with a tender appreciation for a sexual partner.

The Greeks and Romans used myths to tell stories about love and lust. In these myths, sexual promptings were felt to be destructive. They turned humans into animals or plants. Even the gods were turned into animals by lust. But the Greeks were interested in depicting love in all its forms, which suggests it was a topic of continuing fascination and importance for them and that they had a sophisticated awareness of the issue.

In early medieval European society the idea of sexual love was nothing if not confused. Love was often depicted as a disaster that threatened the all-important loyalties to the local lord and his clan. From Beowulf to King Arthur's legends to Tristan and Iseult, the plots all carry the same major components about love, that love leads to disaster; and that the demands of loyalty and loyalty's relentless partner--revenge--destroy love.

Love is always seen as a static concept. There is no attempt to show that love can grow or change; it can meet challenges ('for richer, for poorer...'), there is almost no exploration of the way love can deepen and develop, or fail to grow and so wither and die. One is either in love or not.

What this signals to us is that in bygone eras people were fully aware of the power of sexual love and the need to idealize the loved one, yet they had very little idea as to what to do with this urge, nor how to align it with religion. Religion insisted that only the love of God mattered....

Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet is pointing us to a far more complex discussion of love than just sexual attraction and its challenges....The play is much richer if we stop focusing on what we expect to see--a romantic love story--and observe its larger resonances as an exploration of many different kinds of love, loyalty and attachment. Despite this, society in those times had a rather grim and pragmatic approach to love; love was not to derail wedding alliances if it could be avoided. Love was nice, but money ensured that no one would starve.

In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries we can detect a move to redress this imbalance of love being a negative influence by and large, by authors such as Jane Austen, who explored themes of fulfilled love matches, based on patience and sensibility.

Which brings us to present day. So up until a few hundred years ago (if we assume an evolutionary process of the role love played in our history, a chronological time line of growth), love was not held in high regard. Yet now it is almost a religion as reflected in current media and popular culture, and is a major thrust of most modern religions. What happened that made such an ideology so all-consuming so fast? If modern human has been around for 200,000 years, and up until a few hundred years ago (at most), love wasn't given very high regard, how can it all have changed so quickly and gone from being considered so malevolent to being so benevolent, at least as I perceive it in our modern culture.

Or is this just the other side of the pendulum swing? Malevolent>Benevolent, and then we'll eventually settle somewhere in the middle. ?

 

[Synapse]

Out of curiosity wants to ask does love come from the heart or the mind?

If its universal or if it isn't, where does love come from? How can you tell its love? Do we need a heart to love? Do we need a mind to love? Do eyes express love? Does the body express love? Does touch express love? Does our spirit express love?

 

[Synapse]

You raise an interesting point with the love/hate thing. Are we more likely to hate if we love less?

In considering love as a biological, chemical process that has aided in our evolution through time, I asked my son what he thinks about love. He said he thinks love is getting stronger in us because we are not as barbaric a society as we used to be; that in all the ways we measure love, it used to not measure up like it does now. I'm not sure about that, but maybe he's right. We seem to go out of our way more to protect our children for a longer period of time of their growth. We seem to hold more dear the sanctity of relationships, no matter the paradigm we believe in. We seem to understand the concept that healthy self love exists and try to understand it. We join together in love when we have a crisis, but that does dissipate after a while.

I have to wonder if some of us that love too much or don't love enough are just along different time continuum in that evolution of love. Perhaps we are developing more affinity for love as a human race; perhaps that is slowly being selected for over time. Those that hate, are killed, those that love procreate; to use a very simplified example. Those that don't fit in, are ostracized. Those that do, are embraced.

If only we could plug our tails into our computer monitor and unite all our good wills together, Avatar style, how awesome would that mind-meld love be?

Neat response. Good question, can't really answer that, I suppose we shut down the processes that are meant to be loving. Maybe there is a scale that depends on individual experience to trust those thoughts and emotions that experience love in its base form with others.

 

[sculpting]

Neat response. Good question, can't really answer that, I suppose we shut down the processes that are meant to be loving. Maybe there is a scale that depends on individual experience to trust those thoughts and emotions that experience love in its base form with others.

I would suggest that stress factors in early life play a role in how this works. If you are in a very high stress place, you cannot trust emotional ties to be reciprocal-thus you do not develop them.

 

[Synapse]

I would suggest that stress factors in early life play a role in how this works. If you are in a very high stress place, you cannot trust emotional ties to be reciprocal-thus you do not develop them.

Makes sense, this applies to me somewhat. Trying to determine what the scale is then between the terminology out there. Whether love exists in a positive form, which it does. Though experiencing the negative form does create a sense of cynicism for the future that I am trying to replace with a better sense of reality. Its quite amazing how much of our attitudes about love and acceptance are learned from an early age and then reinterpreted through the looking glass of society.

 

[Queen Kat]

Love can't be a truth. That simply doesn't make sense, because love isn't a sentence, like "the grass is green" or "1 and 1 is 2". It is a thing, things can't be truthfull or not. Love is in fact very simple. It just means that you strongly prefer something or someone. When you say "I love cookies", it means that you'd rather eat cookies than most other things. When you say "I love my wife", it means you'd rather be with them and/or do things with them than with other people. Love is just strong preference.

But people seem to want to make love more complicated, just for the sake of making it complicated. They add symbolic elements to it and they want to tell what kinds of love are love and what kinds aren't, just to feel better than others. For example: being set up with a date by one of your friends, dating with them for a long time, arranging when to kiss first and when to make love for the first time, getting married when other people want you to and having kids when others want you to is called love, because it's what the people who tell us what love is call that love. Meanwhile, the couple that meets each other for the first time in the elevator, starts having sex right away, after that decides to stay together and in the end suddenly grow old together, doesn't love each other. Why? Because others said so. They never dated before they had sex, so they can't love each other. Somehow, I'd still rather be in the second relationships than in the first one I described. But that's not love. Love is planning-planning-planning-dating-dating-dating-marrying-getting babies-being like everyone expects you to-divorce-die.

Love is bounded to rules. Not just to the rules I just described. Another example: mothers are expected to love their children the most of anything in the world and love them all equally. But that's not how things work in real life. I know plenty of mothers who love one child more than the other. I also know mothers who don't love their children at all and even hated them from the day they were born. But there are still people who stick to that all mothers love their children more than anything in the world and that they love them all equally. Because that's how it REALLY is. They think they all know it better. But it's all just relative.

That's why I don't think love is a truth and why love is relative rather than universal.

 

[sculpting]

Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. It is quite impossible to accept one and reject the other. But this is just what we do. We say God is love. And so we try and try to love and avoid hate.

But this just blocks our flow of feeling. When we can flow, we let love and hate flow within us, without blocking either one.

Love, we might say, is one foot and hate the other. And we need both feet to to walk, and we need both feet to dance.

Victor i do not understand. What does hate feel like you for? When I say hate I mean almost a walling off of this person from my soft, open space. I cast them out. At first I might feel animosity, but very quickly I have to let that go or I feel like it taints my soul. I just feel nothing for them. I may call it hate but it is more the absence of goodwill? absence of an underlying sense of caring that I feel towards most people....Do you maintain a sense of hate long term?

Makes sense, this applies to me somewhat. Trying to determine what the scale is then between the terminology out there. Whether love exists in a positive form, which it does. Though experiencing the negative form does create a sense of cynicism for the future that I am trying to replace with a better sense of reality. Its quite amazing how much of our attitudes about love and acceptance are learned from an early age and then reinterpreted through the looking glass of society.

My experience has been one of blocking others out with logic. I care deeply, but on a very visceral level. I am wary of emotional bonds as a result-meaning it can actually be hard to open myself emotionally.

 

[Synapse]

My experience has been one of blocking others out with logic. I care deeply, but on a very visceral level. I am wary of emotional bonds as a result-meaning it can actually be hard to open myself emotionally.

Yeah I don't know. I feel so far removed from the thoughts and emotions needed I wonder whether I'll be be able to open up easily either. Much the same, I care about people but from a distance. Like with my real life friends, I keep them at a distance without really wanting to know them well, too much effort.

Really guarded myself from these ideas, years of practice from dealing with an intj family who lack a healthy understanding of love. Mature intj can, any personality can, except their ability to is lost. I'm just trying to rediscover the warmth. Many roads to travel as they say.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Love can't be a truth. That simply doesn't make sense, because love isn't a sentence, like "the grass is green" or "1 and 1 is 2". It is a thing, things can't be truthfull or not. Love is in fact very simple. It just means that you strongly prefer something or someone. When you say "I love cookies", it means that you'd rather eat cookies than most other things. When you say "I love my wife", it means you'd rather be with them and/or do things with them than with other people. Love is just strong preference.


Love is bounded to rules. Not just to the rules I just described. Another example: mothers are expected to love their children the most of anything in the world and love them all equally. But that's not how things work in real life. I know plenty of mothers who love one child more than the other. I also know mothers who don't love their children at all and even hated them from the day they were born. But there are still people who stick to that all mothers love their children more than anything in the world and that they love them all equally. Because that's how it REALLY is. They think they all know it better. But it's all just relative.

That's why I don't think love is a truth and why love is relative rather than universal.

I really like your post. I like thinking in terms of love as a 'preference' instead of as an absolute. I also agree with you that we all try to make love pretty, but I think it is really just as ugly for some. I am not sure what makes it pretty versus ugly, but I don't think it's just ego development getting botched, I think it's also other survival mechanisms that get pulled into play. Think of Sophie's Choice (movie where mother must choose which child dies) for one example. But the voluntary application of love versus non love is really more interesting to me.

Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. It is quite impossible to accept one and reject the other. But this is just what we do. We say God is love. And so we try and try to love and avoid hate.

But this just blocks our flow of feeling. When we can flow, we let love and hate flow within us, without blocking either one.

Love, we might say, is one foot and hate the other. And we need both feet to to walk, and we need both feet to dance.

I've always read that love and hate were the same emotion, and that apathy was the opposite emotion. Of course, that's spewed from modern day propaganda about love, so who knows?

Apathy: Etymology: Greek apatheia, from apathēs without feeling.... I can have apathy about what my child becomes--what career path he chooses--but that doesn't mean I don't love for him to work or to be something meaningful. I can have apathy about my friends' life paths but that doesn't mean that I don't care about them in general. We seem to associate apathy with anti-love, and I don't think that's a good idea. Apathy can even be argued to be more loving, because lack of feeling toward something/someone means you totally stay out of their business, leaving them full freedom to be themselves or follow their own mindset.

I would suggest that stress factors in early life play a role in how this works. If you are in a very high stress place, you cannot trust emotional ties to be reciprocal-thus you do not develop them.

I can't say that beyond my husband and children that my close ties are reciprocal (and I'm one of lucky ones). I am an Fe aux who has spent 20 years trying to make it so. I think that is a mindset that is socialized into us in our culture of love; that reciprocated love will be our due if we just love fully and openly; that extends out of the Universal Love is a Truth mentality replete in popular religions and literature. The only way it makes sense that love is not reciprocated is either if you do what Halla suggested and cull your love recipients carefully, or if you realize that love is something else entirely; a coping mechanism, a stratagem for biological success and survival, perhaps the icing on the top of a few relationships that come and go; but not a whole lot more.

Coming to terms with that would help the loveless a lot more than telling them to buy into the rampant love myths in existence in our world today. And if a more altruistic love does evolve within us all more collectively, then wonderful.

 

[Fluffywolf]

If love was a universal truth, I'd be a depressed and sad little person. But I'm not, so it isn't.

Is love a subjective truth to 'most' people on this planet? Probably, I'm just not most people.

 

[RaptorWizard]

What is vice? All that proceeds from love and weakness! What is virtue? All that proceeds from stregnth and power!