Love: Imaginary if and only if Real

[nosos]

i have more time for views that discuss mind as something emergent from the incredible complexity of evolved biology

Just to reiterate, I completely agree with this. I just feel compelled to point out that emergent properties preclude reductive explanations.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

Just to reiterate, I completely agree with this. I just feel compelled to point out that emergent properties preclude reductive explanations.

yes, but that's the current trend innit - away from reduction and towards generation. we don't take kittens to bits anymore. we open kitten farms instead.

We are animals but we're animals whose forms of regulative interaction (in the sense of the santiago theory: language is not a distinct human possession but an incredibly complex form of the regulative behaviour which is found in all life) are pretty much unique and thus we can't be studied as natural objects (in the sense in which the natural sciences concieve of their objects).

well, if you look at "love as regulative interaction" - yes, it sounds cold - it explains why people attempt to personify it as a "force". like god. again, it's the attribution of intent, the instinct to create agents; because the cause is not directly obvious, it must be a magic spirit that is an independent agent, while really, it's absolutely the other way round.

 

[nosos]

Things arise in dependence upon conditions but when those conditions are inevitably part of our background understanding or otherwise obscured by view, the thing in question becomes seen to be self-sustaining. In this case a force.

Our capacity to reflect on the causal system out of which that very capacity to reflect emerges is responsbile for us making 'things' through the above process of reification.

(I think)

 

[Barking_Mad]

"I love you because I need you"

"I need you because I love you"

 

[nosos]

I love you because I need you to explain

 

[gorski]

Well that puts me off reading Fromm

Nope, he is the best, when it comes to the subject. It doesn't mean we can't argue [or agree, for that matter] with a bit of his beliefs...

Indeed, I would very warmly recommend "The Art of Loving" to anyone wanting to REALLY dig into the subject on all levels!!!

I started a thread about it but seriously prejudiced sods came to claim he's seriously prejudiced, hence not differing from him in anything except the prefix!!

Reich, Fromm, Marcuse and the lot said most there is to say on the subject in Critical Theory, combining Marx and Freud and hence opening up Social Psychology, a most relevant and interesting discipline in Humanities!!

 

[gorski]

no, thats copulation I think.

Indeed!

and nobody truly loves society

Loving a person is just a part of love imo.

These two sentences might be in conflict... "...but what about 'brotherly love'", Fromm would say....

Love makes you kerazeeee

That might be something else... Again, Fromm's analysis is by far the best in the area... I warmly recommend his little booklet!

 

[nosos]

Reich, Fromm, Marcuse and the lot said most there is to say on the subject in Critical Theory, combining Marx and Freud and hence opening up Social Psychology, a most relevant and interesting discipline in Humanities!!

In all honesty reading Adorno in class last year completely put me off the frankfurt school. He says nothing particularly interesting and he says it in the most excruciatingly convuluted and pretensious style. Are the others better? Everyone keeps telling me I'd love Marcuse.

 

[gorski]

I do! Read Reich and then Marcuse and Fromm!

Habermas had to admit Adorno hit the wall with his approach and learned his from Hanna Arendt!

 

[gorski]

Btw, Adorno lead "Authoritarian Personality" study! A most important one, I think, when it comes to studying a Modern American [etc.] society...

 

[CJohn]

Love comes from the heart, and the heart isn't committed. It just is.

I just mean that love cannot be reduced to a feeling state, for me it is something that is manifest, that is, observable (in a subjective sense) in how we relate to other people in the world. I don't think its helpful to dissociate the two. Love is something I do, a way of being with the other.

 

[CJohn]

But if you take this to it's logical conclusion it entials that all the attempts to model human sciences on the natural sciences (evolutinary psychology, sociobiology, behaviourism) are incredibly misguided.

I don't think psychology is modelled on human sciences. It can be, and certainly it is the dominant paradigm, but as a discipline it can take an interpretative or phenomenological approach.

 

[tufty79]

Love is a mixture of the biological urge to mate, spawn and raise kids, coupled with a socially constructed rationalisation for the them.

what about the homosexualists with no paternal or maternal desires, eh?
do they get that too?

to the OP:i think that you can forget, if a relationship ends badly, what it felt like when it was good (or 'better', if on reflection you decide it never quite made it to good....)
it's also one of the harsher things you can say to someone at the end if you want to mess with their head :s

personally love is real, it just comes in different strengths, flavours and variety. you can also love the same person in different ways over time.

/my tuppenceworth

 

[fela fan]

Well that puts me off reading Fromm

I guess you're not being serious there, but either way i'd like to know which book of his says that.

And as an exploration of modern man, fromms double whammy of escape from freedom and the sane society take the prizes for me. With the madness going on over in the US these days, his books are most appropriate reading in order to understand how our free societies are not quite as free as we think they are.

Incidentally in fromm's book i referred to i can't recall anything he writes about sex, just about love, loving, and how to love.

I believe love is an energy - not a feeling or emotion. And it may well be very much tied in with awareness and knowledge.

 

[fela fan]

I just mean that love cannot be reduced to a feeling state, for me it is something that is manifest, that is, observable (in a subjective sense) in how we relate to other people in the world. I don't think its helpful to dissociate the two. Love is something I do, a way of being with the other.

I like the word manifest. Agreed mate.

I could even say that love is a dimension that you are either in or you're not.

 

[fela fan]

Fromm says male homosexuality is based on fear of the vagina - and is nothing but a redirected, bastardised urge "designed" to protect vulnerable male children from sexual interest in their mothers and resultant physical punishment from their fathers. For fuck's sake. The other component of same-gendered love is narcissism apparently.

He requires the libido to be ignored; or better, harnessed towards something highbrow. He was personally embarrassed by sex.

It's a very Christian attitude imo. Sex is something dirty and base that needs to be overcome, risen above, ratified by love.

Can you let me know in which book or article he said all that?

And did he write that he was personally embarrassed by sex? I wonder how you have come to know this.

 

[fela fan]

On the downside, love can be a form of insanity, and in some people's cases it manifests in that way. Certainly, even the most balanced of people can have their behaviours affected in potentially harmful ways - for example the loss of appetite that attends separation from the object of love; when it tips over from being a positive into the negative of obsession; when love ends for one half of a partnership or friendship and the other can't accept it and that results in negative behavioural patterns like stalking, phoning people in the early hours etc etc.

You're talking about the kind of love where a person is taking, expecting, looking for it, wanting it, wanting to be loved. With this kind of love comes the flip side of hate.

Another kind, the real kind, the kind that is the biggest protection for humans to wend their way through their journey of life, is based on giving out love.

There is a tremendous difference, and the latter is not a feeling nor an emotion, it is a dimension, an energy. And this giving out of love is for all things that live, people, animals, nature. It is the force that unifies us with existence from whence we were born. It is the energy that brings us back home having been yanked away from after leaving the mother's womb.

To love is the greatest thing to happen to a human being. To want love is possibly our greatest weakness, as you have alluded to kyser.

 

[kyser_soze]

Strip away the hippy stuff about dimensions and energy there and we're in agreement FF...

 

[fela fan]

Strip away the hippy stuff about dimensions and energy there and we're in agreement FF...

Well, that's nice! I'll break open an extra bottle tonight to celebrate the occasion...

But i think when you mean/think hippy, i mean/think spiritual. Certainly, the person i most respect (commonly referred to as a spiritual mystic) called love an energy, and i only heard that yesterday as it happens since one of my indian students came back with a three cd set by him. Instead of reading him, i got to hear his voice, and he was talking about love.

It's me that thought, okay, if it's an energy, then it can be a dimension too. I think what this is meant to mean is that it's not like a tap that can be turned on and off, it just always is, or always is not. I mean to say that if one loves, the giving sort, then we don't really take any break from that. If you like, we could call it lovingness, imbuing it with a quality, a way of life, someone's nature.

In other words an energy, which is why i liked it when i heard it. Can we agree on that, without it being 'hippy' any more??

 

[kyser_soze]

No - as Nosos said earlier, the word 'love' (in it's various incarnations between cultures and languages) is a social construct that is used to describe a set of biochemical reactions in the body and brain that have proven to be useful from the POV of keeping humans from killing their offspring and each other; another expression for love could be 'practical empathy' - but if you want to start calling it an energy or going on about other dimensions, go talk to Merlin Wood, Dwyer and all the other Platonists who think that things like consciousness, love etc exist separately to the physical reality we exist in.

Charlie Brooker sums up for me what I think when I hear the word 'spiritual', in his review of Ricahrd Dawkins series, The Enemies of Reason

Well I don't. "Spirituality" is what cretins have in place of imagination. If you've ever described yourself as "quite spiritual", do civilisation a favour and punch yourself in the throat until you're incapable of speaking aloud ever again. Why should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the contemptuous mockery it deserves?

Maybe you've put your faith in spiritual claptrap because our random, narrative-free universe terrifies you. But that's no solution. If you want comforting, suck your thumb. Buy a pillow. Don't make up a load of floaty blah about energy or destiny.

 

[fela fan]

Yes i read that article by brooker the other day somewhere here on urban.

I said at the time it was another example of how the meanings of words get hijacked so easily.

For the record, for me spirituality is the tool required to fight injustices in the world, not politics.

Spirituality, very much to do with the love i've talked about, to me refers to the bit beyond the body mind and soul. And of course that beyond cannot be defined using language, it can only be experienced.

Finally, for the moment, spirituality is the dimension (you can call it 'thing' if you want) where all duality has ceased. And thus love without hate. And thus freedom from dependence.

 

[i-am-your-idea]

Finally, for the moment, spirituality is the dimension (you can call it 'thing' if you want) where all duality has ceased. And thus love without hate. And thus freedom from dependence.

to be free we depend on the things that give us freedom.

to love, we must be emotional creatures, and that includes negative emotions. its all part of the package.

If you are trying not to hate, you are maybe also trying to control your love too.

 

[gorski]

No - as Nosos said earlier, the word 'love' (in it's various incarnations between cultures and languages) is a social construct that is used to describe a set of biochemical reactions in the body and brain that have proven to be useful from the POV of keeping humans from killing their offspring and each other; another expression for love could be 'practical empathy' - but if you want to start calling it an energy or going on about other dimensions, go talk to Merlin Wood, Dwyer and all the other Platonists who think that things like consciousness, love etc exist separately to the physical reality we exist in.

Charlie Brooker sums up for me what I think when I hear the word 'spiritual', in his review of Ricahrd Dawkins series, The Enemies of Reason

Originally Posted by Charlie Brooker
Well I don't. "Spirituality" is what cretins have in place of imagination. If you've ever described yourself as "quite spiritual", do civilisation a favour and punch yourself in the throat until you're incapable of speaking aloud ever again. Why should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the contemptuous mockery it deserves?

Maybe you've put your faith in spiritual claptrap because our random, narrative-free universe terrifies you. But that's no solution. If you want comforting, suck your thumb. Buy a pillow. Don't make up a load of floaty blah about energy or destiny.

Spirituality has other meanings. This one is more or less Hollywood claptrap, so not very hard to knock over... Try Hegel for size...

As for biochemical nonsense: this is worth of multiple Nobel awards in many a field of Human exploration...

Do tell, please... Oh, God...

 

[i-am-your-idea]

The whole world is hollywood. Sort of.

 

[fela fan]

to be free we depend on the things that give us freedom.

to love, we must be emotional creatures, and that includes negative emotions. its all part of the package.

If you are trying not to hate, you are maybe also trying to control your love too.

No, that is not being free at all. Freedom is achieved only when independence is achieved.

The kind of love that i'm talking about is not about emotions. When you give something, that is not related to any emotion, only the 'action' of giving is happening. Being emotional is nothing to do with this kind of love.

I don't try not to hate, if i did i'd fail. I just simply do not. And i cannot control whether i give love out, i just do or i don't.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

Can you let me know in which book or article he said all that?

And did he write that he was personally embarrassed by sex? I wonder how you have come to know this.

i spent half an hour on google yesterday which tbh i don't care to repeat. not read anything by fromm and only read about him before while reading about Freud and Fliess. it's so not my cup of tea

but here is one example:

Fromm was handsome and, after his 1941 bestseller, he was a rich man; but he remained childless and his best friend was the notoriously homosexual psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan. A further hint that Fromm maintained a childish and less than fully libidinal relationship to women comes from his reluctance to break with Freud in his psychological theorizing. Though Fromm deplored Freud's simplistic biologizing, he never wanted to make the kind of break with Freud that Karen Horney had made ...

There is certainly something odd about a man with such a history wanting to counsel others in 'the art of loving'; and the mystery deepens when it is seen that Fromm counsels that erotic love needs a firm basis in *brotherly* love -- a phenomenon which the singleton Fromm had never himself experienced.

there's nothing more ugly than pompous old sex-phobic chauvinistic duffers trying to be "noble". i had a go at these ideas a few months back

sorry, but people like this are never going to be a "model" for me. they're interesting to read about, historically, but their baggage makes me choke. i don't want to learn about love from someone who thinks my reasons for loving men are all based on fear of women's sexuality and sadism.

 

[i-am-your-idea]

there's nothing more ugly than pompous old sex-phobic chauvinistic duffers trying to be "noble".
sorry, but people like this are never going to be a "model" for me. QUOTE]

I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Money for dope
Money for rope

I'm sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mama's little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now

I've had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth

 

[fudgefactorfive]

I once met a man with a sense of adventure,
He was dressed to thrill wherever he went.
He said, "Let's make love on a mountain top
Under the stars on a big hard rock."
I said "In these shoes?
I don't think so."

 

[phildwyer]

No - as Nosos said earlier, the word 'love' (in it's various incarnations between cultures and languages) is a social construct that is used to describe a set of biochemical reactions in the body and brain that have proven to be useful from the POV of keeping humans from killing their offspring and each other; another expression for love could be 'practical empathy' - but if you want to start calling it an energy or going on about other dimensions, go talk to Merlin Wood, Dwyer and all the other Platonists who think that things like consciousness, love etc exist separately to the physical reality we exist in.

I think no such thing. Ideas and matter depend upon each other for their existence--neither can exist on its own. In the phenomenological sense that is, which is the only sense with which we can be concerned. Idealism and materialism are equally deluded, and deluded in exactly the same way.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

no le gusta caminar - no puede montar a caballo