i-am-your-idea
pretty vacant
i like the poem, how do you relate it to this thread?
Love: Imaginary if and only if Real
- Thread starter i-am-your-idea
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citydreams
on the road again
kyser_soze said:
I see. So, looking for love is actually a causal reaction to a basic impulse to prevent me from killing anyone, or to help me to procreate? Why then do we love people we have never met, nor are likely to? For example, we perform acts of love by giving to charity. You argue that this is purely selfish? But then people give up their lifes for love too, how can this be selfish?
I also think that love is outside language, and equate it more with spirituality than chemistry.
i-am-your-idea
pretty vacant
can you have a selfish wish that you die instead of someone else?
citydreams
on the road again
yes, i suppose you can, but maybe that only applies here if there is no such thing as a truely selfless act?
citydreams
on the road again
Another thing that I don't get about the view that love is purely an evolutionary construct:
It is often suggested that there is no such thing as the perfect woman (or, if you prefer, man) in a search for a partner to love. Yet, we (nearly all) do settle for someone.
However, if love is purely a biological urge, then how can one love someone that is not perfect? That is, do we really just settle for someone who shares our common goals/interests and then call that feeling of righteousness love?
I can't believe that the majority of people settle for the one they 'love' the most.
Indeed, we often love those who are least likely to be our partners.
It is often suggested that there is no such thing as the perfect woman (or, if you prefer, man) in a search for a partner to love. Yet, we (nearly all) do settle for someone.
However, if love is purely a biological urge, then how can one love someone that is not perfect? That is, do we really just settle for someone who shares our common goals/interests and then call that feeling of righteousness love?
I can't believe that the majority of people settle for the one they 'love' the most.
Indeed, we often love those who are least likely to be our partners.
i-am-your-idea
pretty vacant
we love the imperfect because there is no choice.
There is a crack in everything, thats how the light gets in.
There is a crack in everything, thats how the light gets in.
fudgefactorfive said:
Look mate, you've said you've not read anything by fromm, so how can you judge what he's saying? How can you say he's not your cup of tea? You seem rather happy to take other people's word for things. As for his 'baggage' that you talk about, it looks like that's not his baggage, rather bags attributed to him by others.
Now i can easily refute what that person you quote says about fromm not dropping freud. The stuff i've read (from art of loving, escape from freedom, and the sane society, on disobedience and other essays) have numerous references by fromm saying where he believed freud had gone wrong, not least because of the times freud lived in. Fromm has been described as mixing freud and marx, but i've not seen to much referred to by fromm over the latter.
If the writer you quote can get something like that so wrong, one wonders if a) he's actually read fromm, and b) anything else he says must also be suspect.
Excuse me for saying so, but you seem to put more in store by who you think a person is, rather than what he says. Which means you potentially miss all sorts of wisdom. Humans are humans and we have strange lives and life is often weird, so of course we do weird stuff. However, that said, i just don't know what kind of person fromm was in his own life, but i didn't actually think it mattered one bit.
His message in the books i've read is so very persuasive, i try hard to counter what he says as i read it, but i never can. And fruequently i'm able to confirm to myself what he has analysed by comparing it to people i've known or met.
"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."
But how do you know this is what fromm thought? Because you read it somewhere??
citydreams said:
For those searching for someone to love them, to fall in love with them, no perfect person can be found.
For those who practise the giving kind of love, the love as an energy as i have called it here, then there are many people who will be perfect, and i use the word here in the sense it is thought of in this context.
gorski
customised free radical
Fela, FFF does not understand that someone might have many "good" or "correct" insights even though one or more are not so "good" or "correct"...
Why not blacken someone if you possibly can...
Btw, use that principle on anyone and the world will end in pure hatred and war - cynicism galore, indeed...
I can see quite clearly he's bringing his own issues into the debate.
But a debate on something he knows nothing about.
And he calls Fromm prejudiced...
What bollox!!!
Why not blacken someone if you possibly can... Btw, use that principle on anyone and the world will end in pure hatred and war - cynicism galore, indeed...
I can see quite clearly he's bringing his own issues into the debate.
But a debate on something he knows nothing about.
And he calls Fromm prejudiced...
What bollox!!!
Well yes it's a pity!
But if fudgefactor has time and the inclination i am offering up two links i found with minimal time from google.
The first link is a very good resume of his life and his writings and ideas.
The second link is just to add more about the man.
The man was sheer class in his writings, and it seems barely credible that he was the kind of person that fudgefactor says he is. But even if he was, how does that alter the wisdom of the man's analysis of humans and the conditions of being human?
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/fromm.html
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/erich-fromm/
But if fudgefactor has time and the inclination i am offering up two links i found with minimal time from google.
The first link is a very good resume of his life and his writings and ideas.
The second link is just to add more about the man.
The man was sheer class in his writings, and it seems barely credible that he was the kind of person that fudgefactor says he is. But even if he was, how does that alter the wisdom of the man's analysis of humans and the conditions of being human?
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/fromm.html
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/erich-fromm/
gorski
customised free radical
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
citydreams said:
'Love' in the English language is a construct in the same way liebe and aimer are in in French and German - a way of expressing a set of ideas.
Concepts like 'perfect partner' are cultural and only have a minor role to play in the wider process of evoulution in specific cultures - the majority of marriages in the world are still arranged, not 'free choice' based on the late-times notion of romantic love (and even this is relatively recent - arranged marriages, especially among the r/c and m/c were popular into the C20th (indeed, look at the way UK Royal weddings are managed - the sap-to-be has to be the 'right' marriage partner).
So far from 'settling', most of the world gets married and then has to work at it, with Western style 'I choose them because I love them' very much in the minority globally. Your whole notion is based around Western cultural concepts of how relationships and people work.
Do you love anyone you've never met? I'm sorry, but I don't regard signing a charity direct debit, or putting 50p in a charity box classifies as 'love' - acting on the impulses of sympathy, empathy or guilt perhaps, but love? Or that doing charitable works doens't give an ego reward, a swift burst of serotonin and dopamine that tells you that you're a good person for doing this?
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Ah yes, I forgot you hate science don't you?
kyser_soze said:
I don't how anyone can possibly think "love" is used to describe a set of biochemical reactions etc.
It isn't, it's used to describe feelings of total warmth goodness and unity with another.
If it really was used to describe biochemical reactions then you could start talking about your biochemical reactions to your beloved, instead of your love, and no-one would think this was remotely strange, whereas in fact, this new way of speaking is unlikely to catch on.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
And what causes you to personally experiences those feelings of warmth, goodness etc? Biochemical reactions to external stimuli.
That may or may not be true, - I guess that it is true in a way, but that's totally irrelevant to the point. Whether it's true or not, the word love is not used to describe fairly undefined biochemical reactions, - nor does the concept, love, mean - various undefined biochemical reactions, -
But it's kind of an interesting argument, - to some extent, Gold means, - that shiny yellow stuff, but it also means the metal with atomic number X, (for X consult the relevant experts)
But thank God we haven't yet reached the point where anyone thinks that the relevant experts, if you want to know the deeper meaning of love, are brain scientists.
But it's kind of an interesting argument, - to some extent, Gold means, - that shiny yellow stuff, but it also means the metal with atomic number X, (for X consult the relevant experts)
But thank God we haven't yet reached the point where anyone thinks that the relevant experts, if you want to know the deeper meaning of love, are brain scientists.
kyser_soze said:
True in a way, but I'd take issue with the idea that these biochemical reactions can appropriately be described as causing the feelings.
Suppose we run with the idea that love is a load of serotonin etc.
I don't totally agree with that, but, I'd be happy enough with -the feeling of love correlates with "serotonin-pumping" - please excuse the terminology,.
But what does this mean, - does anyone seriously want to suggest that love is "really" serotonin.
But if we did go so far as to say love really is these physiological reactions + these cognitive components, first that wouldn't change the fact that "love" is not used to describe these things. Nor would it mean that the relevant physiological whatevers caused the feeling of love. I think that would be a bit like, - why is the lake empty,? Because there's no water in it.
i-am-your-idea
pretty vacant
gorski said:What bollocks!
HAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!
[I suggest you read up a bit...]
you told me i need to read up too. i wonder why you are suggesting this. what are we to gain?
maybe we can learn to mock like you. what bollocks right back at yer.
citydreams
on the road again
kyser_soze said:
In English the word 'love' is derived from Germanic forms of the Sanskrit lubh (desire). It is broadly defined and hence imprecise. Perhaps it is better to reference the Greek terms, eros, philia, and agape. Why would they need so many types of love were it not for the need for spiritual worship, devotion, passion and empathy to be distinguished from desire, lust and physicality?
Yet the romantic movement was fathered by one of the most influential thinkers during the Enlightenment - Jean Jaques Rousseau. Hardly immaterial in terms of 'evolution.'
So your evolutionary perspective is based on majority rules? Romance novels as a genre outsell all other genres. The world wants romance. It wants love. It doesn't want the restrictive walls you have placed around your feelings. Why do you think that is?
I love everyone, but then I'm a hippy. But maybe you're right. Maybe I just enjoy the seratonin release from my fluffy thoughts, and actually I'm delusional. That would also explain the great pain experienced by those that lose a loved one - they are having to accept reality.
fudgefactorfive
New Member
fela fan said:
sorry, have neither
i-am-your-idea
pretty vacant
citydreams said:
I love everyone too (peace out and fluffy hugs all round, and sod off the rest of ya!
)I think your right. But they arent having to accept reality- just A reality. It is one where their dead friend is NO MORE. Maybe this is no more real than saying they are alive, when they are breathing.
If someone were really dead and GONE, nobody would cry as the deceased body was lowered into the ground. Nobody would miss them. There would be nothing to miss, if they were all gone.
Nobody is ever truely gone. Their effect is lingering, then mingling with other lingerings.
As Blondie said 'Fade away, and radiate.'
i-am-your-idea
pretty vacant
Herbsman. said:
Thats what I was getting at! Who can disagree with that?Groucho said:No, I think that's wrongly exposed.
I think that love can be both real, imaginary, unreal and hurt. Then it can be gone and once gone it can be gone and forever longingfully, gone but not forgotten, or gone from all time so as to have never was.
It is not a floaty extra entity hovering but a festering bubbly squelch oozing.
Thinking about this some more I am certain that the original proposition was under-exposed.
I think that love can be was once but never forgotten, always but missing, sometimes seldom but wild, never frizzy once only often, bamboozled bonkers chocolate pretending.
It is not a curvy bottom circling but a wobbly innard pulsating bulbous.
i-am-your-idea
pretty vacant
Groucho said:It is not a curvy bottom circling but a wobbly innard pulsating bulbous.
ewwww!
NOT WANT!!kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
You're quoting Mr Naturalist, Rousseau, about evolution? The man who thought that mass society was akin to the fall from Eden in what it did to humans? That man has ever been falling from a state of perfectibility in nature?
If you think he's that great drop the computer and go and live on a commune growing turnips.
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