Love: Imaginary if and only if Real

[fudgefactorfive]

It's your loss then.

not really, i'm fairly sure i can use the time productively

you don't have to read everything i like, either.

i mean, c'mon, do i:

(a) sink a fair bit of time and mental investment in slogging through the incredibly dense and ponderous musings of some straight duffer picked semi-randomly out of a priveleged class in a very socially different time and place, who, furthermore, apparently thinks love is best "done" by a particularly chosen brand of non-conformist and is therefore beyond most people;

or

(b) not bother and use the time to do more nookies with my partner of 12 years

hmmm ... tough one ... leaning ever so slightly towards (b) at the moment

i have a staggering array of character flaws but being an inadequate lover is not one of them

innit

 

[citydreams]

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.

That, my friend, is a cunning plan.

I don't get it Kyser. You accept love as an evolutionary construct (in a biological sense). One which produces happiness as well as insanity. But in the same breath you dismiss the romantic notion of the noble savage.

At what point in the history of evolution does mankind develop a capacity for communal wellbeing? Before or after the invention of the kebab?

 

[fela fan]

not really, i'm fairly sure i can use the time productively

In that case it is not your loss then.

But what i do believe to be your loss is writing people off based on the judgments that others hold on such people.

I feel it is well worth investing in the time to find out for oneself what people are like (or what they write about) rather than depending/accepting others' judgments.

Believe it or not you are touching upon thinking being done for you, rather than by you.

 

[fela fan]

And if you spent time reading fromm, you'd come to understand that very clearly!

 

[fela fan]

i have a staggering array of character flaws but being an inadequate lover is not one of them

innit

Something doesn't quite fit there.

Being a consummate lover is nearly always going to indicate a character with very few flaws. Because those able to give love are not going to find themselves being an inadequate lover, and those that give love by way of life - the love-as-energy that i have referred to - cannot possibly have more than a couple of character flaws.

Being a sex machine might be different though...!

 

[if6were9]

No I'm saying that the neurophysiological causal conditions only partly determine the phenomenology of love

You old romantic.

(unless you ascribe to a biological determinism which holds that mind states = brain states). You can offer a causal account of how love arises but this doesn't explain love. It's the difference between saying the mind supervenes on the brain (the bottom level of the system causally shapes the conditions of the top level of the system) and saying the mind is the brain.

But why can't you say love accounts for the mind and the brain?

Which would make the casuality - a loving subject finding a beloved object - just a fortituous mistake. A localised misrecognition of the beauty of the motions of the cosmic order, or its everlasting sameness - same thing - fixed, teasingly, in mortal transient beauty

 

[i-am-your-idea]

Which would make the casuality - a loving subject finding a beloved object - just a fortituous mistake. A localised misrecognition of the beauty of the motions of the cosmic order, or its everlasting sameness - same thing - fixed, teasingly, in mortal transient beauty

your a poet and you didnt even KNOW it!

have just been watching the god delusion man on tv. i agree with him just as much as the mediums. what he says to claim the absense of god, in my mind directly backs it up, by embracing the nothingness of unknowning, the mystery and wonder, he directs me to the god bit of my own mind. or the spirit molecule, whatever you want to call it.

My parents have given me a talk about not messing with unknown powers. I couldnt help say a few things, but I equally dont want to worry them. I'm really grateful to have urban75 as an outlet.

There is a lovely freedom in being anonymous.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

Believe it or not you are touching upon thinking being done for you, rather than by you.

which is exactly what i'd be doing if I accepted YOUR judgement over the huge number of academic reviewers who have a problem with half-baked pseudo-Freudian sex-phobic elitist tossers

i have probably forgotten more about psychology than i can now remember - i don't need to go back and revisit all that claptrap about penis envy etc - i'm just not interested any more

stop pushing your guru on me. he smells

 

[fela fan]

which is exactly what i'd be doing if I accepted YOUR judgement over the huge number of academic reviewers who have a problem with half-baked pseudo-Freudian sex-phobic elitist tossers

i have probably forgotten more about psychology than i can now remember - i don't need to go back and revisit all that claptrap about penis envy etc - i'm just not interested any more

stop pushing your guru on me. he smells

I'm pushing nothing on you. Why would I?

I've made no judgment on any reviewer of fromm, never mind a 'huge' number.

Nothing i've read of fromm in four books of his indicated anything like sex-phobia or any 'claptrap penis envy'. But how would you know, you won't read him.

You sure are one prejudiced person, and you're welcome to it. I'll not waste any more time trying to save you from yourself...

 

[maya]

I think what we call "love" is a transitory biological phenomenon created by evolution-
The purpose is to make a couple stay together long enough to produce viable offspring...

Attraction is transitory and seldom lasts more than 3-4 years, which is why most cultures consider marriage/the creation of couples a strictly practical question...

 

[gorski]

What rubbish...

 

[maya]

...Bitter? ...Me? Oooooooooh noo...