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cez

Registered: 08/04/09
Posts: 5,854
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You're only looking at one level of the concept. I associate compassion with love. I give money to beggars sometimes. I don't do it because I want to feel good about myself, but I know what it's like to be hungry. If they don't use it for food and they are using it for their drug fix, I know what that's like too. I don't love beggars in the context you are using the word, but I understand that much of this life is bullshit and we can only alleviate suffering through the works of each other and to me, that is love: to be able to see yourself in others.
The desire for a significant other is not love but lust. I think a deep connection can be felt with another and the word love might be the best word for it, but it doesn't mean that it's love.
Like OC, I fell hard for a girl and she let me spew ridiculous rhetoric only to reject me and like OC, I still crave her and am plotting an approach to get her back in my life, but this isn't love in the context I described above. But, what this girl did to me is a curious thing because I've never been pulled towards another before in all my life. She certainly filled a void in my life and the connection felt too real to not be true, but feelings are obviously misleading. I don't know that I love her, but I do know she made me feel good all the time. That being said I don't think the feeling of "good" is love and I don't think the desire to feel good is love.
At the end of the day, love is just a word but I think the belief in love is necessary for a healthy mind.
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Thanatos10
Stranger



Registered: 01/19/15
Posts: 2,770
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 8 months
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Re: Love [Re: cez]
#22241826 - 09/15/15 03:25 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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Your prosocial behavior is also the matter of chemicals. Oxytocin helps promote that aspect among people.
-------------------- As lightless oblivion devours you, drown in the ever-blooming darkness.
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nuentoter
conduit



Registered: 09/17/08
Posts: 2,721
Last seen: 7 years, 21 days
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I doubt it is simply a chemical reaction. I doubt it is just an emotion. I doubt it is a spiritual bond. I think there may be a good mix of all these things that co-mingle and create the experience we call "love".
The idea of "true" love is a strange concept, I believe I have found "true" love with my wife, but I use that term only half-heartedly because love is an agreement of sorts between (usually) 2 people. I know my level of love and dedication to my love, and my love for her is "true" in the sense that it has been unwavering, and complete feeling. I know she says I'm her true love and I believe her absolutely, the thing is how do you ever know what someone else feels is equivalent to what you feel? This used to bother me but it doesn't anymore. I came to the realization (which also helped me get over jealousy issues) that I don't have to know if my personal definition of how I feel "love" is the same and as complete and encompassing as my wife's definition.
All I have to do is realize that I fully trust her, and practice that. Everything else seems so much easier from then on out. If she breaks the trust we have, we'll talk about it then. Until then, I trust her.
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The geometry of us is no chance. We are antennae, we are tuning forks, we are receiver and transmitters of all energy. We are more than we know. - @entheolove "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for" - Georgia O'Keefe I think the word is vagina
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cez

Registered: 08/04/09
Posts: 5,854
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Quote:
Thanatos10 said: Your prosocial behavior is also the matter of chemicals. Oxytocin helps promote that aspect among people.
You can point to chemicals to maintain your position of a trivial existence, but the chemicals are in us and prompting us to act in the same way a battery prompts a car to start. Without these chemicals we don't function 
And chemicals do not answer the question of why a suicidal person refuses to commit suicide when they are equipped with the knowledge that they will hurt others because of the act. That person based on their suicidal tendencies is not getting their proper dosage of chemical pick-me-ups, yet they carry on. You can say "some still do it even though they have people who care about them" just as I can say, "but others don't."
Love isn't quantifiable, but that doesn't mean it's nonexistent.
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BrendanFlock
Stranger


Registered: 06/01/13
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Re: Love [Re: cez] 1
#22248087 - 09/16/15 08:47 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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I think of love like this..
If you really love someone..you will be able to forgive them for anything they do..
And im not saying that you should be a pushover..sometimes you have to be harsh to get the results you need and want..but its like having someone commit a horrible crime over and over again until they have committed it 10,000 times...
Say you tell them to stop, and you forgive them..even though they may have spent so much time being essentially evil..You can always forgive them if they stop performing these evil actions...
But the key is that if they wont stop..you may have to take affirmative action..
This is connected to the idea of Peaceful Buddhist monks learning martial arts..for internal practice..and for self defense..
So the truth is in the ultimatum itself..if they stop..then everything returns to normal..and one does not go out of there way to punish them...
But if they continue..then what ever action is necessary to stop them is likely the most appropriate thing to do..and i call that love as well..but maybe a different type...
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