To start i will define love. I believe love is an expression of the mind. I do not see it as an emotion but rather a will to act and by act i am referring to the act of giving. When you exercize your mind creatively and intuitively in the presence of a lover, you will be rewarded without fail. — Gord

What does that even mean? Are you attempting to convey that love is not emotional or something spontaneous that develops out of your control, but rather a wilful decision? I agree that relationships are certainly this way, but there is something about love that is unrelated to this because it is an expression of your feelings, of you or that inner 'I' and it is why you can fall in love with someone so unexpected and so different to you and still decide to be or not to be with them. Basically, the act of giving love is dependent on a number of factors, but giving love itself is an expression of who you are and you are both a feeling and thinking person. That is why love is moral consciousness.

I understand being in love as a spiritual awareness. Think back to when you were a child and the world seemed magical and your curiosity boundless. I believe at this point in our lives we were in the state of being in love. I think this comes about through the connection we forge with a loving mother. — Gord

Are you sure about that? I had a pretty shit childhood and I consider myself to be an extremely loving person. I see "spiritual awareness" to again be moral consciousness or the capacity for self-awareness and the empowerment that follows and that is not something you get from others as such artificial consciousness is inauthentic. This consciousness is a state of mind or a cognitive tool that we each have at a psychological level and although I understand the Freudian link here, I believe in free-will.

I met a girl in my junior year of college who i had an instant almost preordained connection with — Gord

It takes courage to admit this attachment you had to your mother, which is that feeling of home, of something unconditional and safe. Being separate from that produces an angst that many cannot handle and so this "instant" attraction could be a reflection of your own loneliness and that your ego enlarges to consume the other person by imagining that she is a part of you or that she has the same ideas that you do. It saves you from feeling like you are alone and in particular separate.

We reach a time during our "coming of age" phase where we move away from our mother and attach ourselves to others and sometimes this transition is too difficult that attachments are made in much the same way as people re-arrange their prejudices and call it "learning". It is the reason why only a person who is alone and feels comfortable with being alone can truly separate themselves from this attachment to mother and feel safe and at home within himself.

I love a woman now. I am not in love with her at all. She does not raise my spirits in the slightest. She challenges me to become a stronger, more self aware man, the same way a best friend might do. — Gord

Yeah, this is awkward. You do need to be in love with her too, as in, you love her for who she is and that she makes you a better person - as a friend would do - and I wholeheartedly agree with that, but you also need to feel that emotional connection too, that need to be near her. You need to admire your partner but this admiration needs to be for the things that they do, the person that they are and not the things that you will get out of it including that social protection [like popularity since it enables them to look good and that makes them feel less alone and less separate].

When you look at the advantages without that feeling, you are still being egotistical. It is still about you.



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On a side note, can you please spell properly and use proper punctuation and grammar. I particularly hate the use of i when it is not capitalised.

Okay I will do my best to use proper punctuation. Let me address a few of your contentions. I am absolutely saying that authentic love has nothing to do with emotion. Love to me is not about how you feel, I see it as a shared goal that you and your partner are constantly striving to work towards. For me this is about having children and raising them in the best way possible so they might contribute to the advancement of the human race and also have the best possible chance of finding a mate with whom they can repeat the process.

" I see "spiritual awareness" to again be moral consciousness or the capacity for self-awareness and the empowerment that follows and that is not something you get from others as such artificial consciousness is inauthentic"

I do not understand what you mean here. Please explain further.

"It is the reason why only a person who is alone and feels comfortable with being alone can truly separate themselves from this attachment to mother and feel safe and at home within himself."

I believe you are right on the money here. I enjoy time with myself as much as i do with others.

" but you also need to feel that emotional connection too, that need to be near her"

The need exists, although it is not something i "feel" per say. I would call it more a longing.

"You need to admire your partner but this admiration needs to be for the things that they do, the person that they are"

I disagree with you here. I think we are all alone in this life whether we are around people or not. There is no way of escaping the "I" you refer to. I freely admit all of my motives are selfish. I believe if you can find a person who enhances that "I" within you then that is very much a good thing. In the same way i would not expect her to admire me, who I am, what I do. I would wish her to be with me because of how it helps her change herself. Do you understand?

Hope my grammar was better.

(To quote someone, you can highlight their text and click on the pop-up "Quote" button.)

(To quote someone, you can highlight their text and click on the pop-up quote button.) — Baden

Got it, thanks.

I am absolutely saying that authentic love has nothing to do with emotion. Love to me is not about how you feel, I see it as a shared goal that you and your partner are constantly striving to work towards. — Gord

Then it is not love anymore but merely a transaction that is mutually beneficial. It is no different to forming a relationship based on economics - because you save money - or because she provides that platform that makes you appear more popular because she is attractive, etc, those artificial elements. What if a woman is actually right for you, someone who will bring you happiness, but she does not have those qualities - economics, popularity, attractiveness - that is beneficial to you, does that mean you reject her?

Love enables us to transcend those almost capitalistic transactions that make us see an object that is beneficial to us in as much as an iPhone would, and it is questionable in how much of that "need" that compels us to an iPhone is socially constructed. People tell us what we are supposed to want and that is where an absence of feeling exists, because the centre of our being is our connection to honesty and authenticity and why one needs to first learn how to love themselves so that they do not follow but think. Love is moral consciousness, a type of authenticity in our behaviour and responses; so, when you say you are using your mind, you are using your mind with clarity, with common sense and honesty - moral consciousness.

Friendship is the most important step in forming a bond, the very beginning and why when you meet a love interest you should first form that friendship, but there is love in this friendship too although it is something acquired and not given unconditionally. You are probably at this stage. That move from friendship to romantic love is a move from that conditional space toward trusting or having that faith that allows you to feel that emotional connection. You develop through reason and mutual enjoyment a compatibility that respects and admires the other as you move towards that love; it is not blind or spontaneous, basically. It is something you learn to give.

It is therefore your state of mind and your responses that you need to question; for instance, love is not something you give only to one other person while remaining indifferent to everyone else. It is an expression that you give to all people and that requires a type of feeling or comradeship with all people.

I think we are all alone in this life whether we are around people or not. There is no way of escaping the "I" you refer to. I freely admit all of my motives are selfish. I believe if you can find a person who enhances that "I" within you then that is very much a good thing. In the same way i would not expect her to admire me, who I am, what I do. I would wish her to be with me because of how it helps her change herself. Do you understand? — Gord

You speak of this 'I' as though you somehow have sufficiently found who you are but I see your articulation on love to prove quite the reverse. In your actual case, you are not giving love at all- and that is what love is, it is to give - but you are receiving. You want. That is why selfishness and love are incompatible. It is only a justification of your selfishness to claim that somehow she will improve by being with you, again, as though she were some object. This "I" that I am referring to is a feeling, intuitive, emotional that separates you from all that you have been taught to identify as 'reality' and thus separate from all that learning. It is a state of mind that explains your genuine or authentic responses.

To say your motives are selfish only show me a person who was probably hurt and wants to protect himself.

Love to me is not about how you feel, I see it as a shared goal that you and your partner are constantly striving to work towards — Gord

What's the difference, then, between a lover and a business partner?

Sometimes the most lasting relationships are based on a transactional analysis between partners. If not material, than emotional.

But is that love?

I'd concur with @TimeLine in saying that a transactional relationship, at least on the face of it, doesn't seem like love. Not even erotic love, which may seem like a transaction of beauty for beauty, seems quite like that to me: I'd say that erotic love is a relationship where you share mutual feelings of appreciation for one another's bodies and mutual pleasures.

At least not "at bottom" -- obviously you can enter into transactions with a lover, such as the splitting of the chores, but you'd do so with a loving relationship already in place for it to count as love. Otherwise it seems like I must love the store clerk, the waitress, a coworker, or anyone who I do interact with on a strictly transactional basis.

I realize you could restrict the definition of love to particular kinds of transactions, but to that I'd just say that love doesn't feel like that -- phenomenologically the experience of love just doesn't feel like an exchange. Hence the difference between friends with benefits and lovers proper.

But is that love? — Moliere

Doesn't that imply that love is a unique experience, in a phenomenological nonsensical sense? As if the feeling cannot be learned, and appreciated, and developed over time?

Well, we've been engaged in defining "love" for quite some time, haven't we? Plato nearly beat it into the ground in his Symposium. Aristotle, that relentless categorizer, added his thoughts. Other philosophers, poets, writers, have had their say. Eros, agape, Platonic or Christian, we've constructed various kinds of love. It's not clear to me that this has done much for us, or for love for that matter.

As wonderful as it is to feel in love, as wonderful as it would be for all to love one another, I think that love is something we experience infrequently in our lives and have for very few of those we encounter in our lives. I don't think it's something we can cultivate as we would a crop or extend it to more than a few. It has a very limited application; it's impact on our lives can be profound, but is narrow. It's very personal. Enjoy it if you're fortunate enough to love or be loved, and be content with that enjoyment.

Doesn't that imply that love is a unique experience, in a phenomenological nonsensical sense? As if the feeling cannot be learned, and appreciated, and developed over time? — Posty McPostface

I'm not sure what you mean by "phenomenological nonsensical sense" -- care to expound?

I don't know if it's unique. I think we know what we're talking about when we talk about love, at least -- it's not like a beetle in a box that only I have access to. Is that what you mean by unique, or something else?

And I'd say that love can be learned, but I don't know if it can be developed. We learn what love is by being in, falling in, and acting out of love. Then talking about love can help to gain understanding as well, but I think you'd have to have the experience first. I don't think that love is purely propositional and can be understood simply by telling someone 'This is what it is", in the manner that we might say we can understand that the capital of the United States is Washington D.C.

I think I'd fall pretty close to how @Ciceronianus the White talks about love just above in my thoughts, though I think I might make a little more room for its frequency and application.

I don't know if it's unique. I think we know what we're talking about when we talk about love, at least -- it's not like a beetle in a box that only I have access to. Is that what you mean by unique, or something else? — Moliere

Yet, we treat it as if a beetle in a box, that is unique to us only or to two partners.

And I'd say that love can be learned, but I don't know if it can be developed. — Moliere

I don't understand the difference between the two here.

I don't think that love is purely propositional and can be understood simply by telling someone 'This is what it is", in the manner that we might say we can understand that the capital of the United States is Washington D.C. — Moliere

We can talk about what people or ourselves think about love; but, in many cases love is a transactional attitude.

Yet, we treat it as if a beetle in a box, that is unique to us only or to two partners. — Posty McPostface

Hmm. I dunno. It seems to me that love isn't ineffable. Because it's not strictly propositional there is more to love than words, but we can sensibly talk about love.

I don't understand the difference between the two here. — Posty McPostface

Learning is more broad than development. It seems to me like development involves a kind of programme or discipline where someone could potentially teach a skill. But we can learn what pizza tastes like only by eating and tasting pizza -- there is no class that can teach that taste. True, we can develop theories of taste and improve our discernment based upon said theories, but I'm not sure that there is a real discipline here as much as it is a mutual discussion about a shared experience.

Maybe you could develop some sort of discipline, but I am merely uncertain.

We can talk about what people or ourselves think about love; but, in many cases love is a transactional attitude. — Posty McPostface

Like when? And, if so, how is it different from other transactional attitudes? (or is it different at all, in your view?)

The Greeks thought there were several kinds of love:

philia - deep friendship love
Philautia - love of the self (good self-love is essential; bad self love or narcissism is harmful)
eros - love as sexual passion
philia - deep friendship love
agape - love for everyone (unconditional love)
ludus - playful love -- young love
Storge - love of parents and children
pragma - the deep love between longstanding relationship partners

Point is, love isn't one thing.

I believe love is an expression of the mind. I do not see it as an emotion but rather a will to act and by act i am referring to the act of giving. When you exercize your mind creatively and intuitively in the presence of a lover, you will be rewarded without fail. — Gord

Sure, love is expressed by the mind; but if there is no emotion, no passion involved, it's just not worth thinking about.

The passions, the emotions, are not a lesser or junior part of the mind. They are the mainspring of the mind, will, and body. You just can't have "love" as a mental process without emotion. To get biological here, the mind isn't some stand-alone pristine program; it's a product of a body with physical needs, pains and pleasures, emotions, drives, appetite, etc.

Hmm. I dunno. It seems to me that love isn't ineffable. Because it's not strictly propositional there is more to love than words, but we can sensibly talk about love. — Moliere

This is nonsense. When someone says that they love someone more than what words can convey, then they have conveyed their love, no?

This is nonsense. When someone says that they love someone more than what words can convey, then they have conveyed their love, no? — Posty McPostface

Sure. But my bagel is not a "bagel", and when I eat it I'm not eating words.

Love needs more than expressions of love -- it is also actions, commitments, feelings, a relationship, and an experience.

Love needs more than expressions of love -- it is also actions, commitments, feelings, a relationship, and an experience. — Moliere

Isn't all of that manifest in transactional acts?

I'd say feelings are noticeably absent. Also, the kind of commitments , as well as specific commitments, in a transactional relationship differs from a loving relationship. My commitment to a store clerk is to not steal, or some such, but that's about it. To a lover I'm committed to their well-being.

And then there is the relationship itself -- the mutual feelings and commitments that are shared between people that I do not feel for the store clerk, nor do they feel that for me.

And then there's the kinds of actions. For a store clerk I simply pay for what I'm buying, and leave. If I don't buy something of his there is nothing personal at stake -- he's just not selling what I'm buying at the price I want it at, and that's that. But for a lover I will think of things they enjoy and do things so that they might enjoy them because I am motivated out of care for them, in particular. I'll know their quirks, their dislikes, their likes, dreams, feelings... so many personal details that just are not present in a strictly transactional relationship, which is goal-oriented and ends the moment the goal is completed.

Being in love, falling in love, and acting out of love just don't feel anything like a business arrangement or simply working together towards some end-goal. It's deontological and motivated intrinsically, rather than utilitarian and motivated extrinsically.

Not a transaction, not a deal, but a gift. Love is what it's all about, it is an overflowing, it is a passion, the passion. Love is taking pains, and giving without consideration, it is not counting, and so unaccountable. It is what you need, and all you need. Don't expect to catch it in a thread, or limit it to definition. My song is love unknown.

To say your motives are selfish only show me a person who was probably hurt and wants to protect himself. — TimeLine

I think you are quite right. I must reflect on this.

I'd say feelings are noticeably absent. — Moliere

You have no grounds for doubting here.

It is therefore your state of mind and your responses that you need to question; for instance, love is not something you give only to one other person while remaining indifferent to everyone else. It is an expression that you give to all people and that requires a type of feeling or comradeship with all people — TimeLine

I don't think love is something we can give to all people, unless you equate it with "comradeship" or something similar. And I think it's quite possible to love someone and remain indifferent to everyone else. I think we do that all the time. We don't know anything about most other people, in fact.

I can say I love my children, but couldn't with a straight face say I love all people or can love them if by "love" I mean what I feel towards my children. That's why I think that it is, in a word, foolish to claim that we should all love one another. It will never happen. If one feels the need to establish rules of conduct for all of humanity, I think it would be far more realistic to contend we should all respect one another, for example. There's no need that I love someone in order to respect them, or consider them a friend, or be kind to them. I'm certainly not indifferent to someone I consider a friend, but don't love them.

i just realized that i love jesus with all my heart

You have no grounds for doubting here. — Posty McPostface

What? I'm totally confused as to what you're getting at. My best guess right now is you believe I was talking about someone else's relationship which is transactional and so I don't know what they are feeling -- but I wasn't talking about someone else's relationship, I was talking about my feelings with respect to someone I have a purely transactional relationship contrasted to someone I have a loving relationship with.

What? I'm totally confused as to what you're getting at. — Moliere

A transactional relationship, be it emotional and material is no different than one based on one where love is present, as you seem to differentiate between one and the other, where there are no grounds to do so.

But I do. They feel different. Just as I have a reason to distinguish between red and blue -- they look different -- so I have a reason to distinguish between transactional and loving relationships -- they feel different.

But I do. They feel different. — Moliere

Again, have a expressed my love and adoration with saying that I love you more than words can say?

Surely, we can talk about love; but, it is often shown through deeds and acts. A transactional relationship can entail everything that is the case about love.

Maybe you two are using different definitions. "Transactional" is fairly broadly used in psychology to refer to relationships.

"Psychology: an interaction of an individual with one or more other persons, especially as influenced by their assumed relational roles of parent, child, or adult"

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/transactional

To me though it seems to inhere conditionality, the necessary expectation of something in return, which doesn't fly with regard to love. See Un's post. Anyhow, talk is cheap in this area.

Again, have a expressed my love and adoration with saying that I love you more than words can say? — Posty McPostface

Sure. But I don't see what you think this entails.

Surely, we can talk about love; but, it is often shown through deeds and acts. A transactional relationship can entail everything that is the case about love.

Yes, it's shown through deeds or acts.

I'm not drawing the same implications you are. I don't see how you get from your first sentence to your second sentence, in a reasonable fashion.

"Psychology: an interaction of an individual with one or more other persons, especially as influenced by their assumed relational roles of parent, child, or adult" — Baden

I had hoped that the use of examples like a shopkeeper would make it clear exactly what I mean by transactional.

But even a role seems a bit off to me. I'm not so sure about that.

To me though it seems to inhere conditionality, the necessary expectation of something in return, which doesn't fly with regard to love. See Un's post. . — Baden

Yeah, I think you're right there.

Anyhow, talk is cheap in this area

It can be. But I think it's worth exploring love at a conceptual level, too. I'm halv-sies on the role cognition can play in healthy relationships -- it's not all talk, feelings and actions play a bigger role than Reason may wish, but reason can help too.