• Benj96
    2.3k
    For those who have not experienced love what do you believe love will be/ is? For those who have experienced love what was it for you? And for those who are sceptical as to whether love exists or not.. what do you believe accounts for the concept of love in others or in general?

    What is the purpose of love? Where does it come from? Is it needed?
  • Pop
    1.5k
    I love the things and people that give me pleasure!

    Interpersonal love is the feeling that results from the experience of being willingly bonded to someone as a result of the pleasure they give you. This extends to doing non pleasurable things for the benefit of the bonded partner, in the interest of maintaining the bond, and its accompanying pleasure.

    Love is a feeling. A feeling resolves to a felt quality that is either pleasurable or painful (non pleasurable).
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    Love is an umbrella term for several different things: attraction, attachment, commitment. Check out Helen Fisher. I recall she did a TED talk on the subject that was quite good.

    For me, love is not wanting to be without my partner for a second (okay, maybe an hour), and wanting to support them through their own ambitions in life.

    And fucking. Quite a lot of it is about fucking.
  • Miguel Hernández
    66
    Groucho defined it perfectly:Will you marry me? Do you have any money? Answer the second question first.
  • Outlander
    2.1k
    Something this world is nearly devoid of, what people wouldn't know if it bit them in the arse.

    Not raising a kid to follow your views or treating a woman with sincerity because you know it all comes back to what you want or need. These days it's little more than a feeling, typically primal and primordial in nature, chemicals and endorphins which together create a positive state of mind that alleviates a negative or darker state of mind or being. To those before us however, it was the only thing in this life that could give pleasure during pain and on occasion, pain during pleasure.
  • LuckyR
    480
    Agree about the numerous possible meanings. Generally folks refer to either romantic or family based aspects of love, though technically it includes others.
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    first thing that need be said is the '8 kinds of love' that are sometimes read at wedding ceremonies.

    Philia — Affectionate Love. Philia is love without romantic attraction and occurs between friends or family members. ...
    Pragma — Enduring Love, love between long-term partners
    Storge — Familiar Love, friendship
    Eros — Romantic Love, erotic love
    Ludus — Playful Love, young love, 'puppy love'
    Mania — Obsessive Love, jealousy.
    Philautia — Self Love (as in self-esteem, emotional maturity - not narcicism.)
    agapē — Selfless Love, unconditional love, charity, compassion for all.
  • Garth
    117
    Love is the only basic emotion. It is common to all life, not as the totality of desire but as the common thread of each desire, found in all other emotions as the essence of emotion itself. In the understanding of desire, the possibility of conflict gives way to perfect harmony in actuality. Love is our recognition of this harmony of desire, be it the desire to make love, or the desire to help and to receive help, or the desire to march into battle together, or for that matter, against each other. Indeed, even in the bird which flies away and the cat that jumps after it, there is love as these desires fall into perfect harmony with each other. Only perfect harmony can be absolutely correct because correctness is nothing but absence of error. The correct understanding of emotion is therefore always harmonious, and the meditation on the harmony of desire produces the sensation of love. As no emotion can be understood without this element, it is the essence of emotion. All other qualities of emotion are accidental qua love.
  • Leghorn
    577
    @Anyone Is not love the longing to have what you do not possess?

    For example, if I love money, do I not strive to possess more of it than I have? Or, if I love women, don’t I desire the next attractive one I see? Or, if I love honor, will my longing be quenched until I am ruler of the world?
  • Daniel
    458
    Oh baby, don't hurt me
    Don't hurt me
    No more
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Some famous dude said, "Love is the pleasant interval between meeting a beautiful girl, and realizing she looks like a haddock."

    I am not plagiarizing, I just can't remember the originator's name.
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    Is not love the longing to have what you do not possess?Todd Martin

    No, that’s craving.
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    Love is the only basic emotion.Garth

    Evidence suggests love is neither basic nor an emotion. It is an aggregate of drives.

    No, that’s craving.Wayfarer

    :up:
  • baker
    5.6k
    Philia — Affectionate Love. Philia is love without romantic attraction and occurs between friends or family members. ...
    Pragma — Enduring Love, love between long-term partners
    Storge — Familiar Love, friendship
    Eros — Romantic Love, erotic love
    Ludus — Playful Love, young love, 'puppy love'
    Mania — Obsessive Love, jealousy.
    Philautia — Self Love (as in self-esteem, emotional maturity - not narcicism.)
    agapē — Selfless Love, unconditional love, charity, compassion for all.
    Wayfarer

    Which of these are not craving?
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Will you marry me? Do you have any money? Answer the second question first.Miguel Hernández

    :rofl: To clarify, those are tears of "joy".
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    On a serious note, I think love is, dare I say it, a form of rationalizing [casuistry] and I'm talking about so-called romantic love. When people say they've fallen in love, it actually means they've fallen for one of those fancy tricks the mind pulls off with such frigthening ease viz. fooling itself into thinking that sex was never a consideration. God-level self-deception if you ask me.
  • Miguel Hernández
    66


    I was married by a judge... I should have asked for a jury. – Groucho Marx
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    I was married by a judge... I should have asked for a jury. – Groucho MarxMiguel Hernández

    The more the merrier..eh? :smile:
  • Leghorn
    577
    If we divide love up into different sorts with different names and properties, then we end up discussing different things under the guise that we are talking about one thing only, and we only end up talking about what are really different things.

    If on the other hand we agree that the word “craving” and the common conception of it as “an immoderate desire” for something fits the bill, then our discussion might prove productive.
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    Interpersonal love is the feeling that results from the experience of being willingly bonded to someone as a result of the pleasure they give youPop

    Could the motivational system be reengineered so that social bonding no longer produced pleasure but pain instead? under that circumstance, would there be no such thing as interpersonal love?
  • Pop
    1.5k
    I don't think it could be reengineered, but its an interesting idea. :chin:

    If bonding was painful, we would be averse to it, so there would be no bonding, or love. Well its something for a mad geneticist to think about. :smile:
  • Pop
    1.5k
    What is your interpretation?
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    It was kind of a test of your pleasure-pain model. Piaget would answer that motivation and cognitive structures are indissociable. Pleasure-pain no more ‘drives’ cognition than cognition drives pleasure-pain.

    “ The dichotomy usually envisioned between intelligence and affectivity is based on the idea that these two aspects of behavior are distinct but analogous mental faculties acting on each other. We reject this conception because, in our view, it creates false problems. It is convenient, but it does not correspond to reality. Behavior cannot be classifed under affective and cognitive rubrics. If a distinction must be made, and it appears one should, it would be more accurate to make it between behaviors related to objects and behaviors related to people.”
  • thewonder
    1.4k

    Love is the only force in the world capable of inciting the experience of ekstasis long thought to be exclusive to divine revelation. Every form of free expression has been born out of it. It is only through love that we can come to an understanding of freedom. Love is a blissful, devastating, and cathartic experiment in the exploration of the only truly unknowable domain within our visible universe, the free human psyche. Love exists. Like the Messiah of yore is said to during an age of revelations, it conquers all.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k
    a
    If it was a matter of something that could be explained like a purpose or a means to something, you wouldn't have to ask about it.
  • Pop
    1.5k
    Piaget would answer that motivation and cognitive structures are indissociable. Pleasure-pain no more ‘drives’ cognition than cognition drives pleasure-pain.Joshs

    Its been a long time since I read Piaget. I don't recall him dealing with the issue of experience.

    How would he account for love?

    "For Piaget, emotion is the motivating force of action emanating from outside the individual in the form of sensations emitted by objects. ... His abstract concept of emotion as force fails to explain the relationship between bodily feelings, emotions, and higher forms of consciousness in human beings." - Springer Link.

    I have a lot of respect for his cognitive development theory, however.
  • Edy
    40
    Love, is giving.

    I lay my life down for my Queen. I give her as much of my attention as I can, and do my best to make her feel loved.

    Perfect love is giving without expecting anything in return. But as a mere mortal incapable of perfection, I do expect a thing or two in return. I am payed in full, and some more, because luckily my Queen loves me.
  • Present awareness
    128
    Love is an emotion, a feeling of attachment towards a person or a thing. Humans are social animals, making love, the bonding agent keeping people together. To understand what love IS, one needs to understand what emotions are and how they arise.
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