What I mean is - when a man falls in love with a woman, does it mean he saw someone in this woman who could provide him safety, comfort, satisfaction,...? — Craiya
Is love really a good thing, or is it selfish to love somebody/something? — Craiya
At the same time, as others have alluded, we are self-directed individuals seeking happiness, thus cannot escape the self-serving interest component. Kind of like the need to procreate/aspire to have children of our own.
(Albeit adoption, seems to be more in line with an altruistic act or concept... .) — 3017amen
Is love really a good thing, or is it selfish to love somebody/something? — Craiya
Well, we can escape it, it’s just less effort to roll with it, and justify it, and pretend that it’s somehow necessary. — Possibility
can you please clarify this? — 3017amen
we are self-directed individuals seeking happiness, thus cannot escape the self-serving interest component — 3017amen
If you are saying it takes less conscious effort, isn't that the same as saying something like; intrinsic needs, or hardwired, or instinctual, etc.. — 3017amen
What causes human's to seek pleasure and/or Love ? One plausible answer would be metaphysical will. Accordingly, that would be something existential that just is...otherwise, maybe other possibilities could include something else that is beyond logic; intrinsic, instinctual, phenomenal, genetic, emergent, et al . — 3017amen
Personally, I think that ‘love’ at its most fundamental is the origin of the universe, but we don’t really understand what that means. I think a fundamental truth beyond logic is that the universe matters to the universe, regardless of anything. This truth brings meaning to interactions between potential, which realize a mutual capacity to develop and achieve by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration in the universe as it unfolds with each interaction. — Possibility
It takes much less conscious effort to believe that we ‘cannot escape’ pleasure-seeking, than to understand that pleasure-seeking isn’t as ‘necessary’ as we think. — Possibility
In that sense, how can we escape ( I'll use that wonderful word again, ha) the so-called intrinsic need for seeking gratification? — 3017amen
To love a something, in part, means I'm both making a choice to do so, and I'm satisfying an existential or intrinsic need. Arguably to Love, is much like the need to eat or sleep. Albeit in this case, eating and sleeping would be first-tier hierarchical. To Love though, seems integral with all forms of behavioral needs. Thus I can love to eat steak, love my house, love my girlfriend, children, career, ad nauseum. — 3017amen
So, in thinking out loud here, I'm trying to understand why you believe pleasure-seeking would not be 'necessary' for human existence. — 3017amen
Internal conditions of ‘sufficient’ energy/information are achieved by creating isolated systems of what matters. By ignoring information or excluding it as ‘other’, an individual system of potential interactions (eg. a living cell) can perpetuate a temporal state of almost ‘being’ everything that matters to the universe/system. This is the illusion of ‘survival’, where motivations, pleasure-seeking and/or love are based on a limited perspective of what matters to the universe/system. — Possibility
When we ‘love that dress’, we’re referring to an object: to its physical properties as we experience them. It could be the colour, the style, the feel of the material. We may desire that dress now, but as a person who desires, we’re not a static object but a developing and experiencing being who can change in how we relate to an object from one moment to the next. Plus, we probably won’t love that dress anymore if it shrinks in the wash, or gets a red wine stain...
When we love the taste of chicken, we’re referring to an experience, regardless of the properties of whatever object it may be attributed to. It’s the same when we love a person not necessarily for their physical appearance, but for how they positively contribute to the way we feel about and experience ourselves, that person and the world in general.
But love can be deeper than that. Because we can love a person not just for how they make us feel at the time, but for the potential we see in them, and the potential they bring out in us. At this level, we’re not deterred by bad moods or stressful situations, by their shyness or prickly personality, their embarrassing faux pas or bad taste in clothing. We can see past how others see them in that moment to who they can be, even if they don’t quite see it themselves, and we strive to bring out the best in them - not just for how it makes us feel, but for their benefit and the benefit of anyone else who interacts with them. This is not the same as trying to change, improve or ‘rescue’ them - it’s about potential, not possibility - we need to be honest about their capacity, and about ours. But it is this love that endures through the rocky patches of life and marriage, through illness and money troubles and teenagers and nightmare in-laws...
And we can also love a person for the added meaning that relationship brings to how we relate to the universe as a whole. At this level, the love we have for them intensifies every interaction we have with the world, because we relate to everything not only through our own experience, but through our relationship with that person we love as an experiencing being. In this way, what might otherwise have escaped our notice has meaning for us purely because we know it has meaning for them. We can relate to the world almost with two minds. It is this love that endures long after that person has been lost to everyone else. — Possibility
Yes loving someone isn’t just about how that person makes us feel, and it isn’t just about wanting them to be happier, and it isn’t just about seeing a potential in them, it is also about seeing who they are beyond appearances, about seeing a light in them despite how they appear or how they behave, about seeing their inner beauty that the eyes don’t see. — leo
Does love usually sour after years of cohabitation? Do couples need to learn to “fall back in love” for the sake of keeping together what they have built their lives around, especially when it has been many years of cohabitation? — Noah Te Stroete
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