Thank you for your comment.

I agree with you in there being degrees of love. How we love a friend isn't the same as how we love a romantic partner for instance, and each may have their own intensity and beauty.

My focus of discussion is love to begin with. When and how do we love? How do you know you love your mother, sister, or even colleague? I say it is choice because how someone makes you feel results in how you respond to them. If they engender positive emotions you choose to respond positively and vice versa; you further choose to cultivate affection from those feelings. That affection determines the degrees of love you mentioned. And as humans are imperfect beings that are bound to mess up, you choose to continue loving them inspite of their imperfections. This is where you become vulnerable because you've now opened yourself up. Borrowing your term of learning, I think that that comes in because you learn in the person's treatment of you how much you choose to take, suppress, let go, or even turn to hate...

Gossip is a very human entity that starts from childhood. Just the other day, my 8-year-old cousin and her friend were caught passing notes in class, the content of which was comments about their classmates. Although they weren't being malicious, this shows how human it is to gossip. Humans are thrilled by drama, this is why soap operas are so successful!

As others have stated before, gossiping enables us to socially fit in; we learn what is acceptable behaviour so we do not end up being a topic of gossip. Why do we as humans find it thrilling to "spill the tea?" Learning of another's misfortune gives us a sense of schadenfreude, "at least my life isn't as bad as theirs."

So where do we draw the line between fueling our need for superiority and trampling on another's dignity and right to privacy?

Very interesting discussion you have going here...