Is love worth it?

[Scot C. Trypal]

What a sappy bunch of cold-hearted skeptics are we.

You should see me at weddings... What a scene.

Permanence is inability to change- stagnation. Stagnation in romance, or art, or employment leads to boredom and "death" of the very thing one wanted to be "permanent". Love is a juggling act- changing and growing just enough to keep it fresh, keeping just enough the same to avoid growing apart.

I’ll agree with your agreement.

As I expressed, I think part of a romantic relationship becomes 2nd nature after a decade or so . But, I’ve also seen that lull people into too much comfort, and neglect; both have to be paying attention and willing to bend constantly.

I suppose, that effort would be another thing to factor into “love’s worth”, besides the possibility of loss. Sill, more than a fair deal, I’d say.

 

[Skep]

Love is eternal

Please provide proof for this assertion. There is no reason to believe that "love" (you'll need to define what you mean by "love") is "eternal." As far as we know, nothing is eternal.

 

[Atlas]

Is love worth it? Of course. It's something that is societally healthy in that it leads to strong familial bonds and the family is the basic unit of society.

Tricky touched on the idea that it is healthy for the species, an idea that for me is so self evident that it needs little more than a nod of assent.

But I believe it is healthy for the individual as well. In fact, the individual that cannot accept or give love is stunted in potential. I know of a fellow who was an unwanted child. So unwanted that his own mother did not pick him up for the first 6 months of his life. He is past 60 now but has a syndrome in his relationships with women that can in part be attributed to that infant treatment.

I have lost the link to the paper that described it. But one of the things it said was that the brain is still forming and that loving touch and baby talk causes the brain to grow in some area that is diminished if no loving behaviors are extended.

We all know that abuse damages a child. I think we all know that love develops something in us. When we receive it growing up we are better able to establish loving relationships later on. It's like a knowledge that we've decided is valuable to our species to pass on.

I think that I'd be against lifegazer using love as any kind of indicator that we are all ultimately at singularity. I didn't believe free will or intent were - He doesn't seem to be making that argument yet so I'll drop that thought and end with: Love - I'm all for it.

 

[Kitty Chan]

quote:
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Originally posted by Kitty Chan
Love is eternal

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Please provide proof for this assertion. There is no reason to believe that "love" (you'll need to define what you mean by "love") is "eternal." As far as we know, nothing is eternal.

Well . . . Scot's doing a good job at a description of love

Being a parent really helps perspective in this topic. Even after my mother passed away I still love her and still feel her love in different moments. With my husband and family I am loved and love back. We go through thick and thin and the love remains through generations.

Also, note how most here have said that they would gladly love another no matter the results good or bad

As for a description of love I would hope by all the examples you realise it has nothing to do with Hollywood, paper hearts, or infactuation. The word love gets batted about so much it almost loses its meaning.

 

[Kitty Chan]

oops

 

[Atlas]

I'd like to post in agreement with Kitty that love is eternal though I'd argue that it's timelessness in a different sense.

Human beings have a capacity for certain feelings that are so elevating that they experience their own life from a different perspective. They believe in God, for instance and have certain insights to the perfection of that being. For me those feelings are the source of their faith.

Likewise, those feelings gve rise to notions of soul. Some are truly lofty elevations from otherwise mundane existence. Love is one of those feelings. People use the terms floating, cloud nine, walking on air...

There are moments, when you are holding someone you love, when the experience is timeless. This is the eternal. It is being captured inside a timeless moment. It is an experience.

So my argument is definitional. It is experiential. It has nothing to do with life after death or time after the end of time. Experience of the eternal is something that can be felt here in our lifetime. It is doubtful we will ever have it if we miss it here.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Lifegazer-

Love is a social glue. A bonding agent.

Whether loving and losing contributes to individual growth or not is an issue of more interest to some people than to others. The latter would be the "plonkers" referred to, I suppose. By the same token, learning to handle drink, or pain of any sort, or rejection, death, illness, failure or even success are also growth experiences: Why should we see love differently?

What is critical to human gene survival, is that we mate and raise children until they in turn are able to mate. Doing that sounds simple, but ain't. Doing it in the company of someone you don't like has to be profoundly hard. Not all love is equally good in this sense: When self love outweighs love of a partner, divorce rates climb and raising children degenerates into a solitary instead of a cooperative enterprise. Is self love then worth having?

Most arguments have two sides. They may both be worth hearing.
There are shelves full of books out there about the genetics of sex and altruism. This plonker advises you read one or two.

 

[Skep]

quote:
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Originally posted by Kitty Chan
Love is eternal

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...Being a parent really helps perspective in this topic. Even after my mother passed away I still love her and still feel her love in different moments. With my husband and family I am loved and love back. We go through thick and thin and the love remains through generations.

Also, note how most here have said that they would gladly love another no matter the results good or bad...

I'm not posting to question your love, nor even to be snippy, but a blanket statement like "love is eternal" is not factual. It is a sentiment. It is the way we wish things could be. We should be careful about stating our wishes as fact.

Whether your love actually transcends generations could be debated, but there is no reason to believe that a biological/social construct like "love" will outlast the species in general, let alone your specific familial love.

Granted, I'm slightly off topic, but whether "love is eternal" is germane to whether "it is worth it"

 

[Skep]

I'd like to post in agreement with Kitty that love is eternal though I'd argue that it's timelessness in a different sense.

...There are moments, when you are holding someone you love, when the experience is timeless. This is the eternal. It is being captured inside a timeless moment. It is an experience...

So my argument is definitional. It is experiential. It has nothing to do with life after death or time after the end of time. Experience of the eternal is something that can be felt here in our lifetime. It is doubtful we will ever have it if we miss it here.

There is no question that love can feel great, and can feel timeless but these are subjective impressions, not objective reality. This doesn't diminish your love or the sensation that it feels "timeless" to you, but this poetic metaphor doesn't actually make "love eternal." When you and your loved ones are gone and all memory and record of your feeling are gone, their is nothing left of this love. There is no evidence that some sort of "vibration" or anything else remains of your love floating around in the universe.

The problem here is that I'm using "eternal" in the more objective sense and you are using it in the subjective sense. So, I realize that to some degree I'm talking cross-purposes, your point and mine are different, but I think it is important to be clear about throwing around phrases like "eternal" when we actually mean "feels eternal." The two are very different.

 

[Piscivore]

Sorry, Kitty, but I think that the fact that love is not eternal is what makes it special- see my previous post. If it was just a matter of love-at-first-sight-and-it-lasts-forever Romeo and Juliet nonsense it wouldn't mean anything- it would be just a chemical reaction. The fact that love has to be maintained, with effort, is what makes it really worthwhile.

IMO.

 

[Suezoled]

I think Lifegazer is a dumb@ss and I would LOVE to plant my foot up his -- (carried away kicking and screaming by the nice men in white coats)

 

[Skep]

Sorry, Kitty, but I think that the fact that love is not eternal is what makes it special- see my previous post. If it was just a matter of love-at-first-sight-and-it-lasts-forever Romeo and Juliet nonsense it wouldn't mean anything- it would be just a chemical reaction. The fact that love has to be maintained, with effort, is what makes it really worthwhile.

IMO.

Of course, the social/biological urge to maintain that love is also from a chemical reaction. We are walking chemical factories.

 

[Skep]

I think Lifegazer is a dumb@ss and I would LOVE to plant my foot up his -- (carried away kicking and screaming by the nice men in white coats)

While you may have a good reason to propose this, could you enlighten me (I won't presume to ask for others) with a quote you are responding to?

 

[Atlas]

... The problem here is that I'm using "eternal" in the more objective sense and you are using it in the subjective sense. ...

Yes. I'm kind of a lousy atheist. I kinda like Piscavore's comment about the fact that it's not eternal that makes it special and I also have no disagreement with you saying that we are walking chemical factories.

But that robs too much from my human experience. Life is enjoyed best with at least half the heart of a poet. The concepts of love and the eternal both have their origins in human feeling. Religionists have taken control of the word and made it incomprehensible. But the concepts are mythic. They are in all of our stories. They are front and center in the story of man. They both have a a physical truth element that is undeniable. So I say embrace them. Walking chemical factories??? Walking meat bags??? C'mon. That's the banal identification with existence. We're conscious. We're deep. We are the only beings we know that have a concept of the eternal. If we can have the many words for love, surely we can have many poetic meanings for the eternal... especially when we know we have the experience of it. And I don't know if you've had it, but like love itself, it's something you're caught in.

Anyway, I'm on a pendulum that seems to have swung from your position and back to my current one several times in my life. I think I'm comfortable here at this end of the swing again. I celebrate the human experience. I elevate feeling alongside rationality. I need both to be a complete human.

And in reference to you comment, in terms of love and the eternal, the subjective sense is the only way to fly... The objective appreciation is comparatively a bleak airless moonscape.

PS. If I may respond for Suez, lifegazer is another Mr E. He is a Solipsist and is maddening in his explanations and defense of his vision. He has plenty of threads and they all go long. Pick one at random and read one page.... You'll recognize the pattern.

 

[Skep]

And in reference to you[r] comment, in terms of love and the eternal, the subjective sense is the only way to fly... The objective appreciation is comparatively a bleak airless moonscape.

PS. If I may respond for Suez, lifegazer is another Mr E. He is a Solipsist and is maddening in his explanations and defense of his vision. He has plenty of threads and they all go long. Pick one at random and read one page.... You'll recognize the pattern.

I'll go with you on the subjective experience of love over merely knowing the organic chemistry. But I like to have it both ways.

Thanks for the previous heads up on Mr E, who is starting to bore me with one-note blather. (If I wasn't chatty or even argumentative, I wouldn't be on this board, but arguing with people who can't recognize their own empty rhetoric for what it is becomes tiresome...)

 

[Kitty Chan]

I'd like to post in agreement with Kitty that love is eternal though I'd argue that it's timelessness in a different sense.

Human beings have a capacity for certain feelings that are so elevating that they experience their own life from a different perspective. They believe in God, for instance and have certain insights to the perfection of that being. For me those feelings are the source of their faith.

Likewise, those feelings gve rise to notions of soul. Some are truly lofty elevations from otherwise mundane existence. Love is one of those feelings. People use the terms floating, cloud nine, walking on air...

There are moments, when you are holding someone you love, when the experience is timeless. This is the eternal. It is being captured inside a timeless moment. It is an experience.

So my argument is definitional. It is experiential. It has nothing to do with life after death or time after the end of time. Experience of the eternal is something that can be felt here in our lifetime. It is doubtful we will ever have it if we miss it here.

ok everyone read Atlas if you want the defintional, experiential explaination, I think what you said is bang on where I was going with this.

Piscivore You said Love needs to be maintained with effort and that makes it worthwhile, that is also what makes it eternal. Romance has no effort Love does thats why I made a distinction between love and infactuation.

Skep I dont take you as snippy, or questioning me. But I disagree it is not sentiment. Atlas explained things well too. What we are speaking about is moving beyond feeling great and wonderful.

Love is sacrifice of yourself to the other and the other to you. Both of you going through life and doing things to make the other well. From this comes a deeper love from the first infactuation you may have felt. When couples are married for a while and then they say they dont "feel" like they did when they first met. They are probably right you cannot stay in the state of feeling infactuations first fluttery love.

You complete each other with your strengths and weaknesses. And its lots of work, trials and forgiveness and thinking the best of each other, trusting.

Then you move on to a deeper love a changing love because you both are changing and growing. This is where Atlas said

"There are moments, when you are holding someone you love, when the experience is timeless. This is the eternal. It is being captured inside a timeless moment. It is an experience."

This comes from being together through the highs and lows. And you both pass the love to your children and they to their children and so on through the generations. Love recognises others not itself. Thus, Love is passed on eternally.

A poetic metaphor wont pull you through diapers, job stress, growing old, changes and life but Love can.

 

[Skep]

Love recognises others not itself. Thus, Love is passed on eternally.

Kitty Chan,
I think your thoughts are wonderful. But, and don't mean this personally, really, but love is not eternal. That is a fine thought and a nice way to think about others, but from a scientific/skeptical perspective just not true. "Eternal" is literally forever. Love can feel eternal, but that doesn't make it so. If feelings made things real, then, well life would be very different. To call love literally eternal is to mis-use the term.

However, I'm being repetitious, so I'll sign off for now unless someone really wants a response from me.

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

Kitty Chan,
I think your thoughts are wonderful. But, and don't mean this personally, really, but love is not eternal. That is a fine thought and a nice way to think about others, but from a scientific/skeptical perspective just not true. "Eternal" is literally forever. Love can feel eternal, but that doesn't make it so. If feelings made things real, then, well life would be very different. To call love literally eternal is to mis-use the term.

However, I'm being repetitious, so I'll sign off for now unless someone really wants a response from me.

Love is eternal because it all happens in the moment, which is everything, or nothing, or maybe it's God. Hell, I dunno, I'll get back to you.

 

[Atlas]

Love is eternal because it all happens in the moment, which is everything, or nothing, or maybe it's God. Hell, I dunno, I'll get back to you.

Ya know, that's hard to argue with, Marquis.

Fortunately, there is room for Kitty and Skep and you and me in the eternal present, if that's where you guys are right now.

Reading about eternity takes only a moment or two.

 

[neutrino_cannon]

It's hard to quantify any costs or benefits here, so the question is hard to answer.

As I figure it, the adversity of the world is greater than the strength of a person. It's like a ball thrown upwards, excepting very high velocities, it always returns earthwards.

My very lucky constituent atoms are on the N_C ride for, in a cosmic sense, a very short ride. It's a one time affair and tickets are limited. I'll gladly (or not, but gladly in absolute and impersonal retrospect) juxtapose myself in any position my nervous system is exited by, 'cause (note "hip" use of colloquial contraction, ala Jack T Chick) there aint a whole lot more I can quote later when I'm auditing the long strands of life before the final cutoff.

So yeah, love for me. I don't care if I'm wasting my time, it's not like N_C had much time anyway, and it's not like his constituents will be any different from the ride (excluding high energy radiation, of course).