What is Love? I thought Keats put it well. " Yourself--your soul--in pity give me all/withhold no atom's atom or I die." I think that describes the feeling but what IS it. Chaucer was right too though: "How we delude ourselves when we love. Love is blynd." Is love pure chemical delusion? A massive cocktail of dopamine and nor-epinephrine that makes us crazy and sends lovers like Paulo and Franchesca to an eternal embrace in the first level of Dante's hell? Is love worth it? The Bible adds insights to love too: For love is as strong as death./Its passions are as cruel as the grave/And its flashes of fire are the very flame of God. (The Song of Songs) This is the dark side of love clearly and there is a dark side which one typically ignores. There are consequences to incautious love that shape our lives, but then Love makes us incautious. Is the purpose of love to just get us crazy enough to mate and have children? Then there is lust, where does that fit in? Is love really just lust. Why don't I know this?
Labels: What is love?
posted by Anne Coe | 5:35 AM
8 Comments:
Just so you know I have not gotten soft in my old age, if you don't know what it is by now, then you missed some important lessons or else you are a dumb cluck.
First of all, you are mixing up all kinds of love here.
To begin, the first human "love" was of a mother for her child. This would have been biologically the first and might be promoted to oxytocin, but certainly is related not to self, but to the other: in serving the needs of the other. This is dutiful love and actually it is quite beautiful.
When males were brought into the equation, in my mind, it was guided by paternal love, which is yet a different model.
The love between a man and a woman can take various forms, but the form that ENDURES is the one that is important, as it -- like mother's love-- preserves, protects, provides. Obsessive love is about self-interest and leads to things like Troy. The irony being that if he could have had his way with Helen, until lust fried his brain, he, in the normal course of events, would have tired of her. My guess is that they only stayed together -- if they did, as I can't remember right now -- it is because of the shame associated with all the deaths and dishonor. This was Jim and Felicia until she wanted out. As they said, "We are so much in love, we can't help ourselves." Sigh...ah the consequences of such lust.
Keats, and the Chaucer and Dante's hell examples, are about obsession, what HE OR SHE WANTS. This is related not only to lust, but the early stages of lust. Give them a few months of self-indulgence, and then ask them to tell you their love story.
It is not necessarily what is better for the other.
The Greeks were the best at categorizing love. They had something like 10 categories. Here are a few of them: EROS: and according to Helen Fischer it is a combination of lust and romantic love. MANIA: obsessive irrational possessive, etc. LUDUS: Playful unserious, uncommitted. Love as theater. STORGE:Brotherly, sisterly love. AGAPE: unselfish, dutiful, spiritual love. That must be close to what you are talking about, yes? PRAGMA: pragmatic love based on compatibility and common sense. My point was that humans at least experience eros and mania so that they are crazy enough to mate and have children so they can experience the other kinds of love. It is not a bad system and it has work for thousands of years.
boy do I have a book for you Anne... I think the Greeks tried, and did rather well... but they missed some, though I am at a loss of how to define them.
Anne, I have tagged you, visit my main blog to see what you have to do.
It seems to me that, among healthy people, there are really just two kinds of love: there is love that enriches us; and there is love that impoverishes us. Love that enriches us can be between parents and children, family members, friends, and lovers of all inclinations, just as can love that impoverishes us. Love that enriches is other-directed, trustworthy, and enlivening; love that impoverishes is self-centered, manipulative, and dispiriting. I try to lean toward the former and away from the latter. The Greek categories of love seem to me to really be dimensions of love, all or most of which might be evident, as appropriate, in a healthy relationship. A Pragma relationship, for example, might be enriched with a little Eros, Ludus, and Agape, just as it might be impoverished by Mania. So, "the purpose of love is not just to get us crazy enough to mate," it is to enrich our lives in many dimensions. Lust, happily, is just one of the really fun ones.
It is still all the 8th grade I don't care what all of you say.
Love-thou art deep-
I cannot cross thee-
But, were there Two
Instead of One-
Rower, and Yacht-some sovereign Summer
Who knows-but we'd reach the Sun?
Emily
But by reason of this secret and intimate union with God, there remains in the Soul a sweet impression, so firm and assured a satisfaction, that no torture, however cruel, could overpower it, and a zeal so ardent that a man, had he a thousand lives, would risk them all for that hidden consciousness which is so strong that hell itself could not destroy it.
—Saint Catherine of Genoa
Spiritual Dialogue, Part Third, Chapter X
Your next to the last entry made me realize that perhaps we should divide that love into mindless obsession and mindful obsession -- this last being the ballywick of poets.
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