Love and Value Judgements

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ouinon
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20 May 2009, 8:37 am

ouinon wrote:

Perhaps the new categorisation was necessary/driven by the increasing need to achieve the valorisation/legitimisation of love between privileged educated free men, which was otherwise invisible/almost literally unnameable, being neither "sexual love", ( in the sense which existed then ), nor religious.

If this were so, then it is interesting that most people who use the word "love" experience it as valorising whichever of their feelings that they apply it to, because that is exactly what the privileged free men who created the spectrum ( of "love" ) in the first place "meant" it to mean. They meant it to convey value, ( on relationships/special friendships between men ), and so that is what it means generally, to this day. The word "love" tends to valorise/legitimise/"make important" anything that it is applied to.

In the same way as the many labels which society, ( with the help of science/medicine and schools etc ), has been inventing in increasing numbers and applying to more and more people in the last 40 years or so, represent one aspect of society's refusal to take responsibility for the suffering of its citizens, ( choosing to label difficulties as emanating from the individual themselves ), almost all of them, in the final analysis, mean the same thing; that the person so labelled is less responsible for their acts than other people, ( and is "excused" ).
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Last edited by ouinon on 21 May 2009, 7:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

ouinon
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20 May 2009, 2:30 pm

Despite the spectrum it is difficult for many/most people in modern society to feel passionate friendship for someone of the same sex, ( even more if it is someone of the opposite sex ), without believing that it is romantic/sexual, ( because that depth of feeling tends to "mean/indicate" love, but "love", the official label, no longer includes/recognises it unless it is "stamped" with sex ), ... or rapidly becoming insensible to their passionate feelings for someone, playing it down/denying it, because "it doesn't exist".

It's like the labels act as lenses, filters, which focus our attention and consciousness on certain things, and make other things invisible. Value judgements about the relative importance/reality of aspects of life. It's not that feelings don't exist, alba, ( I saw your post, briefly, before you deleted it ... ), but that what they feel like depends to a great extent on the labels we use for/apply to them.
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Last edited by ouinon on 21 May 2009, 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ManErg
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20 May 2009, 6:36 pm

ouinon wrote:

It's like the labels act as lenses, filters, which focus our attention and consciousness on certain things, and make other things invisible.

Yes, I think that's a good description. For those born way before the label existed, AS being an example of something that was invisible, as we grew up with no word or concept of it. And now the label has appeared, we see it everywhere!

If something hasn't got a label, we have to describe it in terms of other labels. Which is often so awkward, we give up and assume we are at fault. This is linked to language as labels are words, and absence of the word means a much harder struggle to explain a concept. And then if no word, we assume that it is unimportant and nobody else has ever seen it the same way.

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ouinon
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21 May 2009, 6:14 am

ManErg wrote:

ouinon wrote:

It's like the labels act as lenses, filters, which focus our attention and consciousness on certain things, and make other things invisible.

If something hasn't got a label, we have to describe it in terms of other labels. Which is often so awkward, we give up and assume we are at fault. This is linked to language as labels are words, and absence of the word means a much harder struggle to explain a concept. And then if no word, we assume that it is unimportant and nobody else has ever seen it the same way.

And if it has a label which says it is a "good" or "important" feeling/experience we will almost certainly feel very differently about it, have a different experience in fact, than if it is a label which says our feeling/experience is trivial/unimportant, a weakness or a failing, or is connected to something which is feared/rejected.

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ouinon
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21 May 2009, 6:30 am

ouinon wrote:

We will almost certainly feel very differently about our feeling/experience, have a different experience in fact, if it is a label which says our feeling/experience is trivial/unimportant, a weakness or a failing, or is connected to something which is feared/rejected.

I wonder how the religious leaders of the epoch, ( jewish and then christian, as the greek philosophical structures spread around the mediterranean ) reacted to the greeks putting religious love on the same spectrum as sexual/physical love, whereas previously they were completely unconnected [ except as metaphor in some poetry of the time ] .

Might that explain their generally hostile, fervent, and aggressive stance on sexual/physical love thereafter, because they felt the need to distance themselves from that, re-separate the two experiences? A bit like some people don't like to think that they are supposedly on the same spectrum as LFAs.

If the greeks had not put both religious and sexual love into their new continuum/spectrum monotheistic religion might not have felt such an urgent need to distance itself from sexual love by denigrating/criticising/attacking it, and issuing warnings about it. They were afraid that people would confuse the two experiences, because of their being associated with each other on a spectrum.
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Last edited by ouinon on 21 May 2009, 4:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Sand
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21 May 2009, 6:45 am

ouinon wrote:

I wonder how the religious leaders of the epoch, ( jewish and then christian, as the greek philosophical structures spread around the mediterranean ) reacted to the greeks putting religious love on the same spectrum as sexual/physical love, whereas previously they were completely unconnected.

Might that explain their fervent, intense and aggressive stance, ( generally hostile in some way ), on sexual/physical love thereafter, because they felt the need to distance themselves from that, re-separate the two experiences? A bit like some people don't like to think that they are supposedly on the same spectrum as LFAs.

If the greeks had not put religious love into the same continuum/spectrum as sexual love religion might not have felt such an urgent need to distance itself from sexual love by denigrating, criticising, and warning people against it.

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The whole business with the Garden of Eden and God's anger at Adam and Eve was concerned, not just with love, but obviously with sex and human capability to create new life in competition with God. That's why priests and nuns were forbidden to have sexual partners, whatever other reasons dogma can provide and sex is a marvelous reason for Christians to feel guilt and therefore require expiation by the church which is the only source of forgiveness. This is why the whole psychological business of sex being dirty is still around. It's a terrific tool for the church.

ouinon
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21 May 2009, 6:48 am

Sand wrote:

The whole business with the Garden of Eden and God's anger at Adam and Eve was concerned, not just with love, but obviously with sex and human capability to create new life in competition with God.

It was? Such an interpretation doesn't seem "obvious" to me at all.
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Sand
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21 May 2009, 6:56 am

ouinon wrote:

Sand wrote:

It was? Such an interpretation doesn't seem "obvious" to me at all.
.

Then why, in the story, did nakedness suddenly become such a problem?

ouinon
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21 May 2009, 8:00 am

Sand wrote:

Then why, in the story, did nakedness suddenly become such a problem?

It's metaphorical; it symbolises ( the beginning of human ) "self" consciousness.
.

Sand
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21 May 2009, 8:03 am

ouinon wrote:

Sand wrote:

Then why, in the story, did nakedness suddenly become such a problem?

It's metaphorical; it symbolises ( the beginning of human ) "self" consciousness.
.

Self consciousness about what? Did they have to hide their faces or were their sexual areas what they suddenly became uneasy about?

ouinon
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21 May 2009, 8:20 am

Sand wrote:

Self consciousness about what?

Self consciousness. "Conscious" of difference, etc, ( which is probably at the heart of "self" consciousness, the kind which separates from the universe ), and the only clear difference between them in the story is their sex.

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Sand
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21 May 2009, 9:07 am

ouinon wrote:

Sand wrote:

Self consciousness about what?

Aha! So you are convinced that by covering their sexual areas Adam and Eve felt their differences would be indistinguishable. Or did you imply that Adam and Eve were sort of zombies with no sense of self before that apple cleared things up. That strikes me as very strange. God evidently, in your concept, created a bunch of organic robots. How then did they have the motivation to take that apple bite? Did the snake have the equivalent of a robot remote that he operated with his tongue to cause the disobedience? Then, of course, the two human originals were not themselves responsible for the apple snack, so it had to be the snake who committed original sin. Following that logic, Christ died on the cross to absolve the snake, not the humans who were under its control. Quite a novel perception!

ouinon
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21 May 2009, 9:24 am

Sand wrote:

Did you [ mean to ] imply that Adam and Eve were sort of zombies ... [ snip ] .

Sand
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21 May 2009, 9:27 am

ouinon wrote:

Sand wrote:

Did you [ mean to ] imply that Adam and Eve were sort of zombies ... [ snip ] .

If they had no consciousness before they bit the apple they must have been zombies. But perhaps you didn't mean that. I thought that's what you said.

ouinon
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21 May 2009, 3:07 pm

Sand wrote:

If they had no consciousness before they bit the apple they must have been zombies. But perhaps you didn't mean that. I thought that's what you said.

This is what I said:

ouinon wrote:

Sand wrote:

ouinon wrote:

sand wrote:

Why, in the story, was nakedness suddenly a problem?

It's metaphorical; it symbolises ( the beginning of human ) "self" consciousness.

Self consciousness about what?

Self consciousness. "Consciousness" of difference, etc, ( the heart of "self" consciousness, the kind which separates [ us ] from the universe ), and the only clear difference between them in the story is their sex.

Sand
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21 May 2009, 11:05 pm

Thanks for the attempt, but I find no sense in your statement. I give up.

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