What is love?

Post Reply New Topic

Feel free to use any field you wish to use in defining love: Science, Philosophy, Religion, or your own, unique, personal beliefs.
Also, does love exist?

Brain chemistry probably it's nothing supernatural.

A son of a b***h meant to trick us into reproducing / forming bonds between individuals.

Yeah seems that way. From what I read about oxytocin it has alot of the effects we label
as love. There is also this amphetamine like high(from other substances) one can get that last for a period time I guess measured in months to a few years.

I read in the news a few months ago that there's a harmless parasite that half of people have, that makes women more horny.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,238957,00.html

Love is when you care about things and give for other people. You show that you care for other people and you give what you can. Trying to make friends is a sign of love. You are willing to give yourself to people to connect with them and do good with them. It goes even further when you begin to develop a relationship.

A man donating money to charities. That's love!
A girl trying to open up to other people to become a friend. That's love!
A boy giving flowers to the people he cares about, including his sweetheart. That's love!
A woman who shares her cookies with her children. That's love!

It's all about sharing and giving all kinds of things. When you say "I love you", you are basically giving yourself to that person. You are showing that you care about this person in a deeply emotional way. When it comes to friendships, you don't have to say "I love you" or "I like you". You show love by sharing and giving. The giving doesn't have to be physical, but it can be psychological as well. For example, you can show support for a friend or give advice to the person. Or, you can just give some loyalty by showing up when you say so or spending the night at his/her house. It's REALLY simple to show love. It doesn't have to be about hugging, kissing, sex, marriage, or other things. It can also be about sharing, caring, and giving. Many people just don't really see it that way.

Yeah I've come to this too. Naturally, humans are selfish creatures. Emotions interfere and make us temporarily selfless at times. Evolution has given us a conscious mind by which to judge, reason and critically think. This can run contrary to our biological purpose (to spread our seed and further our species), so we have similarly evolved emotions to inhibit such reservations at times. Love is one such tool of biological compliance.

... baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more...

I think one really amazing thing about love is that no one wonders what I mean when I ask "What is love?". We'll have tons of different answers, yet we all know what is being asked by that question. No one says, "Love? What are you talking about? What is this 'love' to which you refer?" Sure, someone might, but we'd know they're joking. I mean, look at Sopho's answer and Yoshie's answer! They're both very, very different, but neither one of them asked me what I meant by the question -- they probably both knew precisely to what I was referring.

Doesn't that beg all kinds of philisophical questions?!?

Last edited by Ragtime on 05 Jun 2007, 1:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Depends on what you mean by "love." There are, after all, several kinds of love.

I think it's just awesome to hear what people say to the general question not otherwise specified (li'l pun there ). It allows people to freely expand in any direction they want in their defining process. And that's an invaluable thing to observe and learn from.

Last edited by Ragtime on 05 Jun 2007, 1:24 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Why don't you give us an answer, Ragtime?

I can't put it into words. The closest I could come is "the desire to sacrifice oneself for another". But that still doesn't explain what love is, only what it does in one scenario.

LOL

I think it's more the 'willingness' to sacrifice oneself for another, than the 'desire' to.

The effects of it in men sound more like me.