Thread: Love - learned or inherent?

  1. 01-20-2005 #31
    Clyde
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    you really think so? I'm not great in anthropology, but isn't the "couple" unit a relatively young idea [note the relatively). Also how does your argument account for homosexuality?
    Well presumeably couples have been around long enough (couples are an old idea, though I vaguely recall human society being thought to have gone through a period of non-coupleness) for evolutionary adaptation.

    Homosexuality is unaffected, just because love may have evolved to help rear offspring (in a sense _everything_ evolves to help rear offspring) does not mean that once developed the machinary enabling love could not be pointed in another direction.

    It (love evolving to keep couples together for the sake of the children) might turn out to be false but it seems a plausable explanation.

    see, clyde, you're getting exactly at my point - your definiton of love is not inherent, is it? you had to learn it from somewhere - that emotion (which we define as love) had to be "coached" somehow, in order for you to obtain that deeper definition of the emotion itself.
    I don't really have a definition of love in a subjective sense, just like i don't have definition of "red", it's simply something i experience.

    In a more objective sense i can look at other humans/animals observe that they display certain behaviour and then attempt to derive an evolutionary explanation.
    Last edited by Clyde; 01-20-2005 at 05:55 AM.
    Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
  2. 01-20-2005 #32
    the dead tree
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    There is another experiment on humans that I recall from my sociology class. There is some chemical substance, after a couple are together ( I think after they have a child ) that lasts on the woman for 3 years or so, which is the time she most needs help from someone to bear and take care of the child. Usually that is the time couples claim they love each other, but are no longer passionate. I think the substance has to do with her smell, which brings to another point.

    If love is inherit, what would be the object of our desire? Shouldnīt the smell on others be a major part of this? Or is it behaviors that make one better than others ( thatīs certainly not it if you look how love relations are held ). From that, and giving the fact that we cover our smells these days, there is no much room for love than being an impulse strongly regulated by culture.

    But, there is another experiment. Couples were separated and, the males I believe, had to live on a house using soaps and everything with no smell. After a few weeks, their clothes had nothing but their uncovered smell. So shirts from different men were given to wives, and by a large percentage they liked more the smell of their couples.
    What that can tell us? We can perceive otherīs real stench even while they bath in perfume? And if that is the case, the people on the experiment liked the smell because their genes tells them so, or because they love their couples for another reasons and thus their smell became something pleasant due to conditioning?

    Or we have love genes that tells us to be in love with someone who acts like our parents? Perhaps adopted kids donīt love people like their foster parents ( which is what happens with most people, and that Psychoanalysis claims to be the result of childhood relation with parents regardless of cultures ).
    There are many possibilities

    The fact that we feel so miserable when someone doesnīt love us, is not necessarily a clue that love is more than just a means of pleasure. We humans are born with complete social interaction, what we actually lack is a sense of individuality that grows with time and that we mostly suck at it.
    When you call your ex-girlfriend A LOT after she broke up with you, itīs usually our little psychosis talking. We have a problem understanding that what the other person feels is not what we feel.
    And when we have a self steem shattered because whe donīt understand why someone we loves does not loves us back, it could be our lack of individuality working, and not the love impulse at work.
  3. 01-20-2005 #33
    jEssYcAt
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    I think love, like all emotions, is inherent. You may learn to deny love for various reasons, or to interpret your feelings of love as feelings of something else (or the opposite, interpret feelings of lust as love because you think you should be in love with the guy you want to do those kinds of things with or you are a slut...). That doesn't change the emotion itself anymore than belief in who was at fault changes the fact that one car rearended another. They still wrecked, and you still feel that emotion called love.

    We can read stories and see what others think love is, but haven't you ever watched a movie and thought, "Wow, they were lovers? You could have fooled me." We do learn to recognize things from stories, but if we have experienced them ourselves, the stories no longer teach us in that sense. Instead they become just stories, like "The boy who cried wolf." If you've never done it, that story may help you learn not to do it. If you've done it and been ignored in a time of real need because you "cried wolf", then that story is something you can identify with, but not really learn anything more from.

    The fact that there are so many love stories is a testament to how complex love is, and how wonderful it is. Just like the boy who cried wolf, when you read a love story you may learn to try and find love in the same form, but if you have experienced love, then you would instead identify with that love, perhaps bringing up memories of your own love experiences. I don't believe you will experience love just because a situation meets the critera you read in a book, or even in a library of books. Instead, those stories may help you recognize that the feeling you are experiencing is in fact love.

    Why do I think love (like other emotions) is inherent? I need look no further than my 2 year old son. No one has specifically taught him to love, but I know he feels the emotion even if he doesn't really understand it yet. He has learned, by watching us, that to express love one says it and hugs and/or kisses. When I come home from work, he will run up to me, hug my leg, and say "I luff yoo!" Sometimes out of the blue he will walk up to me and tell me he loves me and give me a kiss as he sees his parents do when we tell each other. Going back in time, he exhibited behavior that I would associate with love in different ways until he learned to imitate his parents and show it in this manner. The love was there however the whole time as part of his basic wiring.
    Last edited by jEssYcAt; 01-21-2005 at 12:05 AM.
  4. 01-20-2005 #34
    dagdarian
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    Human beings rely on other human beings for survival, going back to early man.. we lived in groups, protected and provided for ourselfs and eachother.

    The protectiveness we have for our 'loved' ones, family, friends and our partner must derrive from these early practices. As mentioned earlier in another post love is the key to survival in many ways.


    Could the overwhelming 'true' love we feel for a person be because we sense a link with an early or even our first mate.... like when people in love have a 'connection' ?
    Microsoft is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistant one.
  5. 01-20-2005 #35
    the dead tree
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    Could the overwhelming 'true' love we feel for a person be because we sense a link with an early or even our first mate.... like when people in love have a 'connection'
    I donīt think so, because the personality/qualities/whatever we love can completely change.
  6. 01-21-2005 #36
    Sebastiani
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    It's interesting that most people consider human love to be the most significant manifestation of the emotion when, in fact, love holds a central role in almost every aspect of life. The sky and the ocean, for instance, evoke just as powerful feelings of love in me as any person could. Now of course, love for a person has a much different quality than the love for a sunset, but they both nonetheless originate from the same basic principle. I think love manifests itself whenever we feel unity with something and then become attached to it, and if that's true then there are really two (opposite) principles at it's root (unity and attachment). To quote Lao Tsu: "Under heavan all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness". In other words, we love because we are afraid to lose something that we identify closely with.
    Code:
    #include <cmath>
#include <complex>
bool euler_flip(bool value)
{
    return std::pow
    (
        std::complex<float>(std::exp(1.0)), 
        std::complex<float>(0, 1) 
        * std::complex<float>(std::atan(1.0)
        *(1 << (value + 2)))
    ).real() < 0;
}
  7. 01-22-2005 #37
    Clyde
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    Now of course, love for a person has a much different quality than the love for a sunset, but they both nonetheless originate from the same basic principle
    Hmm, romantic love, love for ones family and perhaps love for ones friends seem quite similar, but love for a sunset? I would have thought there's something very different going on there, all involve attachment but in terms of how they feel subjectively, and their neurological and evolutionary basis i imagine there is a fairly large divide between the personal love we feel for people, and the somewhat abstract feelings we might have towards a sunset.
    Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
  8. 01-22-2005 #38
    Sebastiani
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    They are different kinds of love but that doesn't make one 'abstract' and the other 'real'. You love them for different reasons, but the loss of one can have just as much destructive potential as the other.
    Code:
    #include <cmath>
#include <complex>
bool euler_flip(bool value)
{
    return std::pow
    (
        std::complex<float>(std::exp(1.0)), 
        std::complex<float>(0, 1) 
        * std::complex<float>(std::atan(1.0)
        *(1 << (value + 2)))
    ).real() < 0;
}
  9. 01-23-2005 #39
    Zach L.
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    I have a feeling that the particular situation you are describing is the result of a (possibly unfortunate) use of love to categorize a broader set of emotions/reactions. I may be wrong, but I don't imagine that one gets the same psychological and physiological effects from "love" for a person and "love" for a sunset. They may be quite similar in some respects (leading to the ambiguous term), but I still have trouble with them being the same "love".
    The word rap as it applies to music is the result of a peculiar phonological rule which has stripped the word of its initial voiceless velar stop.
  10. 01-23-2005 #40
    Aerie
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    Zach L:

    You...! I was typing almost the same thing word for word, then got frustrated with the way the words were pulling at me and quit. Stop copying my brain!
    I live in a giant bucket.
  11. 01-23-2005 #41
    Zach L.
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    Hmm... Great minds think alike, eh? Or maybe it's deranged minds. Anyway...
    The word rap as it applies to music is the result of a peculiar phonological rule which has stripped the word of its initial voiceless velar stop.
  12. 01-24-2005 #42
    dagdarian
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    Quote Originally Posted by the dead tree
    I donīt think so, because the personality/qualities/whatever we love can completely change.
    But my thought is, is it really those qualities of a person that we 'love' or something we can't describe ?
    Microsoft is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistant one.
  13. 01-24-2005 #43
    RoD
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    New theory.

    Love - Pointless bullI am sillyI am sillyI am sillyI am silly.
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