What is love to you?

[Variform]

them you are the messenger of God and God commands them to slaughter their neighboring village... but we, having sofisticated education, doubt such things could happen when we are encouraged to think for our selves.

Go live in the good 'ole us of a. It is a christian fundamentalist country when you compare it to many other nations. And no land goes to war as much.

 

[Variform]

How can you define love? It is not only an abstract subject to the perspective of the individual, but it is a process. And this process will continue to evolve over ones lifetime. Everyone will see it a little differently, approach it a little differently, experience it a little differently.

Ah, I love it so when people speak about things as processes.

 

[Variform]

Sometimes I worry about you.

(Other times I just want to hose myself off.)

I hear it is a Swedish pastime.

 

[The Void]

No, that is just the word love being misused. You don't love money. You like money. Or violence. Love, by default, by its definition, cannot be abused.

If violence is loved, it cannot, it is hate. In a way, when you appreciate violence, you must say 'I hate violence'. Because hate and violence go together, violence is the fish in a sea of hate. Here 'hate' is used to express appreciation or 'love' for violence.

This is a linguistic problem. Love and hate oppose each other. But in language there is no opposition, because when you say 'I love violence' you are using a paradoxical statement by the use of the word love.

Love cannot be used to describe an inherent hateful act, such as violence is. And vice versa.

I was playing the game of semantics. Languages can be manipulated in several ways. You can't say I am misusing the word, I am just using a different system, it is only misuse relative to your personal system of semantis, but what makes one system greater than other, when it is just a word.



Love is beyond notions of reductionist bullcrap. :-)

Basically you are attacking the physical heart where the heart is a symbol. I am not sure where it is from, but if I intuit it, I would say that the pump that is the heart represents the flow of life, so love equals life. In biology that surely is the case. It is also the flow of awareness in that to live is to love, because without love for life there is death, as there is no motivation to remain alive and so there would be no survival instinct, not any instinct to preserve anything, like protecting the offspring.

I Said in my next post that I was joking. Anyway, it was the philosophers who used to believe that heart is the center of life and emotions or something...so it is used as a symbol. It may also have associations with the heart chakra. Here you are playing with words too, as you say love for life you distinguish life and love, the thing that your statement implies is that life or passion to live and love runs parallely not love = life, because fear, hatred , bla bla can be a part of life. See you too, play with language and twist stuff. Love is an experience. An word don't describe experience. Words run circular. In the present world love is dependant more on expectations, conditions and all that, and that is why all jealously arise. If one loves a person and the person cheats, and the one takes revenge did the person really loved her? The one's love was bounded by the expectation that the person should always act as the one wanted and not have sex with others and stuff. SO what if the person cheated? So much social conditionings

gfhynlksajlkfjlkfdlk;d;flkld;gfkd;lh

 

[Rudolph Mondal]

Love...love can be expressed through various mediums and forms.

It is something that envelops you, enraptures you, something that you're willing, more than just willing, to expend energies on.

It could be love for knowledge, for a particular craft, for a person, for an idea.

That being said, love can also blind you. It causes you to act up irrationally. It causes one to defend his/her thoughts and feelings without being able to accept that those thoughts and feelings could be misplaced.

Love gives one meaning for existence.

So, you could say, that without love, mankind (insofar as there's a point on the continuum of living things (which is itself not a clearly defined term) beyond which we could apply that word) would die out for there'd be nothing worth living for anymore.

Maybe one day we would be able to do with love. Maybe not.

We'll see.

 

[Jennywocky]

Love is not robotic, acts of love can be robotic.

I consider "robotic acts of love" to be a useless definition of love.

If it's robotic, it's programmed and thus mandated, and thus not a choice. The ATM is showing love by giving you money, and your toaster is showing you love by cooking your toast (or even burning it, if improperly programmed), and your computer booting up is an act of love. And a shark is showing you an act of love by ripping off your leg and swallowing it according to its nature.

Or... do you perceive love differently?

I do not expect everyone's definition of love to be the same or that all acts of love will "work" for everyone.

So if I run over your significant other with my car three times until they've expired, and I claim it to be an act of love, then that will be an acceptable definition of love to you?

I'm glad. I love everyone so much.
And I have a full tank of gas.

now know I dont want to touch cc if he is feeling really loving.

What I would like to do is hang him in an art museum and have everyone come and oogle. Such individuality must be scrutinized and enjoyed.

Maybe I'll add a few dallops of shaving cream and food coloring for good measure.

 

[Flawed_Ravvn]

@Vairform- you actually have soft side, that's nice to hear

I'm sorry about your marriage, that must suck to go through. I'm hoping that I don't have to go through that IF I marry.

I do agree that Americans misuse or over use the word love or the phrase I love you. I rarely ever tell someone I love them, unless I truly mean it, even with family members.

I glad I'm not the only one that has problems letting go of people I really care about. It could be that I'm just a teenager, but there is this one guy that I can't seem to let go, it's been almost a year since the breakup, but I still have feelings for him, or at least I think I do. It could just be the fact that I'm young.

For me, I think the definition of love to you changes as you get older. When I was younger, I use to think love was when someone called you their boyfriend or girlfriend. I use to see it all the time in school. But now that I'm older and have actually been in a few relationships, I think love can be described different by everyone, there is no one set definition of love. I also think that people show love differently, of course there's the traditional ways of kissing, hugs, and 3rd base, but besides that I think people show it differently. I do believe that everyone is capable of loving someone, it's just a matter of allowing yourself to love someone.

 

[The Void]

I had never fallen in love, but may be once I wanted to love, and be loved,
but humanity disappointed me. I became a hater. But then one day after I did something to something (secret satanism stuff), I was really scared, I couldn't sleep out of fear, I couldn't close my eyes in fear of seeing hellish dimensions because of the forbidden dark magick I did.

And I was miserable. I was in the state of greatest fear. It was fear in its ultimate, and then something happened, some will within me, made me want to love, I started to love, each and every thing, the whole universe, and along with it followed an orgasmic bliss, my whole body vibrated, and I could feel love for everything,
and then scary thoughts occured in my mind, but I even felt love for those scary thoughts. I was in such a state, that if a ghost would come, to torture me, I would keep on loving the ghost. All fears died. It lasted for an hour. And it was that day, I learned what true extent of love is.

It was love in its ultimate form. Yet I was not attached to anything. That love was not bounded by any expectation. If my loved ones died, I would not feel sad, I would still go on loving, and well, my loved ones, cells, and all are going on dying, death was not a bother, yet there was love, appreciation for all.

Now I know how to combat fear.

 

[BigApplePi]

What is "like" to you? Whatever it is love emerges out of a bunch of likes.

 

[Grayman]

What is "like" to you? Whatever it is love emerges out of a bunch of likes.

What is the adequate number of likes to consider it love?

 

[kora]

To me love is something which comes naturally after I smear myself in my own urine and semen.

+100 INTPf points for in joke and cross referencing threads without de-railing.

 

[Spirit]

I consider "robotic acts of love" to be a useless definition of love.

If it's robotic, it's programmed and thus mandated, and thus not a choice. The ATM is showing love by giving you money, and your toaster is showing you love by cooking your toast (or even burning it, if improperly programmed), and your computer booting up is an act of love. And a shark is showing you an act of love by ripping off your leg and swallowing it according to its nature.

Or... do you perceive love differently?

Acts of love are rituals. I perceive love and acts of love to be separate. Love is inside ones mind. Acts of love things we do to signal to another person they are unique compared to another person.

So if I run over your significant other with my car three times until they've expired, and I claim it to be an act of love, then that will be an acceptable definition of love to you?

You would be a murderer because you have committed an act of murder. Culture has defined rules for murder. Your act of love is superseded by the rules for killing people in society. That is not a shared ritual for acts of love.

Are you telling me that you running over my SO is an attempt to tell me you love me? You could kill my SO and still love me but you would be a criminal. I would not consider this an act of love but a psycho. However, you could see it as an act of love, I would not recognize it but to you it could be an act of love.


I'm glad. I love everyone so much.
And I have a full tank of gas.

See below

Bold

 

[BigApplePi]

What is the adequate number of likes to consider it love?

Minimum = three:

1. I like sex with you
2. I like your companionship
3. I like what the combo does

That's just an example.

Another:
1. I like this book
2. This book fulfills me
3. I like what the combo does

Maximum:
1. One to infinity indefinite many - I like all the little things about living here
2. The combo fills my life
3. I like that and I'll take it. Therefore I love it.

 

[Aerl]

My new and final definition of Love, Love is the ability to Accept and it will never change from now on.

 

[Red myst]

I have given this a lot of thought. I do not feel it needs too complicated of an answer. I know I said in a previous post that it is an abstract thing, but I have boiled it down to this.
My definition, to me, how it breaks down considering every relationship I have ever had. Love at its core was an emotional attachment. It exist. Perception is reality.
Now weather it a healthy emotional attachment, weather it will be an enduring emotional attachment, weather it is a misguided emotional attachment etc.... Is another topic.
On a side note, a little piece of every love i have ever had has remained with me. So in a sense they have endured. But just because I loved someone does not mean we were mature enough or compatible enough to maintain an enduring relationship.

 

[Red myst]

Ah, I love it so when people speak about things as processes.

Well, if you believe that love can grow deeper, if you believe ones understanding of love grows through experience, if you believe it matures over time, then I call that a process. I just wanted to keep it short.

 

[Variform]

@Vairform- you actually have soft side, that's nice to hear

I'm sorry about your marriage, that must suck to go through. I'm hoping that I don't have to go through that IF I marry.

Not married, we never saw a point in it. I have a great soft side. Maybe too big. It engulfs me. I am a person that you read about in the INTP descriptions, what happens when the Fe side is underdeveloped. I am not a standard INTP. I am an INTP with mental issues, maybe ADD, which distort my personality. Being cognitive of it helps little though.

On one of those pages you gave me the other day, thanks for them, you can read that INTP's should make decision about marriage later in life rather than sooner, because only later they have gone through dealing with their Fe side well enough.

I do agree that Americans misuse or over use the word love or the phrase I love you. I rarely ever tell someone I love them, unless I truly mean it, even with family members.

The benefits of the INTP :-)

I glad I'm not the only one that has problems letting go of people I really care about. It could be that I'm just a teenager, but there is this one guy that I can't seem to let go, it's been almost a year since the breakup, but I still have feelings for him, or at least I think I do. It could just be the fact that I'm young.

He may represent something you seek as you recognize it in him or with him and to seek is to desire.

For me, I think the definition of love to you changes as you get older. When I was younger, I use to think love was when someone called you their boyfriend or girlfriend. I use to see it all the time in school. But now that I'm older and have actually been in a few relationships,

I be wounded by thy words of such callousness, thou strongest of maidens, that by thy limbs over-cometh thy foes, wrestling them Earthward, yet by your tongue thee striketh my heart, to bleed me so much more reaching back through the ages, for your dress has shifted from the purest of white, like the whitest dotted clouds above, to tainted clouds of rain, falling on my face, like tears wept by angels in regret of my desperation and shame.

I think love can be described different by everyone, there is no one set definition of love. I also think that people show love differently, of course there's the traditional ways of kissing, hugs, and 3rd base, but besides that I think people show it differently. I do believe that everyone is capable of loving someone, it's just a matter of allowing yourself to love someone.

The Hurricanes sing in 'Only One Night': 'All it takes, is daring to give.'

 

[redbaron]

It seems that the thread has been concerned primarily with romantic or relationship love, so I guess I'll talk about that.

I think that real love in that sense is unconditional. The kind of feeling that whatever may or may not transpire, there'll be a place in your heart for that person. For me this is quite a mental process.

Maybe somewhat dangerously so, there's certain people that I'm endeared to on such a level that they could probably manipulate me if they so desired, since I deliberately choose to let them have that kind of access to me emotionally. I'm quite picky about who I do this with, and there's only one person (maybe two) I know who I love/loved in this way - past or present.

So love to me, is the complete acceptance of someone else as a whole, at their worst and best. As well as giving them full access to me.

It's also something consciously chosen. A conscious recognition of some quality or qualities in somebody that makes me respect and/or admire who they are. More that that though, they're the kind of person that I think the world needs more of in general, who I want to see succeed and be happy in whatever path they choose. For someone I love, I'll go to great lengths and am willing to make significant self-sacrifices to see them have the opportunity at that - which also entails being willing to live without them if necessary.

 

[BigApplePi]

It seems that the thread has been concerned primarily with romantic or relationship love, so I guess I'll talk about that.

I think that real love in that sense is unconditional. The kind of feeling that whatever may or may not transpire, there'll be a place in your heart for that person. For me this is quite a mental process.

Maybe somewhat dangerously so, there's certain people that I'm endeared to on such a level that they could probably manipulate me if they so desired, since I deliberately choose to let them have that kind of access to me emotionally. I'm quite picky about who I do this with, and there's only one person (maybe two) I know who I love/loved in this way - past or present.

So love to me, is the complete acceptance of someone else as a whole, at their worst and best. As well as giving them full access to me.

It's also something consciously chosen. A conscious recognition of some quality or qualities in somebody that makes me respect and/or admire who they are. More that that though, they're the kind of person that I think the world needs more of in general, who I want to see succeed and be happy in whatever path they choose. For someone I love, I'll go to great lengths and am willing to make significant self-sacrifices to see them have the opportunity at that - .

There is something very true about what I read above, yet there is a mystery about it I cannot quite put my finger on. Notice, "which also entails being willing to live without them if necessary." There is something about another human living being which cannot be interfered with. They are like you ... they must be set free. Possession or possessiveness is outside this and that must have something to do with shortcomings in oneself ... but I hesitate to use the word, "shortcoming" without knowing what it means.

 

[Variform]

Maybe somewhat dangerously so, there's certain people that I'm endeared to on such a level that they could probably manipulate me if they so desired,

...

So love to me, is the complete acceptance of someone else as a whole, at their worst and best. As well as giving them full access to me.

...who I want to see succeed and be happy in whatever path they choose. For someone I love, I'll go to great lengths and am willing to make significant self-sacrifices to see them have the opportunity at that - which also entails being willing to live without them if necessary.

Yes, this. I like this. That is it to me too.

 

[StevenM]

When in love, the warping and stress on my brain is akin to an ENFJ with discalculia trying to rewrite and understand the discrete fourier transform algorithm.

However, once some time has passed, and my mind is back into homeostasis, I am able to make reason to what has just occurred.

 

[Jennywocky]

Bold

Acts of love are rituals. I perceive love and acts of love to be separate. Love is inside ones mind. Acts of love things we do to signal to another person they are unique compared to another person.

So what is your practical experience in relationships?

How have they worked out for you in the past?

So if I run over your significant other with my car three times until they've expired, and I claim it to be an act of love, then that will be an acceptable definition of love to you?

You would be a murderer because you have committed an act of murder. Culture has defined rules for murder. Your act of love is superseded by the rules for killing people in society. That is not a shared ritual for acts of love.

Oh. So because it's a penal thing and codified by law, suddenly that definition is valid? Majority rules, or ruling faction rules, or something along those lines?

Actually, there's a lot of shared general concepts over what love means, and I think it's ironic you're appealing to a majority opinion on what "murder" is while ignoring a pretty general majority opinion on what love looks like between two people... and your extensively abstracted definition is not it.

Are you telling me that you running over my SO is an attempt to tell me you love me? You could kill my SO and still love me but you would be a criminal. I would not consider this an act of love but a psycho. However, you could see it as an act of love, I would not recognize it but to you it could be an act of love.

So is it an act of love or not? If this "love" exists totally in my head but leads me to do things that the general populace would see as non-loving and unlawful, is it really "love"?

Is love based on the ideas floating around in my brain, or is it based more on how I act on those ideas and the things I actually do to and with another human being?

I'm still gonna nail your feet to the floor and ask how your ideas play out in real life. How has your concept of love enabled or un-enabled you to build meaningful relationships IRL? Has your abstracted, internalized view of love actually worked in reality?

 

[Flawed_Ravvn]

@Variform- I think he does a little bit, I just have to figure out what it is. By the way, the poetry thing, whats that suppose to mean? I think I have an idea but I'm pretty sure its wrong.

@redbaron- I agree with that 100%. I hardly ever let anyone in because I'm afraid of them getting to know me to well, then using that against me some how ( its happened before). But then again, I also want someone to have the patience and the wanting to get to know me.

 

[BigApplePi]

I hardly ever let anyone in because I'm afraid of them getting to know me to well, then using that against me some how ( its happened before). But then again, I also want someone to have the patience and the wanting to get to know me.

If you are vulnerable anyone can clobber you if they so wish. Take a look at who they are and see if they are gentle, empathetic, competitive, gregarious, angry or whatever. Then take a chance to become stronger. Maybe I'm off base here cuz I don't know you.

Gregarious! Here is another word with all the vowels used once!

 

[Red myst]

@redbaron- I agree with that 100%. I hardly ever let anyone in because I'm afraid of them getting to know me to well, then using that against me some how ( its happened before). But then again, I also want someone to have the patience and the wanting to get to know me.

Letting someone in is a two way street. I suppose someone has to go first, but it is something you have to navigate. Some people seem to be inherently more superficial than others. Perhaps this is a cognitive preference difference like s vs n, so maybe a strong n opening up to a strong s is a lot more difficult. If you are an INTP,or what ever your type, I think you should look around the net, maybe www.personalityjunkie.com and read about relationships looking through the lens of cognitive functions types, and how they interact together. After reading up on about relationships on that site, I could clearly see in retrospect why some relationships I had in the past worked better than others, and consider that knowledge if I were to peruse a relationship in the future. The best chance at finding someone who will understand you and know you is to find someone who already speaks your language so to speak.

 

[Variform]

@Variform- I think he does a little bit, I just have to figure out what it is. By the way, the poetry thing, whats that suppose to mean? I think I have an idea but I'm pretty sure its wrong.

When I was your age, I desperately wanted a girlfriend. But I was afraid to talk to girls. I think it is because of my mother, who told grandiose stories about herself. As a role model for how a girls is supposed to be, she was very wrong. Unconsciously she taught me that women are not to be messed with, awesome creatures, larger than life. In her stories about her past she was always the hero or victim.

So when I got to high school I was afraid of girls and yet I had healthy male desires. That I could not act on.

You are saying you already had that at age 17. And it may not have been perfect for you, at least you are going through a, hopefully, healthy path to maturity.

So when I see young people admit they were in relationships, had boy- or girlfriends my heart bleeds with regret and jealousy and anger towards my mother and my whole dysfunctional family.

I hope you are not taking it lightly and for granted that you are not like I was and that you can connect to the other sex.

@redbaron- I agree with that 100%. I hardly ever let anyone in because I'm afraid of them getting to know me to well, then using that against me some how ( its happened before). But then again, I also want someone to have the patience and the wanting to get to know me.

It is better to be hurt that way than to have a midlife crisis with the bitterest of regrets. Scars by boyfriends that betray you or dump you is better than never to have had love and sex until way too late in life.

As long as your price is not to low. And check out that boy in the corner, trying to pretend he isn't there.

 

[TimeAsylums]

Spinoza wrote that to love a being is to desire its continuation, which allowed him to claim that even a rock expresses self-love.

Heh.

 

[adenosinetriphosphate]

Personally, I think "love" is simply a feeling. And like all feelings, it's insignificant and does nothing but render you dependent upon some other human being, which, if you ask me, is quite horrendous. But then again, I am a cold, emotionless bastard.

 

[Duxwing]

Personally, I think "love" is simply a feeling. And like all feelings, it's insignificant and does nothing but render you dependent upon some other human being, which, if you ask me, is quite horrendous. But then again, I am a cold, emotionless bastard.

Almost everyone depends on at least one other person; love makes this network of interdependency enjoyable and stable.

-Duxwing