What is love?


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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by Yzreel » June 14, 2015 7:37pm | Report
No, I'm not talking about Haddaway song, nor am I talking about those cheesy melodramatic approach of this question.

I want to ask this in philosophical approach, "what is love?"

I mean, it may sound so simple since we heard the word being used everywhere in romantic movies and stuff, but what is love, in its essence? Some of you might say that this question is quite simple, but it really is not.

If you say how your parents care for you without any expectation of reward, it is not "love" in the strictest sense.

It is obligation.

Think about it, parents who don't love their kids (at least outwardly) will be deemed badly in society, hurting their reputation and stuffs. Alas, whatever they do to you might be a simple act of avoiding this consequence (whether consciously or not). If you don't agree, try thinking it this way: "if I were not my parents' kid, will they still love me like they do?"

Most likely not.

If you want to say that love is like how your spouse/gf/bf loves you, even without anyone forcing them to (subconsciously or not), it is also not "love" in the strictest sense.

It is bias, leading to prejudice.

They won't be able to love others as they do you, simply because of the image formed about you in their mind. Putting it another way, don't you think that if you are not the "you" in their mind, they might not love you like they do now?

This is the same as wealthy people donating to the poor, or people showing kindness to the homeless. Those are empathy, which is different from love. Empathy is an instantaneous feeling, and in a way, also a bias.

Look, I'm not trying to say that your parents/spouse/gf/bf/siblings don't love you, nor am I trying to say that donating is bad. I simply want to ask; What is love? What is the difference of obligation and love? What is the difference of love and bias?

Is it probable that to love someone means to be biased to that someone? Is that truly what love is? Is love simply... prejudice?

Can someone truly love, even with their whole life devoted on learning it?
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by Terathiel » June 15, 2015 7:12am | Report
Love is a chemical reaction in parts of the brain based upon your interactions with people. Nothing more. Like all chemical reactions, it can be cut, it can be severed.
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by Wulfstan » June 15, 2015 8:23am | Report
Oh boy, this is fitting right now. I'm feeling quite broken because a certain somebody...

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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by Dimonychan » June 15, 2015 8:26am | Report
I am pretty sure anyone who barely read the title got this song stuck in his head, not posting it is a crime.


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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by F.E.A.R.0 » June 15, 2015 9:29am | Report
There's no real definition about Love. You'll get different answers from every person you ask.

Let's take Aristotle's quote for an example:

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

Love definition:
  1. an intense feeling of deep affection.
  2. a person or thing that one loves.

However, there's not much difference between love and obligation, clearly there isn't.

Obligation definition:
  2. the condition of being morally or legally bound to do something.
  3. a debt of gratitude for a service or favor.

When you love someone, you have strong feelings for him and sexual attachment and the same time you're bound to him/her morally or legally.

Bias definition:
  2. cause to feel or show inclination or prejudice for or against someone or something.


Other than this, I cannot give you anymore explanation about bias, because I've never thought of it.

Now I'm going to tell you ma thinking.

I don't care about Love and Obligation. I did, but if you look around you, if you look at the world you'll see that people love/like to do bad/evil things, instead of good. OK so you may love a girl, or you yet want to be in a relationship, if you look at the situation around you, you'll understand that that's pointless. Let's say some guy falls in love with a beauty, he does everything so that they can be together, however, the stupid ***** doesn't confess her real feelings for him from the start (I mean that he's not her type or maybe she doesn't realize that she loves him too but cannot understand that), and she plays with him until she stops having fun, at the mean time the guy is working hard, blindly thinking that he and her will have a happy life, while she's ****ing with some other rich ******. The truth cannot be hidden, he will eventually discover it later, and they will argue and she will be like "Baby I'm sorry I didn't mean it". (This also goes vice versa).

The guy is now heart broken, he lost hope, he can't fall in love again. Some fell in depression. But there's something interesting that comes from that tragedy. Hate and Pain. Hate will start consuming (devouring) you. And the same time his pain will get bigger.


While this true, when your hate is big, and when you unleash it, you will start crushing everyone that gets in your way, it's like a wave of darkness devouring everything in it's path. But for this hate to be gone, the girl who did cheated on the guy (or we can call it injustice), must realize that she did wrong and she will have to get him out of dark pit and to calm his heart which is broken and engulfed in black flames. If it's not the girl that cheated on him, then it must be another one that will do it. If that doesn't happen, than there's no hope for the person.

I may have went too far, but I wanted to share my thinking. Still I would go for hate and power, instead of love.
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by KoDyAbAbA » June 15, 2015 11:01am | Report
I dunno.

We love dota don't we? but that doesn't really promote sexual attraction towards the game does it? That's because it is impersonal love.

We love our Family don't we? still no sexual attraction. That's because it's interpersonal love.

I am a person with diagnosed sociopathic tendencies (don't run away). This means i'm a sociopath,but not all the time (It's somewhat like a part time job).

I have difficulties in understanding feelings, so i have definitions for them.

Love, to me, can be easily broken down into 3 phases : lust (sexual), attraction (something like commited lust[?]) and attachment (Commitment to the person as in moving in together, providing a sense of safety, etc).

Of course, I didn't come up with this myself,I only had a rough idea.IO read some excerpts of Helen fisher (good read BTW).


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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by masaaki14 » June 15, 2015 12:49pm | Report
I am.just going to put out the greeks definition, similar to kody's but a little different.

Sexual love, which is lust.
Familial love, which is the love between family members (father to son, brother and sister).
Love between friends, what we define as friendship was seen as a form of love to greeks, which imo does kinda make sense.
And last of all is unconditional love, this one is most accurately showed as charity, or the love of a parent towards someome not your child. Its very hard to describe this love but if you have heard any Christian sermon, then you have a slight idea. this form of love is the love that god has for all humans.


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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by Yzreel » June 15, 2015 2:59pm | Report
Terathiel wrote:


Yeah, I know that's how it is scientifically, that's why I stated that I am trying to find the conclusion philosophically, you know.

Wulfstan wrote:


Sorry to hear it Wulf, don't let it bring you down! The right one's (hopefully) just around the corner :)

Kody and Masaaki:
I understand full well about the Christian sermon-kind of love, what you're talking about (in greek) is basically; sexual Love (Eros), familial love (Storge), love between friends (Phillia), and lastly unconditional love (Agape).

The thing is, all these kinds of love are not precisely what love means, you see. Like I said before, Eros is prejudice (probably because of the heat of the moment/one's beauty/the like), Storge is just an obligation, Phillia is simply a human's basic need of social life, while the last one is what I want to talk about: Agape is basically unattainable by humans, what you said about charity is also, in a way, simply empathy. Empathy is formed because of a prejudice toward one's situation and is not actually love. Even the kind of love god has for all humans –sorry for saying it like this– simply obligation as well, he loves us because he is god, and he cannot deny himself, which is all-loving, right?

If we try a more secular approach, it will be like Kody said: Lust, Affection and Attachment. However, don't you think that all of those are basically, as it boils down, favoritism due to personal bias in certain person? Is that all there is to love? Is love simply prejudice and is it even possible to be something outside of it?


You sound as if you had a rough experience in this manner, and I'm sorry if you remember it due to this. However, I appreciate your opinion, and I'd like to talk more about your initial point: from what I read, you seem to be supporting my initial hypothesis that love is simply prejudice and bias. Furthermore, you're saying that both prejudice and bias needs not be shunned, but be embraced instead. Would you mind to elaborate on that?

In my understanding, prejudice and bias seems to be dangerous, that racism/sexism/war/etc. happened because of those two. In a way, if love truly is just that, it makes sense because every bad thing happened because of excessive love (which is why lust is one of 7 deadly sin, which translate as excessive love), be it of one's race, sex, territories, or certain objectives.

Nonetheless, can we flat-out say that love is a bad thing? I personally don't think that prejudice and bias are all there is to love, which is why I make this thread to ask about people's opinion.
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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by F.E.A.R.0 » June 15, 2015 10:04pm | Report
I don't say nor think that Love is simply prejudice and bias. Love is love. It's a wonderful feeling. The problem is, people like more evil than good, and it's not love that is bad, it's people's mistakes. Another examples is where, let's say a man and a woman have been in love for 20 years and have kids. But then comes a moment where either one of them commits adultery and lust. Simply after that, the marriage fells apart and they divorce. So it's not love, it's people doing bad things.

Religious view

I don't understand your racism/sexism/war part. Are you referring to 2 people of different race (white and black, white and yellow or black and yellow) felling in love? If so, it's not loves fault, but it's the people not realizing that they cannot be together and they will not be (or hardly) accepted by society. I have found someone who supports my theory about this
Spoiler: Click to view

OK so a black guy falls in love with some Chinese girl, and she fells in love with him too. However their parents do not accept this because they do not want their children to look in between black and yellow Orangutans. Neither I would accept that. For me, It's OK mixing between European people, except for 3-4 countries. For it's also OK mixing between USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina (and other South American countries), Australia, New Zealand. Because they're from European heritage (I'm not talking about the afro immigrants nor asian ones nor the arabs.)

I don't say that I hate racial mixing, I just don't like it. Not liking something and hate are different. I myself hate cheating and because of that and my moral standard I cannot think of cheating on my girl.

You also mentioned the seven deadly 7 sins. In the Easter Orthodox, there are no 7 deadly sins. A sin is a sin, while Roman Catholicism does recognize the 7 deadly sins.

Spoiler: Click to view

So imagine that a guy falls in love with the girl in the spoiler and a girl falls in love with the guy in the spoiler. Both of the people are beautiful in the spoiler, but there's a problem. You see they're beautiful, but because of that beauty most people cheat. It's not about that beauty and love is bad, it's because of people's ******edness. If we're in love, they and the **** would you like to cheat on me. And then they go "I'm sorry, please forgive me, I know I did a terrible mistake". Why not stay in love with the person, make babies to look like you, live a happy life, instead they're like "I neds to bang biches" and girls be like "Im to sexi, I neds to get bang bang". Later in the years they realize what they did was wrong (much I like to call ******ed) and they try to find a person who will love them and return that love in favor. Some even go to meet people who once loved them, falsely hoping they would be together and the end, they learn that they're already with another person.

See it's not about love being bad, it's people's stupidity.


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Permalink | Quote | PM | +Rep by CapnDaft » June 15, 2015 10:23pm | Report
Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me...
Spoiler: Click to view


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