froggy

I love myself, we love ourselves. Loving other people is almost as good as not exist.
The catholics lost a well known leader, a Pope, and they mourn. It is easy to say "we love him", it is nothing but selfish statement. "We lost him" is better statement than "We love him". But why lost?
Because it was good for somebody else to do the dirty works, so when the hard worker is not around by death or illness the people affected are in a sense of lost and a substitue is needed to do the rest of the dirty and hard unwanted position as long as "it is not me". Because that people say "we love him", it is lie.
To me the word "Love" as we know it is questionable, it does not really exist for us except in understanding as a beatiful word, but I don't think humanity will accept that either. We get used to with it and the old dog die hard.

I "love" to see what do you think.

y_feldblum

Putting a word in quotes is enough to deny but not enough to disprove the existence of what the word refers to.

Love exists. Cope.

Wads4

""Love is the Romanticisation of Lust""-- somebody once said.

Lust has evolved to encourage us to reproduce, through natural selection.

DBT

It depends on what you define as being 'love.'

froggy

Ok, DBT asked you already and I do the same. What is it?

froggy

Evolved into "Love"? But the example I put above is about a spiritual worker
which others take the benefit by sitting at bay. They have families who the Pope does not, they go to cinemas where the pope does not.

But I like this quote ""Love is the Romanticisation of Lust""

flatland

This hardly seems helpful.

I do tend to agree though. My own definition of the type of love which does exist generally does not meet the criteria of other people I discuss it with. So I'll offer it up. Love is a chemical reaction in the brain. Nothing more, nothing less. This type of love does exist. The romanticized version of love with which everyone in Western culture has been inundated since birth, does not exist.

BDS

Why do you think something doesn't exist, just because we invented it? Don't cars exist, even though we invented them? Of course love is not a material thing, like a car. So it "exists" in a different way. It exists as a concept.

It's a bit like God, in that respect.

To say, however, that love is "nothing more" than a chemical reaction (good Cole Porter tune from "Silk Stockings", by the way) is mere silliness. Like other concepts, it is far more than a chemical reaction. It is also a component in poetry, novels and plays, for example. Like other cultural concepts, it "exists" apart from individuals, and apart from chemical reactions. If all humans died, and all chemical reactions in their brains ceased, aliens could come down to earth and find our literature, and learn about "love".

davec51

The problem seems to be that the English word "love" can mean so many completely different things: sexual attraction (in Greek eros), affection for one's family (filios in Greek), love of God, or religious awe (agape). Then there is love of country, love of ice cream, love of an activity ("I love to ski"). So if we were speaking another language (not Germanic or Latinate), we wouldn't have this problem.

DBT

True.

So how do you define *love* is it more than eros,filios,agape?
Perhaps it's exists in the family bond - parent and child - husband and wife.
But if there is self interest involved,can it be really be called love?