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SugarMyChurro -> RE: What is love? (2/8/2008 3:39:08 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: kittinSol
I'm a sucker for believing that what makes us human is more than mere chemical reactions in our brains, and I believe love IS one of those things that defines our humanity. What do you think?
To my thinking, you just have to change your attitude toward the beauty that is available in reality as it really is. You write that we should be "more than mere chemical reactions in our brains." But what exactly is so wrong with tying your identity to your nervous system? Why should there be more than that? Isn't the beauty of that enough? If not, why not?
The available evidence suggests that each of us is our respective nervous systems. There is no mind/body or soul/flesh problem because there is no mind nor any soul. We have the body, the flesh that is ourselves. We use the terms mind or soul when we wish to put ideas into words that are difficult to articulate without resorting to some vague catch-all concepts like those of mind or soul. We say things like the overly florid "I love you with all my heart and soul" when what we really mean to say is ""My brain/nervous system loves you."
The ability we have for self-reflection is probably just an aspect of being a compartmentalized being. The brain is in two halves that seems to be both cohesive but also separate such that each half is aware of the presence of the other half. We think with our brains but are also aware of a separate thing that is our body. While we are each of us every part of our bodies, this compartmentalization is probably a survival technique so that you can survive with less if you have to. Lose a hand? Not a problem (even though you might miss it) - everything you are was not riding on the presence of that hand, it was just an extension of the nervous system. Cut it off and it's just a lifeless mass of human tissues, one that you can actually survive without.
My brain/nervous system loves my cat and also my slave. My love is not made less special just because it is a biochemical response in me to each of these other beings. Why must I attach that outpouring of feeling to a mind, a soul, or figuratively speaking to a heart? In fact, consider that last bit - the heart. Why do we attach the feeling of love to the heart? Because we sometimes feel love, or the pain of love lost, in our chests in the approximate location of the heart. When we send each other love notes with hearts on them, the hearts look like this:
http://www.mywackospace.com/images/graphics/romantic/gif_heart/gif_heart_373.jpg
and not like this:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/images/ency/fullsize/1097.jpg
There seems to be a desire to evade the body, to not admit that the body is ourselves - the core of our identity. If I had to guess, and I do, I would say that this desire to escape the flesh is simply a fear of our own mortality. We don't want to always have to think about how who we are is something so fleeting in its existence. With the passage of a handful of decades you will be gone.
Memento mori.
I see beauty all around - and maybe it's even more special because it is fugitive. Like grasping a fistful of sand and watching it slip from your fingers, each moment of beauty must be savored before it departs. Like stealing kisses from an eager lover - taking more from it than is given freely.
The real proof that you are your own body is sex. When you fuck you know where you live. The horror that it is just a body with a brain and nervous system doesn't bother you because the act of love is so achingly beautiful that you just don't care and fail to notice the absence of anything more.
Who needs a mind or a soul when the body can feel so good and be so beautiful anyway?
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