An intellectual exercise

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hizgeorgiapeach -> An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 10:04:04 AM)
Recently I've had several people - from my shrink to those whom I barely know - make statements to the effect of, "if you didn't love your father, you wouldn't make the sacrifice of having moved him in." I've heard it frequently enough over the past month that I started asking myself some questions - and decided that I would appreciate intellectual input from those here. Why here? Because the subject of "love" - what it is, where it springs from, what it encompasses - is one that (I feel) Should be easily defined by the lot of you - who are, for the most part, reasonably intelligent and capable of coherent, well thought out responces. While no doubt some (if not many) of you would likely make the assumption that I should be fully capable of coming up with such a definition for myself - I can't. For a long time now, I've been prone to emotional dissociation when I get to a certain stress point - and I reached that point in the situation with my father a couple of years ago. My premise is that in order to Love, a person must accomplish two things First. (1) A person must define - at least to their own satisfaction - what "love" IS. Is it an emotion? A responce to a set of emotions? Is it instinctive or a learned behavior? Or is it instinctive, but displaying it is a learned behavior? And (2) a person must have sufficient positive thought of themselves - their life, circumstances, thoughts, abilities, acomplishments, emotional responces - to have the emotional energy left over to offer up to someone else. Can things such as a deeply rooted sense of Responcibility and Duty - substitute for what most folks seem to call "love"? Thoughts?

samboct -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 11:20:17 AM)
A couple of thoughts- 1) You don't need to be able to define love to perform the action. 2) Emotional responses are by definition, often obtuse to logic. In terms of the bond that you feel with your father- I'll throw out an observation from Desmond Morris's Bodywatching- a book a highly recommend for someone who's grappling with a bunch of the problems such as yourself. In nature, the bond between human parent and offspring is amongst the strongest ever seen. This is due to the extended gestation period for humans from birth to maturity (in our society- over 20 years) that requires an enormous investment on the part of the parent to the child. Nature makes certain that the costs of the genetic lottery are paid, and thus the bond between parent and child is very, very strong. It's a behavior similar to language- a capability that we're born with that requires gestation in a human society to develop. There- does this help? Sam

Kalista07 -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 2:00:56 PM)
i'm going to apologize upfront because i'm currently feeling as if i can not even communicate with the cat coherently...So, why i'm going to go ahead and try on here is beyond me............i'm going to share a couple of exampes from my own life with you regarding love. The first one occured about 7 years and 6 months ago. When my oldest nephew was only 6 months old i was laying on my bed with him. i realized i was being selfish because i wanted him to stay awake despite the fact that i knew it was in his best interest to sleep. And then all of a sudden i had this "feeling" that i couldn't idenitfy. i remember i called my sponsor and was freaking out. She explained to me that the 'feeling' i couldn't idenitfy was love. i quickly informed her that was impossible because i KNEW i was not only incappable of being loved but inacappable of loving as well. That was the first time i had any idea what love even felt like...i had no intellectual knowledge about it at all. i had no ability to define it at all. As for your second question again, my experience would be that none of that is necessary for me to act in a manner of 'lovingness'. i had virtually no positive beliefs about myself, my life, or anything else when my dad passed away. Despite that, i spent the last 11 days of his life by his side in the hospital..... Many people (myself included) would say that i treated him with much much more dignity in his death than he ever did in his life. Why? Did it have to do with some kind of obligatory love? No, in fact there were many times while sitting in the hospital that i would pray for God to end it for him and then just as quickly, would pray and ask God to check my motives..... i truly believe i did everything for him and my mom during his death that i did because it was (by virtue of my morals) the "right thing to do". i do know that part of the reason it was not very difficult for me to continue to treat him with such grace and dignity because i knew (even if at times only intellectually) that the end was near....... If it had been long, drawn out, forever......honestly i can not know what i would have done then. i have no idea if this helps or not. Please know you are in my thoughts and in my prayers. If there's anything i can do please don't hesitate to let me know. Kali

Rule -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 3:31:12 PM)
You are doing the right thing. Be confident.

Vendaval -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 3:31:13 PM)
I think of responsibility and duty as good character traits rather than emotional states such as love or longing. quote: ORIGINAL: hizgeorgiapeach Can things such as a deeply rooted sense of Responcibility and Duty - substitute for what most folks seem to call "love"? Thoughts?

windchymes -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 3:35:32 PM)
My own opinion is that a deep-rooted sense of duty and responsibility and love are two very separate emotions. One can feel the duty & responbility because they love someone, but they can also feel duty & responsibility if they don't. I'm not sure if I could love someone (in whatever kind of love, romantic, family-type, dear friend, pet, etc.) and not feel the d & r, though. But I could detest someone and still feel the d & r, although it would be begrudgingly.

hizgeorgiapeach -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 5:34:53 PM)
Rule - this isn't about Right and Wrong. Doing the "right" thing, even for the "wrong" reasons, is still the "right" thing to do. That isn't what I'm questioning. Hell, I don't even question my Motives, even though several other people have. Knowing that I'm doing the right thing - for a plethora of reasons - isn't what's causing me to start questioning such things as love vs duty, or what a workable definition of "love" even is. (I do appreciate the erstwhile vote of confidence, though!) Sam - I don't necessarily need a "logical" definition - just a Workable definition. I've found over the past several years that logic frequently isn't logical in and of itself. I haven't read Morris's work, but I'll see if I can't find a copy next time I have a chance to go by the library. While species bonding might explain a sense of familial duty, it doesn't do much to address such things as whether emotions such as "love" play a part in that bonding and subsequent sense of duty. (Although the bonds and subsequent sense of duty Do go a ways towards explaining my own sense of ambiguity when I hear statements such as what prompted this thread!) Wynd, what you're saying certainly makes a great deal of sense to me on several levels. Duty has little to do with affection of any sort - whether it be love, lust, friendship, or even just a genial good nature that prompts us towards positivity towards the rest of humanity. I felt a sense of duty towards the bat for Years after I realized that I utterly detest her. (Fortunately, I got over feeling that sense of duty towards her eventually.)

pahunkboy -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 6:08:30 PM)
what a nutcase shrink. they are not suppose to say things like that. you know what your limitations are. with any ordeal in my life, I learned that while others can advise, that I and I alone get to live with the results of my decisions. No one can step in and be me, should the outcome be bad. if moving him somewhere is on the table.. then write it out....plusses, minuses of here there anywhere. it sounds like rather then someone telling you what you are suppose to do, you need someone to actually just hear you out. ..as in a good listener.

samboct -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 6:23:19 PM)
Rhi The bonding that happens between parent and child is very strong, and provides the motivation for "love". I tend to think that love has a strong biological component, and that if we understand how these emotions evolved, we can look at our actions a bit more dispassionately and clearly- which seems to me what you're trying to do. One way to look at the relationships that spring up between adults- not parent/child is that they have their genesis in the parent/child relationship. The language used to describe love is often quite accurate- making love is a good example. We should feel an emotional connection with the people we make love to, otherwise it tends to be a masturbatory exercise in narcissism. Thus, from my perspective, trying to break apart the love that we feel for our parents with the love we may feel for another is a fruitless exercise- they're intimately intertwined. (Yes, I do think that Sigmund Freud was right.) You may be embarked on a difficult quest if that's what you're trying to do. Sam

hizgeorgiapeach -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/28/2008 7:26:17 PM)
Eh - it's more along the lines of trying to figure out if it's an emotion that I can even honestly say that I relate to/feel/experience, Sam. Loyalty I understand. Internal bonds that create a sense of duty or responcibility I understand. Physicality I understand - and even the tendency of most humans to assign some sort of emotional responce to what is essentially a biochemical process aimed at continuation of the species at it's deepest subconscious and genetic levels. (I don't agree with you about the necessity of emotional responce - and certainly not "love" - in order to practice at procreation. Being able to enjoy the physicality of it doesn't necessitate the attachment of some deeper emotion that physical enjoyment of the act.) What confuses me is the multitudinous variety of ... reaction types? responces? associated emotions garbled together until the water is clear as mud? ..... that people display when discussing the concept of "love" as a unique and seperate feeling.

LadyEllen -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/29/2008 4:31:58 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: hizgeorgiapeach My premise is that in order to Love, a person must accomplish two things First. (1) A person must define - at least to their own satisfaction - what "love" IS. Is it an emotion? A responce to a set of emotions? Is it instinctive or a learned behavior? Or is it instinctive, but displaying it is a learned behavior? And (2) a person must have sufficient positive thought of themselves - their life, circumstances, thoughts, abilities, acomplishments, emotional responces - to have the emotional energy left over to offer up to someone else. Can things such as a deeply rooted sense of Responcibility and Duty - substitute for what most folks seem to call "love"? Thoughts? sounds like youre drained as to the second element of your premise, which is why youre questioning the first. it is very difficult indeed to keep giving if one is not taking in elsewhere, which elsewhere need not be the person to whom one is giving. even the most apparently selfless givers of love who seem to have none in this world from whom to receive have some source by which to recharge themselves in order to continue to give. E

corysub -> RE: An intellectual exercise (12/29/2008 5:49:15 AM)
If you google "what is love" you get over 200,000 references from songs and dance to serious philosophical thesis and simple Buddist guide to love available on Amazon. The answer probably is very individual . What you feel towards another person is more than a cultural thing since in my own family my paternal grandmother was beloved but my grandfather was a man you had attachment for since he was family but it was more "respect"...or maybe even fear that he engendered. The man was truly "king of the castle". I don't think there were more than a few wet eyes at his wake...but we all went out of respect. As far as "romantic love" I guess that's more a western civilization thing. In the "old country" love was not the reason why people married and raised families. It was more arranged and, unfortunately, in a large part of the world this is still the case. There may also be a difference in how men feel and how women feel love. Of course men love deeply, would give their lives for their spouse and children in a heart-beat...but it's a lot harder, I think, for a man to express love than a women. Again, it's an individual thing and I'm only speaking for myself.

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