What is Love to you? Is it personal, or all humanity encompassing?

Ooops, anyway, somehow hit enter before I could give my jaded view which might be a good thing,. so, go!








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At the very least, Love is the absence of judgment. What we think is Love, is totally based on judgment. We are often heard saying "I don't love him anymore" which indicates we don't know what Love is. But to be clear, Love, is an earth concept. There is no way to define reality by using the word love or what we have ascribed to the idea of love. In reality, as a whole, "there just is" would be more akin to what we imagine love to be.

Originally posted by Darkblade71

Originally posted by supine

Let it out!!

More love embedding that video

Originally posted by Darkblade71

Originally posted by supine

Let it out!!

Ya, I'm thinking trust.

What ever happend to that?

I can't believe that the opening post is a question about love,
and the content is the "Night at the Roxbury" video.


David Grouchy

Love is a code word for skill.



Here's the video.

reply to post by crankyoldman
I would argue otherwise.

I've long felt that love is best defined as a willingness to put the best interests of another person - or some other purpose, etc. - above your own (hence, 'if you love something, set it free - if it's yours, it'll come back to you'). Any sort of desire to control or vested self-interest, as we typically envision love, falls short - but concerning yourself more with the well-being of the external and sacrificing your own interests upon the altar of what's best for the other...now that's love.

Love is just: "Do unto others that which you would have them do unto you."

Love is Just.

Do to others as you would have them do to you. Really sounds like fun, too, doesn't it?

Reminds me of the old saying....

"a person needs love the most, when they deserve it the least"

Love is dark and light,
Love is wrong,
Yet oh so right!
Love can make you or break you,
love can destroy or rebuild,
In the name of love many people have died,
And many have lived.

I spent a lot of time one summer asking various friends and strangers their definition of love. T'was an interesting summer.

Erich Fromm had this to say about Love in the context of your OP:

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

I personally think our "love" should extend to humanity. My own personal quote after that summer goes like this:

Love is resistant to definition, but conducive to practice.

I hope I'm getting better at it.

Originally posted by davidgrouchy
I can't believe that the opening post is a question about love,
and the content is the "Night at the Roxbury" video.

LOL, dave my point, right off you got it!

Originally posted by supine

Originally posted by davidgrouchy
I can't believe that the opening post is a question about love,
and the content is the "Night at the Roxbury" video.

LOL, dave my point, right off you got it!

Love is a code word for skill.

We have an intimate relationship with something we are skilled at.
We like to do what we are skilled at.
Some people are skilled at the first effort,
some people grow into skill.

How skilled are we at humanity?


David Grouchy

love to be love it has to go way beyond humanity

everything must be included
all animals, plants and rocks

all that we know and all we dont know

i know no other love than that wich includes ALL

Love is a biological response brought about by oxytocin often to do with pair bonding and child rearing.
Birds love, Mammals love,
Reptiles, Arachnids, and Insects do not.

many people pretend to love strangers, but I don't really believe this to be true.

Chemical love:
A couple meet and BAM!! they are all over each other for months.

This lead to unconditional love:
You now have children, you would die for them. You love them no matter what.
If you are lucky, you and your mate also feel this way about each other.
Once the chemicals wear off, the real relationship starts, and is work.
If you cannot find unconditional love with your mate, the relationship will not usually last and will become one of either convenience, or co-dependency.

Then there is another type of love, also like unconditional love, it is much like a parent and a child only it is broader. It is something some people never feel.


It is the love for your fellow human being, compassion for those around you, not just in your family circle, but for your community and your country and your planet. The love of all life, creatures big and small, all is one love.

The BIG love! This is the spiritual essence that many people strive to feel, where everything is connected and melts into one big shiny blob, you included, where you feel like you are all and all is you.

I've only been there once, but it was something else.

reply to post by supine

This song is what love is to me if anyone cares...

www.youtube.com...

The romance writer Ayn Rand also discusses a theory that she called 'Rational egoism' (or more specifically: 'Rational self-interest'). She holds that it is both irrational and immoral to act against one's self-interest.[10] Thus, her view is a conjunction of both rational egoism (in the standard sense) and ethical egoism, because according to objectivist philosophy, egoism cannot be properly justified without an epistemology based on reason:

There is a fundamental moral difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production and a man who sees it in robbery. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level.

Her book The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) explains in depth the concept of rational egoism. According to Rand's ethical egoism, every rational individual's own life should be his or her own highest value; rationality is every human being's highest virtue, and one's own happiness is the highest purpose of one's life.

Consequently, Rand was sharply critical of the ethical doctrine of altruism:
Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute is self-sacrifice–which means self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial self-destruction–which means the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good. Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. This is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: No. Altruism says: Yes.

This is possibly a little cynical, but serves to introduce counterpoint to this topic

I would say it is both.

There are only two Principles that apply as set constants to both the general and the particular: Love and Death.

Also, just read the post above. Ayn Rand is a "romance writer"? Hold on, I gotta photoshop Fabio's head onto the Atlas statue on the cover of Atlas Shrugged.

Or we could cast one of the Wilson brothers to play John Galt in a film version of the Fountainhead.

reply to post by rom12345

She also committed suicide, out of love lorn angst....
Pretty bitter in my view.