Nature of Love

[Walker]

Walker,
Interesting, I never really thought of them as learned, not sure you're right there, is compassion learned, care learned, not sure myself.

Receiving a beloved, adult offspring’s compassion and care can be intellectually learned through need, but it's understood with the addition of the experience.

No, I don't think that is quite right. I think it is as primordial as lust itself; if it were not, societies would have had nothing to hold them together. When one can recognize another self in another person or creature, then compassion arises, and where there is compassion, there is the possibility of unity of communities. This can be seen in animal societies. So it must have also existed along with the all-powerful lust.

A stranger's impersonal compassion for another stranger is not the same as an adult offspring's personal compassion for a parent, and the difference must be experienced to be understood, although this distinction can be intellectually learned through instruction from an outside source, and also by rational inferences about what makes the one distinct from the other. Intellectual learning apart from experience is motivated by the need to learn in the abstract, and the need to learn in the abstract can be caused by a variety of things such as: simple curiosity, the desire to pass an exam for some kind of credit, the need to communicate, or the need to examine within oneself the effects of received and unreceived compassion.

Love is the difference between an ER doctor's compassion (stranger's compassion) and an offspring's compassion.
Love is attachment, and scientific detachment is preferred in a medical doctor.

[Walker]

(continued)

The little child digging through the toy box for a favourite toy is attached to that toy, and by searching for that toy the child is searching for the comfort of love. The same can be said for the adult collector ... coins, stamps, etc. It can be said for even homeless collectors of stuff.

[Impenitent]

collecting adults is fine, but man, do they eat a lot...

-Imp

[Walker]

Aliens were waiting to serve, but the collection of folks assumed a different meaning.
They assumed that to serve is to love, which it can be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp_EhjlLGkQ

[Phil8659]

Love is one of the most profound, complex, and debated human experiences. It doesn't have a single definition, because it takes many forms—romantic, familial, platonic, self-love, and even universal or divine love.



It would be pleasure to mine to know your thoughts about "LOVE "

What may be predicated of anything is wholly determined by the definition of that thing.

Love is what two or more people do together in order to maintain and promote life. Love is not what you feel, love is what you do.

[popeye1945]

Receiving a beloved, adult offspring’s compassion and care can be intellectually learned through need, but it's understood with the addition of the experience.

No, I don't think that is quite right. I think it is as primordial as lust itself; if it were not, societies would have had nothing to hold them together. When one can recognize another self in another person or creature, then compassion arises, and where there is compassion, there is the possibility of unity of communities. This can be seen in animal societies. So it must have also existed along with the all-powerful lust.

A stranger's impersonal compassion for another stranger is not the same as an adult offspring's personal compassion for a parent, and the difference must be experienced to be understood, although this distinction can be intellectually learned through instruction from an outside source, and also by rational inferences about what makes the one distinct from the other. Intellectual learning apart from experience is motivated by the need to learn in the abstract, and the need to learn in the abstract can be caused by a variety of things such as: simple curiosity, the desire to pass an exam for some kind of credit, the need to communicate, or the need to examine within oneself the effects of received and unreceived compassion.

Love is the difference between an ER doctor's compassion (a stranger's compassion) and an offspring's compassion.
Love is attachment, and scientific detachment is preferred in a medical doctor.

Hi Walker,

There are indeed degrees of compassion, and the best surgeons are psychopaths, for compassion is not really in their songbook. Thus, they have nerves of steel and don't crack under pressure. There is no such thing as impersonal compassion; the two terms create an oxymoron. Apparently, there are even degrees in psychopathology; a psychopath of the first order is totally devoid of the ability to feel for another's plight. These differing degrees of compassion dictate one's emotional life. I just had an interesting thought: for most of humanity, brought into this world as a constitution without identity, the subject gains its sense of identity through context defining it, but in a much different way for the biological psychopath; its constitution is different than the norm to start with. A first-order psychopath, I suspect, does not know what it is to love, and the term is most often misused, a bit like calling someone a hero because they're sick. The concept of love is used very loosely; in most cases, it is highly conditional. That said, it is inspiring when one sees the real thing. Doctors and nurses are somewhat desensitized by necessity; otherwise, they would burn out in short order. Interestingly, compassion does not arise if there is no identification with the other person or creature, so it seems compassion itself is an extended concept of the self.