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Topic: What is love? (Read 752 times) |
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Bass
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What is love?
« on: 2006-10-09 09:59:35 » |
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Hey again, just back with another curiosity which is beyond me.
I was just wondering on what the CoV or its members thought on love...I know empathy is important here but what about love?
What causes it, what is it, why do we need it.
I personally dont understand love at all, althugh I think that it does make a good novel.
Cheers.
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Hermit
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Re:What is love?
« Reply #1 on: 2006-10-09 14:25:31 » |
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We don't formally speak about love because we don't formally speak about much at all.
In our forums (BBS, IRC, Active Life, Mail list, Wiki), our members give personal opinions, share their thoughts and ideas in an attempt to develop a helpful philosophy, seek to help others find their own meanings around our virtues and vices and provide feedback to one another of how we perceive each other to be doing (on the basis of the Virian Virtues and Virian Sins) through the Meridion System. From our 'First Host' (most respected) to our "Heretic' (least respected) our opinions should be viewed with skepticism until you comprehend them and decide for yourself whether they are of relevance to you or not. When you need help understanding something, just ask. Somebody will usually try to assist even if that means hinting that you should try harder. Some things you have to work out or experience for yourself. Spoonfeeding is seldom helpful to either party. And the smart helpful Virians tend to lead busy lives full of activity. So we welcome active participation (and rejoice at wikipedia's growing ability to be used to find answers to complicated questions (and this is a strong hint)).
That said, here are my "Cliff Notes" on love from a Virian perspective.
The Church of Virus, rejecting dogma, does not lay down dicta, but suggests that the Virian Virtues - and Virian Vices - describe behaviors which have been observed to be necessary prerequisites to happiness and relevance, or harmful to happiness and relevance in our quest to give meaning to life by adopting helpful weltanschuung in a rational world characterised by the observation that there are no known god thingies, gurus or anything else worthy of worship (unthinking devotion), that in fact abandoning thought (characterised by empathy, reason and vision) is extremely harmful to us individually and as social groups.
The ancient Greeks were smart people. Very smart. The more we learn about them and their thinking, the more that we have to recognise how smart they were, perhaps because they didn't have to live with Christians and their perversions for most of their existence.
The ancient Greeks recognized at least four kinds of love: philia (affectionate love); eros (physical love); agape (general affection or concern); and storge (familial love), and that all of them are important to us.
Today we know that love is a chemical cocktail driven by the endocrine system. We can trigger it, we can stimulate it, we can suppress it, we can point to, activate or excise the parts of the brain that host it, we know how to engender it and how to suppress it. That doesn't mean that love isn't important anymore, just that we comprehend its nature. We also know that we probably evolved to love, that it likely made us more competent to survive or is a side-effect of making us more able to compete.
Empathy is probably most akin to agape and likely necessary for most or all of the other modes of love too.
I have, in the long term, seldom regretted giving, receiving, or sharing love, although in the short term it can cause more hurt than any other human activity. Mainly because it is those we love who can hurt us most. Nevertheless, I recommend the activity, because if you don't love you will lose out on much of what is most rewarding about our all too fleeting illusions of awareness*.
Regards
Hermit
PS We neither encourage nor discourage expressions of love of whatever nature (including sexual), as we consider that this should always be a personal choice made by the individuals involved. That said, we are human, and gossip is always welcome :-)
*Putting it another way, I suggest that between infancy and senility lies adultery, and we should make the most of it.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:What is love?
« Reply #2 on: 2006-10-11 14:46:08 » |
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[Blunderov] It strikes me that you might also wish to consider something the Hermit quoted in another thread. It is very beautiful.
Catullus Poem 5
VIVAMUS mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum seueriorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.
1 Let us live, my Lesbia, and love,
2 and value at one farthing
3 all the talk of crabbed old men.
4 Suns may set and rise again.
5 For us, when the short light has once set,
6 remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.
7 Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
8 Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
9 then yet thousand, then a hundred.
10 Then, when we have made up many thousands,
11 we will confuse our counting, that we may not know the reckoning,
12 nor any malicious person blight them with evil eye,
13 when he knows that our kisses are so many.
http://www.vroma.org/~hwalker/VRomaCatullus/005.html
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Hermit
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Re:What is love?
« Reply #3 on: 2006-10-11 17:05:29 » |
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This translation provides the words, but might I might suggest a slightly different, somewhat more poetic approach. An interpretation rather than a translation if you will. Catullus was a mad, bad boy and his poetry rollicks along. This manic poem is rambunctious, full of life, bubbling with joy and passionate. This is, I think, lost in a pure prose translation.
When interpreting this poem, it is possibly helpful to know that Catullus and Lesbia (actually Clodia) had a stormy, 5 year long relationship even though Lesbia was married to somebody else (a rather severe old man, the malicious person cursing their snatched kisses) at the time.
Compared to modern poetry, Latin poetry is subtle, finding its rhythm in the accents and stresses, but this poem has in it the pulse of a pounding heart, which is missed in a transliteration because the styles we are used to are so different. To do it full justice, I'd try to find an appropriate metre, and perhaps a somewhat comic Byronesque style. Let's see
Kiss Me Already Then
Let us live my Lesbia, and make love, me and you.
Counting as being worth rather less than a sous,
All of the rumblings of severe old men.
For while suns may set, suns will still rise again,
But the light of our lives is all to fleeting,
Once our light has set, what remains is but sleeping.
So cover me with kisses a thousand deep,
Adding to that total a hundred;
Pour on another thousand sweet,
And then another hundred.
Then add more kisses yet, a total eventually so great,
That no man can ever hope to calculate,
The number will be so confusing.
Then no jealous ill-wisher with evil eye,
Can curse any kiss snatched twixt thou and I
For our kisses go far beyond counting.
Poetry by Catullus. Interpretation by Hermit. (C) Open Commons, Hermit 2006.
Not perfect (I plead the excuse that I am, as usual, time constrained), but not too bad. I think it captures the gaiety of the original.
Kind Regards
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:What is love?
« Reply #4 on: 2006-10-12 01:13:17 » |
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[Blunderov] A magnificant rendition!
I wonder if perhaps Leonard Cohen was alluding to poem 5 with:
"A Thousand Kisses Deep"
The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then it’s done –
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it’s real,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.
I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
You lose your grip, and then you slip
Into the Masterpiece.
And maybe I had miles to drive,
And promises to keep:
You ditch it all to stay alive,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.
And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.
Confined to sex, we pressed against
The limits of the sea:
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
I made it to the forward deck.
I blessed our remnant fleet –
And then consented to be wrecked,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.
I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
I guess they won’t exchange the gifts
That you were meant to keep.
And quiet is the thought of you,
The file on you complete,
Except what we forgot to do,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.
And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.
The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat . . .
Best Regards
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Hermit
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Re:What is love?
« Reply #5 on: 2006-10-12 07:24:54 » |
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Thanks for the kind words - and Leonard Cohen's words too. It really is a pleasure and appreciation is always welcome.
I strongly suspect that even if Leonard Cohen doesn't have a classical education, that he most certainly is well read in the classics. Still the "thousand kisses" concept crops up over and over in poetry, prose and music and I don't think it can be attributed to Catullus without other confirmation. Meanwhile, I'm glad you are enjoying the Romans. They could be brutal, but they could also write like angels when the mood came over them.
Thanks again
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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