Love is a metaphysical concept. Not everyone believes in it, even if most people do. Whether this is because of their upbringing or some twisting of their minds and views of humanity or other people as deceptive from some unfortunate experience within their family, who knows what infinite things could have happened. Nonetheless, there is certainly a degree of rationality for those who dispute the existence of love based on the ontological nature of our existence, which subjects us to more scientific bases of psychological behavior than most would want to admit nor could fully comprehend. The thing about human beings, is that we are more similar to the animals that many generations have considered distinguishable. Certainly our communicative abilities are distinct…duh, we can speak verbally with words, and animals are limited to verbal utterances and calls and tone . Also, our language is complex and diverse—extremely cross cultural in the modern era. But, the point is, our minds are, for the general population, less able to be completely autonomous than we tend to think. In other words, our minds are conditioned by the world around us—specifically the behaviors of other people although inanimate objects can have a similar power.
Even mentioning this, as this writing does, gives the reader something to think about. Pause for a moment, and consider ways in which you might have been conditioned to think a certain way, or behave in an automatic response type way, a sort of Pavlovian mannerism which you may have adopted, whether it be something individual about you, or something that you do that practically everyone does. Hopefully, exploring this concept for you is somewhat enlightening, for that is the purpose in mentioning it. The purpose of englightening individuals to the such a depth of our consciousness is thought by some as a means to make for a better world—a way of manifesting a utopian destiny. Herein, its purely for the purposes of creating a foundation for which to analyze the concept of love, a specific form of human emotion which often serves as a driving force behind many behavioral motivations for many human beings.
Now, consider that science recognizes as a member of our own class of organisms that make up the environment, and likewise, psychology recognizes we have traits that are similar and still unique to us. To be specific, we have certain methods of bond-formation that are akin to all primates. It is quite fascinating really, that we follow certain psychological principles that have lead generations of persons from before to achieve our current status in the globe. Simply put, the newest generation of humans will experience not only a very different world and life than my generation due to the advent of computers/internet, but the earth has been manipulated significantly, to form more urban area and modern stylistic distinctions of building structure. Human beings follow certain courses of behavior with relative regularity. It is somewhat dehumanizing when this is fully understood. It is sad to know how programmatic our minds are. It’s a way of taking living flesh and blood, with hearts (which is the most widely accepted universal symbol of love, indicating a shared feeling as that being the location of the body wherein it occurs for most people), and thoughts and feelings, and understanding them in a way as though they are nothing more than certain sequences of neurological synapses. It’s quite depressing really…to take away the concept of actual meaning in life. It makes nihilists seem like sweethearts in comparison.
While science could view love and describe it as something strictly based on the concept of human bonding, analyzing it in terms of time invested (you should know that time spent working on something is a fundamental principle applicable to all human beings that will make them strongly devoted to something…like an addiction, which, if understood, should explain the underlying point of attack for battling addiction). Love is REAL. Albeit a metaphysical concept, something not necessarily within our physical brains, it is not something to be undermined with rationale. Not everything makes sense, and it never was meant to be.
Let us explore love more explicitly in it’s most romantic and intimate form. In other words, not in the generic sense of caring for others or one’s children, but deep, romantic, intimate, perhaps sexual, love. This is not a quest to decipher the meaning of love, but purely for exploration through certain love-related realms as modern society presents itself on this perpetual stage of life we all get to act in. As such, some social commentary will be included, as well as dialogue related to romance, and even the laws stance.
War Between the Sexes as a Perspective
“If men are from Mars, and Women from Venus, where on Earth do we put the children? Armageddon’s not a real war, it’s a war between the sexes. Let’s face it, if we don’t call the troops, we’re never gonna make it.” —The Boats – Industrial Violence
The idea of a war between the sexes is ancient. There are many love stories of actual human’s to have existed throughout history as well as many related to deities. Osiris and Isis, Adam and Eve, Aphrodite and Apollo…all of which explain various concepts of life’s many philosophies as they relate to love. Modern dating methods led by professional agencies might be likened to such a war, wherein each agency writes new tactics for dealing with and countering the informational advice put forth to the audience of the other. Astrology covers it’s own territory by applying some sort of twisted logic to arrangements of outer space to an individual’s love-life course…without being sex-specific.
The War of the Roses (film) depicts a man and woman meeting over an auction dispute, wherein each was highly keen on a particular item, a statue, over which they argued. It became symbolic of their relationship. Later in the film, as “fate” brought the couple into a dream home with children and pets and a kitchen to die for, the statue presents itself as an issue of intense drama. It’s quite funny, really, when the wife locks the husband in his sauna, heat cranked all the way up. It
What’s more about the idea of a war between the sexes is the drama that often ensues. In Grease, for example, neither man nor woman want’s to “give in” and admit to the other they are in “love” too soon. So, they have a brief encounter with a member of the opposite sex, see how it goes, and fairly quickly retreat back to the comfort of their friends (same sex) for discussing how the encounter went. While the dialogue in explaining is based purely on hormonal driven perception, it marks something unique about how humanity as a whole tends to deal with the opposite sex. It’s an exploratory journey…an exciting, dangerous, adventure which one must always be careful to not get hurt.
The likely reasoning is that it will either kill the suspense of the constant bantering back and forth leading up to commitment…or they are fearful of the rejection when the other knows and one lover will essentially have the other in a trap. It creates a sort of romantic power struggle. It goes entirely against the harmonious balance of the war between the sexes.
Biological Perspective on Love
As to the war of the sexes, perhaps it is due to the biological nature of human beings as a species wherein there are two sexes that must mate to reproduce. A sort of dance wherein, through the dance, each partner can gain a certain level of trust, establishing a bond necessary to express a level of commitment toward raising children which, for the species, takes a relatively long period of time.
Nonetheless, love itself is largely considered a sequence of biological processes. Brain scans have revealed that particular areas of the brain will transcend into a hyper-sensitive mode of rapid stimulation when the patient views images of loved ones. Much of love, from the biological perspective, is considered a coordinated response of chemicals in the brain, leading to the firing of synapses—which bend time and morph reality for the individual’s experiencing it. These synapses become grooved neuro-pathways and the memory of the other individual become like a habitual form of sensations.
Human bonding has largely been reduced by “science” to that of the amount of emotional investment by an individual, leading to the establishment of dating tactics to create such shared experiences to grow a relationship, almost synthetically. This is true a great extent. Although it ignores human beings exceptional ability to decipher between fraud and fake, genuine from staged, sincere from insincere, it certainly has the power to entangle the untrained mind.
Love as a Happenstance of Dialogue: Triumph to Tragedy
Couples often remember the circumstances of their meeting with vivid descriptiveness. An instant connect, a “spark” as it is often called, or a rush of new chemicals and sensations…whatever it may be, it certainly makes an impression that often lasts a lifetime…or at least the length of the relationship.
Let us make a distinction, however, between what couples say about their meeting. Instead, consider the possibility of it being something different. For the following analysis, consider exclusively the actual dialogue. That is to say, ignore the idea that when people clearly like someone, they agree or go along with whatever the other person says, and focus on the possibility of forming a bond based on a happenstance occurrence of dialogue. This discussion will ignore individual’s perceptions on their encounters, and focus on questioning the possibility that human beings are innately ‘geared’ toward love and connection in a manner in which they often view metaphysical connections as “real” which may be, for them, but are, in reality, purely biological.
In light of this idea that a meeting of the minds is a random occurrence of diologue-sequencing. Take the example of a male-female relationship wherein the parties were unequivocally unsuccessful in connecting/bonding/engaging/forming one “self” from two. One can only ponder up an explanation as to the dynamics of one person attempting to bond-pair and achieve this thing called love (subconsciously based on their personal nature and views on love and relationships), while the other is in it purely out of a sense of being lost in an abyss. It can be a tragic thing when someone who views love as some partnership that blossoms as two people connect is in a game, unkowingly, versus someone who may not have ever established the physiological connections that are what we commonly consider love and seems to have a sense of other people that’s been altered through an almost commoditization-like view of the human body such that they are not about to bond, but to intentionally capitalize…on another person’s being. It is a meeting of two bizarre and so distinctly different mind-states, alien to one-another, that can utterly devastate and stifle the core of one or the other’s entire existence. When such a discourse persists over one exclusive, ongoing relationship over ones entire adult life, the result is a near-permanent state of dysphoria—of questioning every tiny aspect of the nature of the developed self from early on…particularly with regards to it’s ability to mate or bond with another. Perpetual questioning the use of one’s own socio-philosophical map that is self-identity. Perhaps this is some sort of universal karma, wherein pain, tragedy, emotion, even brighter more positive emotions, are simply transferred between our bodies as they are the entities which carry our souls.
More often, if we measure successful relations as those that progress to certain fundamental
Legal Stance on Marriage
Law is very logical, “rational,” and systemized without consideration of it’s own metaphysical limitations. Therefore, it cannot account for all of the nuances associated with the world of love—even where it is designed to. The law focuses on many aspects that mark a major change in society’s views on love.
For example, the burden of obtaining a divorce by any party wishing to depart has been greatly eased. While this is due largely to a history wherein reasoning for divorce could determine whether it would be granted, often leaving one party distraught with powerlessness and emotionally dominated. Much of social history is laced with male-dominated culture, perhaps related to male’s physical strength and the sheer naturalistic lifestyles of more ancient worlds, or perhaps women’s underground psychological ‘string-pulling’ has remained subtle and unaddressed…but the law has drastically changed in it’s acceptance of divorce by checking a box next to “irreconcilable differences.”
For thousands of years, marriage was a highly religious and spiritual ceremony by nearly every major culture to exist. In one form or another, deities had involvement in marital ceremonies, usually expressing the concept of a soul…a union of souls for those cultures that believed in souls—the vast majority of religions conceive a soul. Now, however, our jurisdictions consider marriage as a contractual partnership. A business-like relationship wherein the parties can feel protected merging their property, because the law will ensure reasonably fair separation of assets in the event of divorce. This “sense of security in the event of divorce” is something the law provides to individuals entering into marriage. If it sounds a bit strange to think that people would enter marriage knowing very well it might not last, just ask around…people are very knowledgeable in basics of divorce law in their respective jurisdictions. All of the aspects of spousal support and child support and custody are locked in from the get-go.
The dramatic increase in divorce rate isn’t the laws fault, however. The law just expresses the changing society. We tend not to view love and commitment the way cultures of the past have. We put a lot of pressure on individual’s to “succeed” which is marked by many aspects, but it certainly tends to entail financial success—even in a financial world that is remarkably cut-throat and subject to a lot of happenstance. As such, there is often a lot of pressure on many levels, on all of us—society on individuals, individuals on themselves, friends and family on couples, spouses on one another, to BE something that more spiritual human beings of history would not recognize.
Social change tends to happen more rapidly in high-density populations, i.e. cities, and only slowly permeates toward more rural areas. So it makes sense to explain the following after having provided that understanding. Love has fundamentally changed throughout a major portion of human thought. Perhaps the economics of romantic kinship has shifted based on an increase in population and, in turn, individuals have grown to adopt a “there’s more fish in the sea” mindset toward relationships at any point that the relationship experiences turbulence. While this is a great mind-trick for getting over a break-up, it is damaging and only serves to sever relationships at a point in time when they are certainly still salvageable. It’s this salvaging concept that the law used to concern itself with and now writes off.
Life is so often about trials and tribulations, a wild adventure that brings those involved closer. The law’s stance is that, when a relationship hits a rocky spot, each party is entitled, without consent or disruption of the other, to abandon ship. This certainly is not conducive to growth of the couple and it acknowledges the concept that “people don’t change” as more powerful than the concept that “people do or can change.”[1] The reality is that, at any point in time, anything can happen, even apocalypse in whatever form it may take.
People used to know how serious of a life commitment marriage was, which is why they toiled and troubled every step along the path to it. The new path decreases romantic certainty by enabling the possibility of people using marriage as a stepping stone toward the acquisition of property and increase in monetary wealth, through sharing and utilizing assets, only until they feel comfortable enough to leave on their own. This also has the alternative effect of providing each partner with a sense of the other’s commitment through the knowledge that either partner could leave with economic stability and chooses to stay. One can never know precisely how another’s mind will change or how a couple will grow, morph, both as a couple and as a partnership. What made marriage sacred was the concept that the pair may experience hellish conditions, and that was the commitment.
That was the beauty of it all—the acknowledgement of the frailty of human existence and utter refusal to give in until the Gods decided upon death. Perhaps this rational world is not so rational, focusing on materiality and the necessity of perpetual material gain for humanity to survive and thrive. As for me, I seek the love of a lifetime, one that will absolutely last until absolution—death.
Economics – What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Modern economic policies are highly centered based on the perception of the individual. While much of this is for privacy considerations, it is purely a phenomena as a result of how the bureaucratic method of resolution affects the psyche. In turn, society is geared toward providing individuals with a very strong sense of self and safety in their ability to manage their own lives. Disagree? Read up on the sociology of individualisation…it’s a process that is a common thread, supported by massive amounts of evidence. The concept of self as being critical to economic policymaking is nothing new, however. Adam Smith had created the Wealth of Nations after his Theory of Moral Sentiments wherein he concluded that the individual was sacrosanct to proper economic-government structure…a feel he likely obtained from Montesquieu.
So, naturally, a functioning economy provides opportunities for growth and invention, and its hierarchy is simultaneously subject to ebbs and flows. Economics has a major impact in couple’s marriages from several standpoints. Not only do difficult economic downturns, job loss, and extended joblessness certainly impact spousal attraction, it can make an uneven balance of what each partner brings to the partnership. Whether couples focus solely on the monetary contribution or also consider romantic or emotional support as well as non-monetary labor is dependent on the particularities of the relationship. However, the latter is certainly less common in our highly money-driven world.
Alas, there is the idea of love as an invention by those seeking economic gain. Summarized by Don Draper’s character in the popular American show Madmen:
“Oh, you mean love. You mean the big lightning bolt to the heart where you can’t eat and you can’t work and you just run off and get married and make babies. The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons. You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.”
Industries across the board benefit financially from the concept of love, in innumerable ways. From restaurants and bars where dating and hooking up is the name of the game, to lingerie and even the concept of any beauty product, and in particular the diamond industry. Does that make it immoral or purely money-driven? While anyone reading this should know my utter disregard for money in our world, it is the symbolism that takes on an immense religiosity for the believers. As such, it wouldn’t be accurate to discount anyone’s belief in the meaning behind a diamond wedding band, even where it appears to be peddled by industry hustlers, if it has symbolic meaning for a couple’s relationship in whatever of the infinite forms it takes. To be complete in making this point, it is akin to the formation of religion as a culture is manifested through the shared experiences of members of a society that exists at any point in time. In modern life, these are common running themes for large portions of the masses, and doesn’t make them followers or sheep for such acts, but merely reflects their decisions as to what to believe in. The degree of autonomy for particular individuals in making such a choice of belief may be a matter of degree, but certainly many folks have adopted viewpoints through as extensive analysis as anyone would sanely endure.
Will there ever be any kind of resolution?
Parapsychology analysis likely has as much beneficial use as anything. What’s more plausible is psychology if it were possible to exclusively tailor it for particular sets of circumstances affiliated with regionally-based, strong cultural norms. However, due to the nature of modern biographical mapping of individuals, it is still highly unrealistic to be of significant widespread help to the types of numbers where it would be worth it to conduct such research necessary to, in turn, formulate a sound proffering.
Should be more concerned with aspects of utopianism. Self-centered? Would you like to make small sacrifices for the benefit of all, including your self? That’s what must occur, or else we might as well declare marshall law right now.
Effects on society – changing humanity / modernity – dynamics
[1] The concept of whether “people change” or not is purely paradoxical and certainly requires a lot of independent analysis of particularities of the circumstances in every one of our lives. Therefore, utilizing this paradox as a valid method of determining whether to stay in a relationship conceptualizes the decision to it’s terms. People change in innumerable, difficult to understand ways.