Love

Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. Depending on context, love can have a wide variety of intended meanings. Romantic love is seen as a deep, ineffable feeling of intense and tender attraction shared in passionate or intimate attraction and intimate interpersonal and sexual relationships. Love can also be conceived of as Platonic love, religious love, familial love, and, more casually, great affection for anything considered strongly pleasurable, desirable, or preferred, including activities and foods. This diverse range of meanings in the singular word love is often contrasted with the plurality of Greek words for love, reflecting the concept's depth, versatility, and complexity.

Definitions

The definition of love is the subject of considerable debate, enduring speculation, and thoughtful introspection. Some tackle the difficulty of finding a universal definition for love by classifying it into types, such as passionate love, romantic love, and committed love. However, some of these types of love can be generalized into the category of sexual attraction. In ordinary use, love usually refers to interpersonal love, an experience felt by a person for another person. Love often involves caring for or identifying with a person or thing, including oneself (cf. narcissism). Dictionaries tend to define love as deep affection or fondness. In colloquial use, according to polled opinion, the most favoured definitions of love involve altruism, selflessness, friendship, union, family, and bonding or connecting with another.

The different aspects of love can be roughly illustrated by comparing their corollaries and opposites. As a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like), love is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more mutual and "pure" form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is commonly contrasted with friendship, although other connotations of love may be applied to close friendships as well.

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The very existence of love is sometimes subject to debate. Some categorically reject the notion as false or meaningless.^{[citation needed]} Others call it a recently-invented abstraction, sometimes dating the "invention" to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages.^{[citation needed]} Others maintain that love really exists, and is not an abstraction, but is undefinable, being essentially spiritual or metaphysical in nature.^{[citation needed]} Some psychologists maintain that love is the action of lending one's "boundary" or "self-esteem" to another.^{[citation needed]} Others attempt to define love by applying the definition to everyday life.^{[citation needed]}

Cultural differences make any universal definition of love difficult to establish. Expressions of love may include the love for a soul or mind, the love of laws and organizations, love for a body, love for nature, love of food, love of money, love for learning, love of power, love of fame, love for the respect of others, etc. Different people place varying degrees of importance on the kinds of love they receive. Love is essentially an abstract concept,^{[citation needed]} easier to experience than to explain. Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of common proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to The Beatles' "All you need is love".

Scientific views

Throughout history, philosophy and religion have done the most speculation on the phenomenon of love. In the last century, the science of psychology has written a great deal on the subject. In recent years, the sciences of evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and biology have added to the understanding of the nature and function of love.

Biology of love

Further information: Interpersonal chemistry

Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive,^{[citation needed]} much like hunger or thirst. Helen Fisher, a leading expert in the topic of love, divides the experience of love into three partly-overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust exposes people to others, romantic attraction encourages people to focus their energy on mating, and attachment involves tolerating the spouse long enough to rear a child into infancy.

Lust is the initial passionate sexual desire that promotes mating, and involves the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen. These effects rarely last more than a few weeks or months. Attraction is the more individualized and romantic desire for a specific candidate for mating, which develops out of lust as commitment to an individual mate forms. Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side-effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a half to three years.

Since the lust and attraction stages are both considered temporary, a third stage is needed to account for long-term relationships. Attachment is the bonding which promotes relationships that last for many years, and even decades. Attachment is generally based on commitments such as marriage and children, or on mutual friendship based on things like shared interests. It has been linked to higher levels of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin than short-term relationships have.

In 2005, Italian scientists at Pavia University found that a protein molecule known as the nerve growth factor (NGF) has high levels when people first fall in love, but these levels return to as they were after one year. Specifically, four neurotrophin levels, i.e. NGF, BDNF, NT-3, and NT-4, of 58 subjects who had recently fallen in love were compared with levels in a control group who were either single or already engaged in a long-term relationship. The results showed that NGF levels were significantly higher in the subjects in love than as compared to either of the control groups.

Psychology of love

Further information: Human bonding

File:Kiss.jpg

A couple kissing. Kissing can be viewed as a physical action brought forth by love.

Psychology depicts love as a cognitive and social phenomenon. Psychologist Robert Sternberg formulated a triangular theory of love and argued that love has three different components: Intimacy, Commitment, and Passion. Intimacy is a form by which two people can share secrets and various details of their personal lives. Intimacy is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs. Commitment, on the other hand, is the expectation that the relationship is going to last forever. The last and most common form of love is sexual attraction and passion. Passionate love is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love. This led researchers such as Yela^{[citation needed]} to further refine the model by separating Passion into two independents components: Erotic Passion and Romantic Passion.

Following developments in electrical theories, such as Coulomb's law, which showed that positive and negative charges attract, analogs in human life were developed, such as "opposites attract". Over the last century, research on the nature of human mating, such as in evolutionary psychology, agree that pairs unite or attract to each other owing to a combination of opposites attract, e.g. people with dissimilar immune systems tend to attract, and likes attract, such as similarities of personality, character, views, etc. In recent years, various human bonding theories have been developed described in terms of attachments, ties, bonds, and or affinities.

Some Western authorities disaggregate into two main components, the altruistic and the narcissistic. This view is represented in the works of Scott Peck, whose works in the field of applied psychology explored the definitions of love and evil. Peck maintains that love is a combination of the"'concern for the spiritual growth of another", and simple narcissism. In combination, love is an activity, not simply a feeling.

Philosophical views

People, throughout history, have often considered phenomena such as "love at first sight" or "instant friendships" to be the result of an uncontrollable force of attraction or affinity. One of the first to theorize in this direction was the Greek philosopher Empedocles, who in the 4th century B.C.E. argued for the existence of two forces, love (philia) and strife (neikos), which were used to account for the causes of motion in the universe. These two forces were said to intermingle with the classical elements, i.e., earth, water, air, and fire, in such a manner that love served as the binding power linking the various parts of existence harmoniously together.

Later, Plato interpreted Empedocles' two agents as attraction and repulsion, stating that their operation is conceived in an alternate sequence. From these arguments, Plato originated the concept of "likes attract", e.g., earth is attracted to earth, water to water, and fire to fire. In modern terms this is often phrased in terms of "birds of a feather flock together".

Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of "absolute value", as opposed to relative value. Thomas Jay Oord defines love as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being. Oord means for his definition to be adequate for religion, philosophy, and the sciences. Robert Anson Heinlein, one of the most prolific science fiction writers of the 20th century, defined love in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land as the point of emotional connection which leads to the happiness of another being essential to one's own well being. This definition ignores the ideas of religion and science and instead focuses on the meaning of love as it relates to the individual.

Religious views

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Love in early religions was a mixture of ecstatic devotion and ritualised obligation to idealised natural forces (pagan polytheism).^{[citation needed]} Later religions shifted emphasis towards single abstractly-oriented objects like God, law, church and state (formalised monotheism). A third view, pantheism, recognises a state or truth distinct from (and often antagonistic to) the idea that there is a difference between the worshiping subject and the worshiped object. Love is reality, of which we, moving through time, imperfectly interpret ourselves as an isolated part.^{[citation needed]}

The Bible speaks of love as a set of attitudes and actions that are far broader than the concept of love as an emotional attachment. Love is seen as a set of behaviours that humankind is encouraged to act out. One is encouraged not just to love one's partner, or even one's friends but also to love one's enemies. The Bible describes this type of active love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:

“

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

”

Romantic love is also present in the Bible, particularly the Song of Songs. Traditionally, this book has been interpreted allegorically as a picture of God's love for Israel and the Church. When taken naturally, we see a picture of ideal human marriage:

“

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealously unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.

”

The passage dodi li v'ani lo, i.e. "my beloved is mine and I am my beloved", from Song of Songs 2:16, is an example of a biblical quote commonly engraved on wedding bands.

Also, the Bible defines love as being God himself. I John 4:8 states "God is Love". In essence, God is the epitomy of love - in action and relation.^{[citation needed]} It is God that first loved mankind and desired a relationship. (John 3:16-17) Love is the underlying drive in most people.^{[citation needed]} The search for love seems endless within the human race, throughout the ages.^{[citation needed]} The Bible defines God as being the completeness of love. Love, as being defined by him, is demonstrated in his character and personality. Another way of defining this type of love is "godly love", a love shown through the example of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. However, this "sacrificial" love can also be expressed by humans.^{[citation needed]} For example, the love of a mother for her child. It is one one of the strongest bonds of love known to Man.^{[citation needed]} The mother would sacrifice anything for the child. It is this type of love that the Bible teaches us to follow and to share with one another. Love, in the end, is truly a sacrifice.^{[citation needed]}

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, defines Love as one of 7 synonyms for God. This indicates that Diety is more than a being that has benevolent concerns for mankind, but rather that God is Love itself. Love is also synonymous with Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, and Truth and indicate the depth and wholeness of Love.^{[citation needed]}

The Bhagavad Gita, India's ageless Hindu scripture, helps devotees to see that love conquers all. It says, "Sattva—pure, luminous, and free from sorrow—binds us to happiness and wisdom" (Number 6). Sattva, translated as purity, helps one to see that love evolves from selflessness.

Cultural views

File:Love-zh.png

The traditional Chinese character for love (愛) consists of a heart (心, in the middle) inside of "accept", "feel", or "perceive", which shows a graceful emotion.

Although there exist numerous cross-cultural unified similarities as to the nature and definition of love, as in there being a thread of commitment, tenderness, and passion common to all human existence, there are differences.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Roger Allen, Hillar Kilpatrick, and Ed de Moor, eds. Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature. London: Saqi Books, 1995.
• Shadi Bartsch and Thomas Bartscherer, eds. Erotikon: Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Mary Baker Eddy, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. 2006
• Helen Fisher. Why We Love: the Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
• Gabriele Froböse, Rolf Froböse, Michael Gross (Translator): Lust and Love: Is it more than Chemistry? Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry, ISBN 0-85404-867-7, (2006).
• Johnson, P (2005) 'Love, Heterosexuality and Society'. Routledge: London.
• Thomas Jay Oord, Science of Love: The Wisdom of Well-Being. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2004.
• R. J. Sternberg. A triangular theory of love. 1986. Psychological Review, 93, 119–135
• R. J. Sternberg. Liking versus loving: A comparative evaluation of theories. 1987. Psychological Bulletin, 102, 331–345
• Sternberg, Robert (1998). Cupid's Arrow - the Course of Love through Time. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-47893-6. 
• Dorothy Tennov. Love and Limerence: the Experience of Being in Love. New York: Stein and Day, 1979. ISBN 0-8128-6134-5
• Dorothy Tennov. A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It "Limerence": The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov. Greenwich, CT: The Great American Publishing Society (GRAMPS), [1]
• Wood, Wood and Boyd. The World of Psychology. 5th edition. 2005. Pearson Education, 402–403
• Jones, Del. "One of USA's Exports: Love, American Style" USA Today: February, 14, 2006.

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