Love defined in one sentence?

[moralist]

Wolf writes:

Greg, wake up! How did you pick Susie instead of Vicki to marry?

Matching moral values determine all human relationships... for better or for worse. Rotten moral values can determine a relationship just as well as decent ones... but they have nothing even remotely to do with love.

Love is living up to a moral standard.

Greg

[Selene]

Adam writes:

What does a Jewish wife make for dinner...

"Reservations."

--Joan Rivers

Greg

Correct!

Winner says the Wabbit...

[Wolf DeVoon]

Wolf writes:

Greg, wake up! How did you pick Susie instead of Vicki to marry?

Matching moral values determine all human relationships... for better or for worse. Rotten moral values can determine a relationship just as well as decent ones... but they have nothing even remotely to do with love.

Love is living up to a moral standard.

150 million U.S. females, of which about 16 million are unattached age 20-35. Let's say 1 out of 1000 of them have moral values not unlike your own. That's 16,000 plausible matches. How do you pick one instead of another? -- simple. You can't bump into all 16,000 or expect all 16,000 to like you well enough to smile. Bottom line: you're stuck with a heifer you met by opportunistic chance at a local feed store or watering trough. Hobson's choice, buckaroo.

Women are morally superior to men. "There is only one good sex, the female one." (Mark Twain) For all your erstwhile chest thumping about being 100% morally upright, odds are your wife is at least twice as brave, clean and reverent.

Assuming you are married, that is, which I'm beginning to doubt.

[Selene]

How do you pick one instead of another?

Become Wilt Chamberlain and test drive them all?

"Did Wilt Chamberlain Really Sleep With 20,000 Women?"

...his 1991 book, A View From Above. In it, Wilt claimed to have slept with 20,000 different women in his life.

A media firestorm erupted, and Wilt was attacked from all sides. The country was at the height of the AIDS crisis, and activists criticized Wilt for his promiscuity. He also came under fire in African-American circles for promoting black racial stereotypes. And feminists resented his blatant sexism for using women in such a manner.

To Wilt's credit (I guess), he never backed down from his claim, never said he was just "bragging" or "stretching the truth." He simply stated: "I was just laying it out there for people who were curious."

Wilt was emphatic that he never went to bed with a married woman. "I was just doing what was natural -- chasing good-looking ladies, whoever they were and wherever they were." But could he really sleep with 20,000 different women? Let's analyze it.

Amusing and clever article...

http://mentalfloss.com/article/12310/did-wilt-chamberlain-really-sleep-20000-women

[ThomasHägg]

Assuming you are married, that is, which I'm beginning to doubt.

There we go again... You can trust a lot of people here are probably starting to wonder the same thing about you. But that's because of your antisocial behaviour, not because we disagree with you.

Why would you need to state that? What does it matter to the topic discussed if he's married? Isn't fact a fact even in the face of not being married?

Homosexual love is love. Anyone born a homosexual should in order to be moral, act according to his or her nature. Human beings don't need to be heterosexual and have children in order to live and live well.

Even being "hot for someone" can be a level of love; If it at all includes valuation. And say you value nothing but physical proportions of a womans body, that would be disturbing but still implies values. (Not good judgement.)

[ThomasHägg]

Ayn Rand: "What do I think about homosexuality? I think it's disgusting." I don't know why. A mouth is a mouth. A tongue is a tongue. Sex is sex.

Heterosexuals tend to see homosexual sex in pornographic terms so "it's disgusting."

Precisely. Well almost.

It (such sexuality, or other expressions of such romantic love) "disgusts" me personally, not because I in any way dislike homosexuals, but because I can't identify with that sexually, lust and in terms of gender identity in general. That's the feeling I - as a heterosexual person - can get because it doesn't correlate with my own nature. It would be fully natural for someone born a homosexual though and I've got no problem with the concept of homosexual love what so ever. Love is great no matter who expresses it.

But I can't read minds, so your quote could indeed be a clue that Rand made a mistake. Who knows.

[Selene]

"The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think—for the same reason—that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one’s mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himselfh."

That highlighted section closed a lot of "situations" for me in my life...

[Wolf DeVoon]

Homosexual love is love. Anyone born a homosexual should in order to be moral, act according to his or her nature. Human beings don't need to be heterosexual and have children in order to live and live well.

Simply being "hot for someone" can be a form of love; But it still requires valuing what makes that someone hot. If you value nothing but physical proportions of a womans body, that is disturbing but still implies values.

1. Homosexual love is love. Perhaps. I don't know that for a fact. Working in entertainment over 25 years, I had a lot of contact with homosexuals, including private knowledge of how homosexual partners behaved with each other. Maybe things have changed. I certainly hope so.

2. Having children consumes parents and irreversibly transforms what was once a romantic relationship. It sharpens the contrary moral purposes* of men and women, when they become Mom and Dad. Some people handle it extremely well. Others do not. In the U.S., half of all marriages end in divorce; four out of ten children are born to unmarried women.

* If you don't know that men and women have contrary moral purpose, we can talk about it another time.

3. Being hot for someone is not love.

[Wolf DeVoon]

[BaalChatzaf]

3. Being hot for someone is not love.

True. But the Hots can sometimes send people to where enduring love can be found.

I was very hot for my wife. I still love her dearly after 57 years.

[ThomasHägg]

3. Being hot for someone is not love.

True. But the Hots can sometimes send people to where enduring love can be found.

I was very hot for my wife. I still love her dearly after 57 years.

Let me explain what I really meant by hot in this context; When I find someone sexy, I find them sexy for a reason. I value something about them. Mostly its an apreciation of a couple of things, such as how they dress and how they behave even before I've talked to them.

I don't mean that in robotic way. And don't tell me I'm "just superficial", because I'm not looking for clues on who could buy me a better house; I'm looking for a sexual partner and someone who could possibly be my "better half".

I may not be able to put words on it in that moment and I probably wouldn't point out every single detail to my buddies sitting next to me if it was in a pub or out socializing somewhere else. I would just say "that woman/girl is hot". On a surface level, I may not even notice "consiously" what was hot about her in particular. She may just have "fit into my template" of what a "hot" woman looks like. But if I decided to make explicit those details that were included in my template, I know I could.

But if I'm not feeling well that day or "my head is in a different place", it's not guaranteed to happen. It is not entirely automatic. A "hot chick" could walk by and I wouldn't pick up on it, even if I looked straight at her.

Some things we value are harder to explain than others. I know I can fall in love, only to find out way down the line that it wasn't the great love of my life. I can make mistakes. But it would still have been love. I honestly, and probably accurately, valued that person - what I knew about her to be specific - very very highly, she expressed she thought similarly of me and as a result we had a romantic sexual relationship.

Feelings were strong as our naked bodies.... just kidding. But that's love. Isn't it?

Here comes another Rand quote. I love this woman

I'll spare you the full context, but this is from "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology"

Let us answer the question: “Can you measure love?” The concept “love” is formed by isolating two or more instances of the appropriate psychological process, then retaining its distinguishing characteristics (an emotion proceeding from the evaluation of an existent as a positive value and as a source of pleasure) and omitting the object and the measurements of the process’s intensity.

. . .

If one wants to measure the intensity of a particular instance of love, one does so by reference to the hierarchy of values of the person experiencing it.

A man may love a woman, yet may rate the neurotic satisfactions of sexual promiscuity higher than her value to him. Another man may love a woman, but may give her up, rating his fear of the disapproval of others (of his family, his friends or any random strangers) higher than her value. Still another man may risk his life to save the woman he loves, because all his other values would lose meaning without her. The emotions in these examples are not emotions of the same intensity or dimension. Do not let a James Taggart type of mystic tell you that love is immeasurable.

Homosexual love is love. Anyone born a homosexual should in order to be moral, act according to his or her nature. Human beings don't need to be heterosexual and have children in order to live and live well.

Simply being "hot for someone" can be a form of love; But it still requires valuing what makes that someone hot. If you value nothing but physical proportions of a womans body, that is disturbing but still implies values.

1. Homosexual love is love. Perhaps. I don't know that for a fact. Working in entertainment over 25 years, I had a lot of contact with homosexuals, including private knowledge of how homosexual partners behaved with each other. Maybe things have changed. I certainly hope so.

2. Having children consumes parents and irreversibly transforms what was once a romantic relationship. It sharpens the contrary moral purposes* of men and women, when they become Mom and Dad. Some people handle it extremely well. Others do not. In the U.S., half of all marriages end in divorce; four out of ten children are born to unmarried women.

* If you don't know that men and women have contrary moral purpose, we can talk about it another time.

3. Being hot for someone is not love.

1 Anecdotal evidence is not worth much unless you can base a theory on it and present it to me.

But I do think things have changed. For example, back in probably the mid 80s, HIV ravaged the comunity here in Sweden. I would be surprised if it didn't also spread to or perhaps even originated from parts of The U.S. It not only wiped out a lot of people, it made everyone live either in fear or in spite of fear because the disease was not very well understood. Fidgety like animals, people don't use their reason well.

Gay culture has also been plagued by behavior induced indirectly by society in general shunning, assaulting and the self-chosen substance abuse (of some but not all). That's not the standard of "love" or "homosexual love" though. If it does not live up to the definition of "love" it can not be love by anyone - homosexual or else.

2 We all handle having children differently, but sure there are changes. However this "what was once a romantic relationship" is not healthy. Be it normal and natural (which it isn't, unless a very brief period) or not, there is no reason to continue down this path. If you are in such a relationship, I would say either fix it or get out courteously. (I don't mean shunning, but don't make such a relationship your primary one for the rest of your life)

I already wrote about the fact that the nature of men and women are different from one another I think, but both depend on the nature of human beings.

[Guyau]

Not a whisper, not a thought,

Not a kiss nor look be lost. -Auden

This drawing was made by my first lover. We were a couple from when we were both nineteen in 1968 to his death in 1990.* My second romantic partner* and I will have been together twenty years next month. We're getting married on that anniversary here at our place.* Twice in my life I was loved totally. Pretty lucky.

[anthony]

Asked earlier by Thomas and me: "Exception-making - for whom, or to what"?

??

We know from artists, poets and literature and from experience and observation, that love is 'exceptional', not mundane, common, shallow or instinctual.

So how much further can it be made an exception, than "exceptional"? Or, exceptions made to it?

The statement implies something above what love - the nature of romantic love - IS, therefore leaving only the mystical.

"I sacrificed my golf game to assist my wife in an emergency!"(Bully for you, then golf is clearly your higher value?).

Value, and an explicit, rational value hierarchy settles for one most of those fake "sacrifices", and exposes ones that are genuinely sacrificial.

Love represents to the two individuals: an exchange of virtues; non-contradictory values; creating 'value added'; and another level of emotionality. A value hierarchy isn't of course just for love, and it acts upwards and down. Replacing a high value with an even higher value, in an accord between people, is -- trade. (I'd call it 'trading up') In case anyone's forgotten the moral basis of Capitalism which is not self-sacrificial, either. ;)

[Wolf DeVoon]

Asked earlier by Thomas and me: "Exception-making - for whom, or to what"?

??

I suppose now is as good a time as any to talk about the contrary moral purposes of men and women.

For Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughters, there was no piecemeal gray area. Either women won the right to vote, or they didn't. It required riots, pouring acid on golf courses and in Royal Mail letterboxes, smashing the windows of Parliament and much of Regent Street (twice), exile, prison, and a hunger strike to force the English patriarchy into recognizing women as people. Justice for women. Does that mean anything to you? Is it anywhere on your moral agenda? ... It is a terrible, irreversible decision to kill, to take human life. Men do it routinely, in every language, with every conceivable weapon, from machete to cruise missile. We've done it for thousands of years. Women rarely kill. (Bad Cop, No Donut)

A very intelligent older woman once told me that the difference between men and women was that a guy could live in a cave for 20 years and never change a thing; but five seconds after he grabs a female and drags her back to his lair, she'll fold her arms, put one hand thoughtfully to her chin, study the rock formation and say: "I think curtains would be nice over there" ... Glancing over at my wife, who's watching a completely inane made-for-TV movie at the moment, I asked her to explain why women enjoy such drivel. "It's perfectly simple," she replied. "Lindsay Wagner is playing an actress who was on a movie set and she got pregnant because she was lonely. She was engaged to a British guy, who found out, and when he found out he rode his horse too fast over a fence and fell off. His sister told him that she knew and the family hired a detective. So Lindsay Wagner went to a beachhouse in America and met another Englishman who was a friend of the family. He was with her when she miscarried and now he's looking after her and she's depressed, so he called her best friend, who is the sister of the jilted brother who fell off the horse and she isn't sure if she should go to visit Lindsay, who's having nightmares because her father got thrown off a balcony by her boyfriend when she was a teenager." Incredibly, this makes perfect sense to women. [The All Purpose Guide]

Simply put, women are Bearers of Life. Men make exceptions by the barrelful to accommodate their needs and preferences, especially in romantic love and marriage. We do it willingly, because Women Are Men Plus.

When we become boys we lose a chromosome, can't have babies, and our intuitive powers shrivel up and die—which explains why men have to have a book like this one to halfway understand the Opposite Sex, whereas women know precisely what to do with men without even thinking about it ... Face it, chump. You lose. She'll understand you perfectly and absolutely, every time you open your mouth—but you'll end up saying "Yes, dear" to thousands of feminine pleas, remarks and dilemmas that I guarantee will make no sense to you because Men Are Women Minus. [ibid]

[Selene]

Asked earlier by Thomas and me: "Exception-making - for whom, or to what"?

??

I suppose now is as good a time as any to talk about the contrary moral purposes of men and women.

For Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughters, there was no piecemeal gray area. Either women won the right to vote, or they didn't. It required riots, pouring acid on golf courses and in Royal Mail letterboxes, smashing the windows of Parliament and much of Regent Street (twice), exile, prison, and a hunger strike to force the English patriarchy into recognizing women as people. Justice for women. Does that mean anything to you? Is it anywhere on your moral agenda? ... It is a terrible, irreversible decision to kill, to take human life. Men do it routinely, in every language, with every conceivable weapon, from machete to cruise missile. We've done it for thousands of years. Women rarely kill. (Bad Cop, No Donut)

A very intelligent older woman once told me that the difference between men and women was that a guy could live in a cave for 20 years and never change a thing; but five seconds after he grabs a female and drags her back to his lair, she'll fold her arms, put one hand thoughtfully to her chin, study the rock formation and say: "I think curtains would be nice over there" ... Glancing over at my wife, who's watching a completely inane made-for-TV movie at the moment, I asked her to explain why women enjoy such drivel. "It's perfectly simple," she replied. "Lindsay Wagner is playing an actress who was on a movie set and she got pregnant because she was lonely. She was engaged to a British guy, who found out, and when he found out he rode his horse too fast over a fence and fell off. His sister told him that she knew and the family hired a detective. So Lindsay Wagner went to a beachhouse in America and met another Englishman who was a friend of the family. He was with her when she miscarried and now he's looking after her and she's depressed, so he called her best friend, who is the sister of the jilted brother who fell off the horse and she isn't sure if she should go to visit Lindsay, who's having nightmares because her father got thrown off a balcony by her boyfriend when she was a teenager." Incredibly, this makes perfect sense to women. [The All Purpose Guide]

Simply put, women are Bearers of Life. Men make exceptions by the barrelful to accommodate their needs and preferences, especially in romantic love and marriage. We do it willingly, because Women Are Men Plus.

When we become boys we lose a chromosome, can't have babies, and our intuitive powers shrivel up and die—which explains why men have to have a book like this one to halfway understand the Opposite Sex, whereas women know precisely what to do with men without even thinking about it ... Face it, chump. You lose. She'll understand you perfectly and absolutely, every time you open your mouth—but you'll end up saying "Yes, dear" to thousands of feminine pleas, remarks and dilemmas that I guarantee will make no sense to you because Men Are Women Minus. [ibid]

Now that is a gestalt that I totally reject...

[Wolf DeVoon]

Now that is a gestalt that I totally reject...

 

Me, too!

 

 

[Selene]

Have a great time babes...

Then I go back to what I was doing.

Additionally, if I did decide to go, I would have a book.

A...

[moralist]

Wolf writes:

How do you pick one instead of another?

Destiny has a lot to do with it. A consequence of doing what's right puts you in harmony with objective reality... in the right place at the right time. It's not necessary to believe those words below are true to take advantage of them.

"And we know with great confidence that God who is deeply concerned about us causes all things to work together as a plan for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His plan and purpose."

(Rom 8:28)

I've proven for myself again and again that those words ring true because I'm enjoying the results of them in my own life. So what I know has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else's views, as it was arrived at by my own actions completely independent of how anyone else chooses to live.

This is not a matter of religious faith... but of knowing... by finding out for myself.

Greg

[moralist]

Stephen writes: [of his own experience]

That's a lesson about matching values. Not about what those values are... but that they match. Matching values are the foundation of every human relationship.

Greg

[moralist]

Tony writes:

Love represents to the two individuals: an exchange of virtues; non-contradictory values; creating 'value added'; and another level of emotionality. A value hierarchy isn't of course just for love, and it acts upwards and down. Replacing a high value with an even higher value, in an accord between people, is -- trade. (I'd call it 'trading up') In case anyone's forgotten the basis of Capitalism which is not self-sacrificial, either. ;)

Exceptionally well put, Tony.

Love is a win/win personal transaction where each party becomes a better person as a direct result of the other.

[ThomasHägg]

Not a whisper, not a thought,

Not a kiss nor look be lost. -Auden

This drawing was made by my first lover. We were a couple from when we were both nineteen in 1968 to his death in 1990.* My second romantic partner* and I will have been together twenty years next month. We're getting married on that anniversary here at our place.* Twice in my life I was loved totally. Pretty lucky.

Awesome. Congratulations! That's a great painting by the way.

[anthony]

Now that is a gestalt that I totally reject...

Me, too!

Apart from a laugh, photos proving ... what exactly?

Assume some cute woman stamped her foot and told her man: "Sweetie, you know how I love you to take me to the Mall in your Porsche and show you off to everyone - so I KNOW you will sacrifice your silly golf day (your bonsai club meeting, your philosophical group) to make me happy"...

...he's something of a puppy dog and she's a probable long-term sacrificer. A woman with values and a "sense of self" should rarely insist on a self-sacrifice from her man for a shallow matter, and a male with values and guts would seldom accede to her demands. It seems clear that little sacrifices mount up to big ones and then it's a habit.

But true, a man will in reality - and without sacrifice - have to wait for his lady outside a store once in a while. Yup, bring a book, take a stroll.

Can we lift this debate? Value, value hierarchy and sacrifice is conceptual, not founded on range of the moment trivialities.

[ThomasHägg]

Now that is a gestalt that I totally reject...

Me, too!

Apart from a laugh, photos proving ... what exactly?

Assume some cute woman stamped her foot and told her man: "Sweetie, you know how I love you to take me to the Mall in your Porsche and show you off to everyone - so I KNOW you will sacrifice your silly golf day (your bonsai club meeting, your philosophical group) to make me happy"...

...he's something of a puppy dog and she's a probable long-term sacrificer. A woman with values and a "sense of self" should rarely insist on a self-sacrifice from her man for a shallow matter, and a male with values and guts would seldom accede to her demands. It seems clear that little sacrifices mount up to big ones and then it's a habit.

But true, a man will in reality - and without sacrifice - have to wait for his lady outside a store once in a while. Yup, bring a book, take a stroll.

Can we lift this debate? Value, value hierarchy and sacrifice is conceptual, not founded on range of the moment trivialities.

I wish I had more "likes" to give away...

[Brant Gaede]

I wish I had more "likes" to give away...

"Likes" don't work very well if at all on OL.

It's a technical thing.

I can't even find any "LIKE" button to hit. (Wait a minute--there it is!)

Regardless, it doesn't seem to tally up anywhere.

--Brant

(the brutal intrusion of reality)

[ThomasHägg]

I wish I had more "likes" to give away...

"Likes" don't work very well if at all on OL.

It's a technical thing.

I can't even find any "LIKE" button to hit. (Wait a minute--there it is!)

Regardless, it doesn't seem to tally up anywhere.

--Brant

(the brutal intrusion of reality)

No? Too bad... It seems to work for me so far. I see total points when I visit other members profiles.