What good does religion offer the world today?

I hope Leadfoot realizes that, rather than blind love. People might think you're on drugs or something...

Is it correct to say that love is something that is measures in degrees?

Yes in the common sense you use the word as referring to someone is perfectly valid...but if we use it generally speaking the word can mean more then it meats the eye...Love is intimacy and intimacy is knowledge and knowing is reconciling apparent conflicts for lack of understanding not hating because you lack complete explanation...knowledge brings peace ! So to use the expression "unconditional love" in this context is redundant. Regarding the whole world either you understand it and accept or you don't.

Possibly. My love for my family is different from my love for acquaintances.

Is love an emotion?

If what you feel for your acquaintances is not what you feel for your family, why not call it something else, since they are not the same thing to you?

Also.
But are you looking for a higher level definition ?
Well in my gibberish pseudo philosophy Love is Unity from Reason.

More like "unity from physical attraction."

No, I'm not looking for a definition of love--higher, or otherwise. I just see the human propensity for defining emotions. Emotions are elusive because they come in many shades. If you are going to call something love, so be it. But to chop it up into pieces, calling weak love conditional love, and strong love unconditional love, then why even speak of love?

Love is the ability and willingness to allow everyone to be who they are for themselves, without needing to satisfy you.

Besides all that, it's said that love and hate are not that far apart.

Once, someone told me that the reason I hate a certain person is because I love them. Of course, I scoffed at that. They then explained that the reason I feel hate is because that person has fallen short of my expectations because I expected more from someone I love.

Can one really hate someone they don't even know? Must there be love before there is hate?

Well the person I hated is someone I knew. Strangers could do something to me, and I would get angry, but then they're gone. If someone I knew and associated with in my life did something to me, I felt anger, but it went beyond that because they fell short of my expectations of them.

Maybe love is something that can't be defined or even described, for, to do so would be to place limitations upon it. Maybe the truth is that love is what you make it. Or, maybe like everything else, love has many shades, each being no less real than the next. Maybe love is like truth. Truth is in the moment; that is, each moment is its own truth. Maybe there's nothing but love, in that even hate is simply love in process/progress.

Maybe I say maybe to all these statements because I don't know.

But maybe not!

I think you're on the right track. We all understand that love is in the eye of the beholder. It's subjective. We have heard of mothers who favored one child over the others. I think "I don't know" is a good answer.

You're right. It is subjective. When my dog died, I felt that more deeply than when my father died. Love may be said to be an expression of meaning. Everything has meaning to me, but each thing has a different meaning. I try to leave it at that.

Years ago when I was a bitter young man, I made light of the term love after hearing people say that "whatever the question, love is the answer." I would say, "Love is the answer as long as the question is: What is so impotent that it is never the answer to anything."

Then many years later, I wrote this about what people call unconditional love.

Suppose you're walking through the woods and you come across a live fly trapped in a spider's web, and the spider is moving in on the fly. Do you:

A . Carefully remove the fly from the spider's web, doing your best to not damage the fly or the web?

B. Carefully remove the fly from the spider's web without giving a damn about the web?

C. Leave the fly in the web, but snap its neck before the spider gets to it, to save the fly any unnecessary suffering?

D. Look around on the ground for a dead bug of some kind (at least as big as a fly). Then free the fly and replace him with the dead bug?

E. Kill the spider, and then release the fly.

F. Kill both the fly and the spider, and then destroy the web, thus putting an end to this nightmare?

G. Set fire to the woods to put a stop to all such future nonsense?
___________________________________________

Of course, true love dictates that I walk away without judging the spider.

Wow! You sure do put a lot of effort into your decisions about how to treat insects. From my POV, that's extreme. I used to give my kids .05c if they killed a fly in the house. End of story.
Talk about flys, I haven't seen them in a very long time. I wonder why.

It sounds like you're saying that the conditions for unconditional love are pretty extensive. :-)

I think we need a less contradictory term..

I just think it is safer to be sure there is a mutual understanding and trust before you can give unconditional love to someone you don't know. Otherwise you may be opening yourself up to abuse.