I disagree that there are only two emotions, love and fear.
I remember my husband coming back from a script analysis class, must have been a Saturday afternoon, engaged by a new insight - and for the next few years he saw everything everybody did in terms of fear, just as the script analysis speaker did that Saturday.
Things are not that simple, to me, re fear and love. Those are just starter emotions.
Not to denigrate them, but they don't live alone.
If your "love" disappears simply because the feeling is not returned it is not love. It is a selfish want that must be satisfied. True love requires nothing in return. And don't go confusing love with worship. Love is love. Worship is one way of displaying it.
And there is not love and fear. There is only love, and all other emotions, even fear, are merely twisted and misguided love.
Love and truth- utopia
Love and lies- the world today
Happy holidays.
I agree, Osso. It's always more complicated than our reductionist tendencies suggest. We often like to reduce everything to an elegant minimum--usually a formula of some kind. But the process can go in two directions: in addition to oversimplication we can overelaborate the world--into some kind of complex theoretical system (although insofar as any system, no matter how complex, consists of abstractions, it is a simplication of reality). I don't think we can always strike a Golden Balance, but we should at least be wary of our individual tendency to go one way or another--that might have to do with one's personality, or its "cognitive style."
Cyracuz, doesn't it seem to you that worship involves a degree of fear? To worship something may be to treat it as grander than ourselves and to be deserving of our self-diminishment before it.
--edited
If there is fear in your motivation I would not call it worship. A man might be afraid of another man, and give the semblance of worship. But it is not. It is manipulation. The aim is not to show that you love, it is rather to give the impression of devotion where none is present. The goal is survival, and it has nothing to do with real worship.
JL wrote:
Quote:To worship something may be to treat it as grander than ourselves and to be deserving of our self-diminishment before it.
I would say that to worship something is perhaps to recognize what it is and pay it due respect. I'll leave it up to brighter minds to determine wich is more true.
I'm betting you recognise me for what I am, (a fellow human) and i'd say you pay me due respect. (you've not been disrespectfull to anyone to my knowledge) Does that mean that you are worshiping me? I think not. And why? I'd say it had to do with you not treating me as grander than yourself, and deserving of your self-diminishment before it.
I think nobody was spot on. (lets see you make sense of that)
JLN and all you wonderful contributors to this thread
I would like to supplement the following for your
consideration, and hopefully, comments
I have had occasion to present this questin in the form of a thesis requiring a straight "Yes" or
"No" answer. The thesis was ...".One can remain in love with another person who has rejected one's love"
As a matter of interest , and much to my
surprise, in a population of over two hundred persons, the males answered "yes" in 60% of the
time, while the females answered "No" in 70%
of the time.
One can perhaps conclude that the male is much more idealistic about love than a female, or putting it another way, the female is much more practical about love than is a male.
What do you think about this statistic ?
alikimr, that is quite a surprise. I was just getting ready to respond from a behavior mod point of view. If a particular behavior is not reinforced, it will soon be extinguished. Perhaps love can be considered among our many outward manifestations.
Possibly the female use of the word love is more encompassing? Males don't have the same tendency to call things love, at least not in my experience.
What passes for remain could also matter. I'd be sort of inclined to answer yes, on the account that I don't consider love to be all that lasting in the first place, and using such other relationships as a measure. I still think in a majority of such cases the unreturned love would come to an end in a matter of weeks.
The word "can" is also of importance, might females be more inclined to assert negatives than males? (I'm just throwing out random comentary at this point, you might have noticed.)
Guess that's about all I can come up with.
Cyracuz wrote:
If there is fear in your motivation I would not call it worship. A man might be afraid of another man, and give the semblance of worship. But it is not. It is manipulation. The aim is not to show that you love, it is rather to give the impression of devotion where none is present. The goal is survival, and it has nothing to do with real worship...
I would say that to worship something is perhaps to recognize what it is and pay it due respect."
Cyracuz, I do not disagree with your "take." In fact, I appreciate how it qualifies mine. That's all we have is takes or perspectives. A great advantage of this Able2Know exercise is that it allows us to see our points of view from that of others and to make the necessary changes/improvements afforded. I agree with you that often worship, or even simple deference, is really manipulation. I used to write about how peasants in a latin american country manipulated their class superiors with "performances" of humility (these were expected of them by their class superiors). I referred to them and other manipulations collectively as "deference rituals". But I could have also called them expressions of The Power of the Weak (the title of a book about similar phenomena in Malaysia). But here I am talking about situations where the "worship" is sincere, where one feels one's happiness to be in the hands of the other. That DOES occur.
And sometimes we do give "due respect" (or credit) to another. To me that is at least a large step short of worship; it is a matter of social deference and/or interpersonal appreciation.
Now, I might not have noted that my generalization about worship had to be balanced against possibilies of manipulation and deference had you not contributed your perspective.
--edited
To add fuel to the fire, can't love be 'expedient?'
For instance, in Janet Lewis', The Wife of Martin Guerre, the protagonist, Bertrande de Rols, falls into the trap of loving two men for the prosperity of the household, in a highly patriarchal society.
Obviously, we do not live in such a structred society nowadays, but history can teach us many lessons. I suppose the end of the book suggests expedient love cannot exist however, as she ends up with nothing, and a husband who despises her.
I guess i answered my own question.
Wow. Lots of interesting input. I have thought some more about my definition, and come to the conclusion that it is not a definition of worship, more a code of conduct. JL is closer.
Let me throw in one more thought on love whereby there would definitely be no need of reciprocation. My idealized definition of love (which unfortunately I have never felt) is a feeling so strong for one that when you make a sacrifice for him/her, there is no conscious or subconscious feeling of resentment for having made the sacrifice.
Very intersting, Flyboy. I would think that that kind of loving sacrifice is more likely directed to our children (especially while they are young--before they have demonstrated their lack of appreciation)
One can love without being loved. Love is doesn't have to go both ways. Love is the most unselfish truth out there. Love is the basis among all. Without love, there could be no hate. But don't confuse love with enfatuation. For that could cost too much for one to bear.
