You’re right, unselfish isn’t the right word to assign to suicide - actually, it can be seen as quite selfish. I stand corrected. My point was, Jack gave up his own life for another person, whether or not it was morally good.
I suppose I can’t prove it one way or the other, but I don’t see any reason to believe that other animals don’t feel love the same way humans do.
As for instinct not explaining love, I would say love is an instinct. There isn’t always a rational reason for an individual to feel love, but clearly a species that loves is more apt to protect one another, and thus better geared toward survival. I suspect that the emotion of love that we feel is the consciousness’ subjective experience of that instinct. Just as pain motivates us to pull our hand away from fire, love motivates us to protect and care for one another. How long do you think humans would have lasted if men had always left women to fend for themselves immediately after impregnating them, and if women had always left their children alone to die immediately after giving birth?
Carnick:
If a person dies saving her or his child, she/he has already passed on the trait. I don’t think it’s a stretch to consider that from an evolutionary standpoint, a younger person has more potential to ensure the survival of the species, so protecting our young makes biological sense, even at the expense of our own lives. Besides which, I think a scenario where a parent knows they will die saving the child, and actually has to make a conscious choice between their death and the child’s death, is relatively rare.
Love is a state of consciousness.
Unconditional love comes from the Creator.
If we try to encourage a consciousness of love in ourselves we benefit from doing so in many ways. Spiritual grown is one of them, but we just feel better about ourselves and others.
Paul says it very well.
“Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love doesn’t demand its own way. It’s not irritable or touchy. It doesn’t hold grudges and will not notice when others do it wrong. It’s never glad about injustice, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends”. – Saint Paul.
We’ve made it this far :rolleyes:
If love is an instinct, it must be a very weak one, or else there’d be far less daddies skipping town after impregnating mommy and far less mommies leaving junior to die in a dumpster.
Anyone would pull their hand out of a fire, unless there was something very wrong with that person. Abandoned and abused babies are far more common. I wish I could go one day without hearing a story on the news about that sort of thing.
That implies love is at least partially a conscious decision, and not pure instinct. Then again, human psychology is horribly complicated, so who knows?
Instinct is not a mandate. We, as humans, ignore them all the time. A male human’s instinct is to mate with as many females as possible, yet some men ignore that because our society values monogamy. I have instincts to reproduce (evolutionarily the most powerful, according to some), yet I have chosen not to have children.
Animals are no different. There are many recorded instances in which an animal has inexplicably killed its young or just walked away, abandoning them. Animals sometimes form homosexual couples, though no offspring can result. Animals sometimes chose not to mate at all.
Humans abandoning babies to the elements used to be far more common in the past. In ancient Rome, for example, doing so was considered perfectly acceptable, if the child was unwanted. There was even a designated spot to ditch them. If a stanger happened by and wanted the baby, they could have it. If not, it died from exposure.
Just because an instinct exists doesn’t mean it cannot be supressed or ignored. We don’t go on “autopilot” when instinct tells us to do something.
I agree with Lissa. It is possible to overcome instinct. We are only capable of acting according to motivation. If one motivation is stronger that another, we will act on it. There are many religious rituals that involve ignoring pain. The instinct to avoid pain is still there; it’s just that another motivation is stronger. Or look at professional athletes; they routinely ignore pain because the motivation to excel at their sport is stronger.
If love is not an instinct, then what is it, and why wouldn’t your argument that it is “weak” apply against whatever it is that you are positing love is?
Looking back on my earlier post, I think my paragraphs 5 and 6 are pretty much crap. I apologize.
Does “love” exist? Obviously so: we have a name for it, and untold millions have declared that they have experienced it. As the experience IS the “it,” the preceding fact is sufficient to demonstrate the existence of the thing-experienced.
I’m not sure that love can be defined without using anecdotes.
To me, love is meeting the sunrise with a kiss on my wife’s cheek, once again feeling blessed that she is a part of my life. Love is what makes my chest bulge out in pride when I see my son accomplish something he hadn’t been able to do before. Love is being unable to hold back the tears when the midwife showed me my daughter for the first time (she’s a month old now…I have pictures 
)
Love is literally being a part of another person and allowing them to be a part of you (I think the second part is key as it makes one quite vulnerable).
As for unconditional love, I think it exists in our minds as something to strive towards. However, the reality of love is that everyone has a breaking point (blanket statement, I know). The one you love could do something, either once or repeatedly, that would cause you to stop loving them.
Dear Carnick:
I must commend you for bringing up the question “Does Love Exist?”
Here is my mini-dissertation.
Before anything else, there is that word ‘love’. What does it refer to? a potato, a computer, a person, a day in the week, an emotion, an action?
It is an emotion, just like fear, hate, envy, greed. And just like any other emotion, it leads to actions and behaviors of all kinds in quest of satisfaction.
Now what kinds of actions and behaviors does the emotion of love lead to? Any kind of actions and behaviors that satisfy the subject experiencing or possessed by the emotion – in whatever way the subject thinks of satisfaction. Let us just simply limit ourselves to actions, for behaviors are composed also of actions.
Actions, there are two kinds: those emerging within the self and remaining within the self, and those also resulting in outside effects which are executed by the bodily faculties of the self or subject possessed by the emotion, love, we are talking about in the present context.
An example of an action that remains within the self is lust that is not acted out. The Master tells us that “Whosoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart” (something like that). When you go ahead to touch the woman, that is an external action, the extension and completion of the inner action.
(An aside: if you have to go to hell for lust in your heart, be practical and execute your lust; because you get to hell already on the thought alone – just trying to be cynically humorous, ha ha ha.)
At this point we can all agree that love exists, at least in our minds who are engaged in this discourse; otherwise we can’t engage in this discourse. What we are actually interested in is the description of that emotion we call ‘love’.
Now, I said earlier that emotion seeks satisfaction; therefore love seeks satisfaction. Satisfaction, that word, it means a filling up of an emptiness or want or incompleteness or inadequacy or deficiency or want or need or wish or desire. You get the picture.
Love can be defined in the broadest possible way as an emotion that seeks self-satisfaction. If you are asking what is satisfaction, just examine yourself to know when you are satisfied and when not, then you know what is satisfaction in all its varieties and moods and ways and other incidentals thereof.
Now, let’s examine some loves. Love of pizza, it satisfies you. Love of women, they satisfy you. Love of Bush, he satisfies you and your sense of patriotism and defense of country. Love of Straight Dope boards, they satisfy you. Love of mother, mother satisfies you. Love of philosophy, it satisfies you. Love of your children, they satisfy you. Love of parents, they satisfy you. Love of entomology, it satisfies you. Homosexual love; two gay parties satisfy each other. Love of God, He satisfies you. Love of tax cuts, they satisfy you.
In every love there is the self and the object of love which satisfies the self or by which and through which the self is satisfied. Examine our examples of love above. And also examine any other kinds of love you can imagine or can engender.
Now, we must see in the self the nuclear self and the extended self. The mother is both a nuclear self and an extended self. Any love that is directed to another self is directed also ultimately to the initiating self which now is acting as an extended self. So the whole idea of altruistic love, love of country, love of the poor, love of God even, are all self-love of the extended self; which does not in any way entail any loss whatsoever of the direct love object, be it the child, the friend, the pet dog, or Bush, or one’s country.
What are the foundations of the extended self? Biological procreation resulting in maternity, paternity, and consanguinity; then all kinds of links which are maintained in the minds of the collective self as of a neighborhood, a country, in general society at large, of which collective self the extended self is a part of.
So, summing up: love exists and it consists in an emotion in quest of self-satisfaction, the self understood as originally the nuclear self, then also and not less crucial, the extended self founded upon biology and upon all the links civilization and society have contrived to bring men together for their communal objectives, which redound to the benefit of the nuclear self in the shorter or longer terms.
That description of love, as I have expatiated on, is concretized in all love from libidinous love to love of Bush and country. Now, if you ask me what is the quintessential love of the extended self? I will maintain that maternal love is the primordial love of the extended self; and all other love where an object, be it a person or an impersonal entity, is patterned after maternity love of the extended self of the woman-mother.
All praise to womanhood and motherhood!
Susma Rio Sep
Very interesting point of view, Susma Rio Sep. The thought of all love connecting to maternity is a very comforting one. Maybe love of friends, family, etc, is all a sort of “training” for parenthood?
Thanks for the lengthy reply. May I ask what belief(s) you follow? You mentioned “The Master,” so I assume Hinduism or Buddhism?
I would hesitate to put “homosexual love” into its own catagory, however. I think when two adults form a romantic/sexual bond, it’s all the same - but I don’t want to get into politics here.
If it were easy to prove, Greenback, then what would be the fun of debating it?
New question: Is unconditional (undying and unwavering) love between two consenting adults, non-sexual friends, or a parent and child ever to be broken? If so, what are those boundaries? If you truly love someone unconditionally, is it possible to ever completely turn those feelings off?