# Love is overrated **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 28, 2018, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378 "2018-03-28T21:38:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/121 "2018-04-03T11:34:07Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Your casual disdain actually pisses me off quite a lot. I don’t know how you can call it ‘casual’. He’s put quite a lot of effort into the practice of this disdain. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/122 "2018-04-03T12:16:09Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Kinda obvious. Kittens are cute, until you take them apart - so don’t. Words to live by! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/123 "2018-04-03T12:19:10Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > You can dispute it all you want, but that doesn’t make it any more real. Illusions feel real, that’s the point. Emotions are a function of chemicals in the brain, not really the mind. That being said, love is an illusion. It tricks you into making something other than what it is. That’s why emotions can be a lie, kind of like anger. It’s a mask for something else. > > You’re reacting the same way I did when I found out love is an illusion, but unfortunately there isn’t anything to suggest otherwise. Describe the advantages and benefit of your “reality”. In what way has your nihilism and depression improved the quality of your life and the quality of life of those around you? In what way would my life improve if I accepted your morose view of people and things in my life that give me pleasure, but according to you (some random depressed obsessive guy on the internet) are an illusion? Explain, using your well informed and unobscured (from illusion) view of reality, why having no love or joy in my life is better for me and the people in my life than being content and finding pleasure in various experiences. How are you better off than I? Finally, because I’m genuinely curious if your mental disorder can be treated, are you getting help from a qualified professional? Because the last exchange was pretty disturbing and it doesn’t seem like you’re doing any better from thread to thread. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/124 "2018-04-03T13:33:10Z")
How does all this make you feel? And if those emotions are troubling to you, does it matter that they are “illusions”? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/125 "2018-04-03T14:33:49Z")
When you eat chocolate, you’re not tasting chocolate - there is no sense in which any molecule of the chocolate enters your brain (within the timeframe of the experience) - the taste of chocolate is just an illusion - a lie - a convenient fiction that your tongue, olfactory receptors and your brain all conspired to trick you into believing. Why does it matter? How is it better to think of things in this way? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/126 "2018-04-03T15:18:10Z")
Yes, the human mind does not and cannot directly perceive reality. So your argument is that human beings can’t really see. Instead photons hit our retinas which stimulate nerves which send impulses to the visual center of the brain which releases chemicals and so on. All an illusion! Except, dude, this is what seeing IS. It’s all chemical reactions all the way down. This is what human beings ARE. Arguing that love doesn’t exist because it’s all a bunch of chemicals in the brain is just arguing that nothing exists. And if nothings really exists, who are you and why are you trying to argue with us? ---
**Author:** ![Crazy\_Canuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazy_canuck/32/5282_2.png) [@Crazy\_Canuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazy_Canuck)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/127 "2018-04-03T15:40:08Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > You have the power to choose differently. You currently choose not to. Does a schizophrenic also have “the power to choose differently” and shut up the voices in their head? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/128 "2018-04-03T16:11:09Z")
> [@Crazy\_Canuck](#): > > Does a schizophrenic also have “the power to choose differently” and shut up the voices in their head? Good question! And the answer is “sometimes”. Some people who have regular hallucinations learn to distinguish between hallucination and reality and to not react to the hallucinatory input. Like, you still hear the voices in your head talking to you, but you know they aren’t real and you tune them out like you’d tune out a talk radio station blaring in a restaurant. The root of the question is how much a human being can decide anything. We make decisions all the time, but what goes into making those decisions? You’re hungry, but you’re on a diet. So do you choose the salad or the french fries. Lots of people don’t choose the salad, they choose the french fries even though they claim to want the salad. So why did they choose the french fries? Because our brain doesn’t control our brain. The brain consists of a whole bunch of things all smooshed together, and in some cases it feels like we have a choice in what we do, and in other cases it feels like we have no choice, and in other cases it feels like we might have a choice but we don’t actually have a choice, and in other cases it feels like we have no choice but we actually do. It’s super-easy for me to not take heroin. I literally expend zero willpower resisting the siren song of opiates. Other people not so much. So what’s the difference between me and them? Why is it easy for me to choose not to take opiates, but not for other people? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/129 "2018-04-03T17:55:56Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > We view and experience the world through our eyes and senses, and only are privy to our own thoughts. I am privy to your thoughts, and see the world thru your eyes, because I read your posts. Are you an illusion? I don’t think these rather depressing screeds you come up with are things you thought up on your own. Therefore you are also capable of encountering experiences from minds different from your own. Are they an illusion? Like I said way back when you started this schtick - there is no distinction between thinking something, and thinking you are thinking something. Thought exists. Reality exists, apart from the self. 2 + 2 = 4 even if I don’t think about it. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/130 "2018-04-03T18:44:02Z")
I don’t know why **Machinaforce** bothers to argue with us unlovable illusions. But when he does, something out there that is not his own mind responds in an unpredictable way. 😃 Perhaps the real illusion is **Machinaforce’s** dubious view of reality. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/131 "2018-04-03T21:05:19Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > The problem is that **Machinaforce’s** arguments are irrational. > > From his original post: > > Because the speed of light is finite, we see things at a distance after they have happened. So this means that everything is an illusion? Or nothing matters? > If you go one light year away, you see things that happened one year ago = love is an illusion? > > This is not a rational argument. > > Machinaforce quotes something from the Bhagavad Gita about the mind being fickle, but omits to say that in the very next verse it says something to the effect that “Yes, but with practice it can be held firm.” In fact the Bhagavad Gita has a _lot_ of positive and inspiring things to say about love. > > So love for inanimate objects, and for things like music, etc. is real, and it’s only love for people that is an illusion? Does this even make sense? > > The quality of these arguments means that arguing rationally against them is a waste of time. The OP is not open to rational arguments. It is ration when you realize that the love for physical objects is really more towards the attributes we assign to those objects and not the object itself. People are not the traits that we love, if they were they would be so all the time. I would like to see the positive things it says about love. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/132 "2018-04-03T21:07:21Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I am privy to your thoughts, and see the world thru your eyes, because I read your posts. > > Are you an illusion? > > I don’t think these rather depressing screeds you come up with are things you thought up on your own. Therefore you are also capable of encountering experiences from minds different from your own. Are they an illusion? > > Like I said way back when you started this schtick - there is no distinction between thinking something, and thinking you are thinking something. Thought exists. Reality exists, apart from the self. 2 + 2 = 4 even if I don’t think about it. > > Regards, > Shodan 2+2=4 only does so because that’s what we agreed upon but there isn’t much to suggested that it could equal something else. You aren’t privy to my thoughts only my posts, you cannot see the world through my eyes only trough what you imagine that to be. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/133 "2018-04-03T21:13:39Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Describe the advantages and benefit of your “reality”. In what way has your nihilism and depression improved the quality of your life and the quality of life of those around you? In what way would my life improve if I accepted your morose view of people and things in my life that give me pleasure, but according to you (some random depressed obsessive guy on the internet) are an illusion? > > Explain, using your well informed and unobscured (from illusion) view of reality, why having no love or joy in my life is better for me and the people in my life than being content and finding pleasure in various experiences. How are you better off than I? > > Finally, because I’m genuinely curious if your mental disorder can be treated, are you getting help from a qualified professional? Because the last exchange was pretty disturbing and it doesn’t seem like you’re doing any better from thread to thread. It’s not about improvement, is about going with what is true. That doesn’t always make life better. Existence and humans are fundamentally empty and the things that we assign to ourselves aren’t us. Or as some people argue, our true nature is emptiness. > **[Bernadette Roberts: A Christian Mystic for Our Time](https://www.spiritualteachers.org/bernadette-roberts/#more-299)** > > Bernadette Roberts passed away in her sleep on November 27, 2017.  What follows is a review written before her passing. This sort of blows a hole in love. We aren’t all one, because there is no one and no other. Those are just inventions we came up with, illusions. We are fundamentally empty so the “person” you are loving is just and illusion, a construct of the mind. They don’t really exist. The processes and behaviors that you weave into a person with a name is but an illusion. That’s why I cannot logically believe in love anymore, even though I still want to. It’s like living a lie. Even thinking as to why I value love leads to me realizing it’s just what got programmed to me by society. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/134 "2018-04-03T21:47:10Z")
Again, dude, if human beings are illusions, what exactly is the thing that’s experiencing the illusion of being a human being? There is no homunculus sitting in your brain looking out through your eyes and pulling levers to move your arms and legs. The combined system of various things that together are having the illusion of being a human being IS the human being. You’re arguing that there’s no such thing as planet Earth, it’s just a bunch of rocks and water and air and lava all mushed together. Nonsense, you’re just arguing semantics. Human beings are piles of chemicals flopping around in various ways. And? What’s the insight here, that if we understood this we’d collapse into a heap on the floor and cry ourselves to death? If love is a meaningless illusion, why are you so upset over learning this? Love isn’t an illusion. Love is just the name we give to the mechanisms in our human brains that cause us take care of each other. These mechanisms are some sort of vastly complicated system of nerves and organs and chemicals, and you can take apart a human being and never find one atom of “love” or “anger” or “sorrow”, because those things aren’t substances. When I kick you in the nuts, is the pain an illusion? Dude, it’s just a chemical reaction carried by nerves to your brain which causes your brain to react a certain way! Pain’s not real, dude! Except it still hurts, right? If it hurts, what exactly is feeling the pain? ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/135 "2018-04-03T22:33:10Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Again, dude, if human beings are illusions, what exactly is the thing that’s experiencing the illusion of being a human being? There is no homunculus sitting in your brain looking out through your eyes and pulling levers to move your arms and legs. Right now was a few moments ago, and the very near future will be right now in an instant, which has already become the very recent past and as I look back on what happened yesterday and what I said and did, I think about tomorrow and how I will feel about today, which will be yesterday by then. No, man, you just gotta do what you gotta do and not waste your life mapping out that part of your belly where the warm and comfortable placenta was ripped away from you. But you can examine someone else’s. Just, look and be done with it. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2018, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/136 "2018-04-03T22:54:56Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > It is ration when you realize that the love for physical objects is really more towards the attributes we assign to those objects and not the object itself. People are not the traits that we love, if they were they would be so all the time. > > I would like to see the positive things it says about love. This post, like so many of your posts, is damn near incoherent (the word is ration_ **al** _, for starters), but I believe I’m seeing a germ of an idea buried in here (though it may be an illusion): ‘We can’t possibly love people, because we have only an external view of people and don’t actually know them _for real._ So we don’t know what we’re loving, so we can’t love.’ There are people who are disputing this by claiming they can _so_ get to know other people for real, but I’m going to go another direction with this: So what if you don’t really know the innards of other people? Love is an emotion - it resides in the head of the person feeling it. And, yes, that means that you can be loving an image that isn’t true. The prototypical image is the dizzy teen who loves Justin Beiber, but even in real relationships you could find yourself suddenly discovering that the other person likes Nickelback and be thrust into a moral quandary. Certain shocking discoveries such as that could change your image of the person, and could even cause you to fall out of love with them. But that doesn’t mean that the love you felt for the incorrect image wasn’t real. Quite to the contrary, it can be shown that love is very real because it effects us physically. (You seem to have this bizarre idea that being based in chemicals makes our minds less real, but that’s stupid. Chemicals are real, so minds made of them are real. Duh.) The simple fact is that love is an emotional state, and minds have it, and both minds and emotions are based in chemicals, and all of it is real. This remains true even if you don’t fully understand the people and things you love. Because love isn’t something _they’re_ doing, it’s something _you’re_ doing. (Well, those of us who aren’t emotionally stunted.) And when you love somebody, that’s a thing that’s happening regardless of anything else. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2018, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/137 "2018-04-04T02:02:43Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > It’s not about improvement, is about going with what is true. That doesn’t always make life better. Existence and humans are fundamentally empty and the things that we assign to ourselves aren’t us. > > Or as some people argue, our true nature is emptiness. Based on this and many previous posts, it seems true that you are obsessed with nihilism and determined to wallow in misery. You repeatedly claim that your joyless existence is the “truth” while everyone else who claims to experience love and happiness in their life is living a lie. You’ve yet to demonstrate with any meaningful evidence, that your version of the truth is more real than those who do not subscribe to your expressed feelings and views. And your cite is (surprise to no one) a religious crackpot that claims the following: > [@Machinaforce](#): > > [Bernadette Roberts: A Christian Mystic for Our Time](http://www.spiritualteachers.org/bernadette-roberts/#more-299) > > > [@](#): > > > > _One possible way of envisioning the human passage is the following. We think of ourselves as originally emerging from the unknown, from darkness, nothingness or non-existence into the light of consciousness. But as consciousness develops we discover the increasing ability to see in the dark, see into the nothingness or mystery within ourselves and eventually realize that this darkness and nothingness is the divine from which we emerged and with which we are one. Thus we discover that our original darkness IS true light. Midway in this passage, divine light (darkness or unknowing) and the light of consciousness are in balance, with neither outshining the other. But as we move beyond this mid-point, divine light begins to outshine the light of consciousness until, in the end, the light of consciousness goes out and only divine light remains. From this vantage point we look back on the passage and see that although consciousness was the veil that dimmed the light, this dimming was necessary in order to make the human dimension possible. But if consciousness makes human existence possible, it is also not separate from the divine, nor does it completely hide it; on the contrary, consciousness or self is man’s faculty or medium for experiencing the divine — so long as it remains, that is [this is key]. Our passage through consciousness is the gradual return to the divine; we leave the divine unknowingly and in darkness, but we return knowingly and in light._ You can’t be fucking serious with this bullshit! Tell me this actually makes a gram of fucking sense to anybody with the most basic capacity for critical thought and analysis. \*“Original darkness IS true light.” \* Jesus Fucking Christ that’s a pant load. :smack: > [@Machinaforce](#): > > This sort of blows a hole in love. We aren’t all one, because there is no one and no other. Those are just inventions we came up with, illusions. We are fundamentally empty so the “person” you are loving is just and illusion, a construct of the mind. They don’t really exist. The processes and behaviors that you weave into a person with a name is but an illusion. This blows alright. YOU may be fundamentally empty. Don’t ascribe your internal illusions to me. What makes you think your reality is anything other than a sever mental disorder that can be treated? Find me serious medical journal that states the natural human condition is congenital misery and obsessive nihilism. Cite it and then we can have this fucking conversation about truth, illusion and reality. > [@Machinaforce](#): > > That’s why I cannot logically believe in love anymore, even though I still want to. It’s like living a lie. Even thinking as to why I value love leads to me realizing it’s just what got programmed to me by society. You have a mental illness. Unless and until you get professional treatment we’re going to continue having this fucking pointless conversation ad nauseam and you won’t be any closer to “truth” or “reality” than when you first posted on this message board. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2018, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/138 "2018-04-04T02:10:41Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > You aren’t privy to my thoughts only my posts, you cannot see the world through my eyes only trough what you imagine that to be. But you seem quite confident and content in your ability to come here and tell us that love and happiness are an illusion and our feelings are a lie. I’d call that hypocrisy if it didn’t stink so much of unfounded arrogance. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2018, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/139 "2018-04-04T06:15:59Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yes, the human mind does not and cannot directly perceive reality. So your argument is that human beings can’t really see. Instead photons hit our retinas which stimulate nerves which send impulses to the visual center of the brain which releases chemicals and so on. All an illusion! > > Except, dude, this is what seeing IS. It’s all chemical reactions all the way down. This is what human beings ARE. Arguing that love doesn’t exist because it’s all a bunch of chemicals in the brain is just arguing that nothing exists. Agreed completely. And incidentally, this is why the creationist argument “you can’t prove it because you weren’t there” is false - we perceive \*\*\*everything \*\*\*both indirectly, and in retrospect - so the difference between our perception of an apple on the table before us, and our perception of a dinosaur that lived 65 million years ago, is only a matter of distance. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2018, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378/140 "2018-04-04T12:04:52Z")
While and exploration of the meaning of love, and what drives us to love, could be very interesting, this thread isn’t it. It has devolved into psychoanalysis and insults. I’m closing it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/love-is-overrated/811378.md?page=6)