It has always been part of human nature to form a bond with another person. These bonds may be as trivial as friendship or as strong as love. Love is very complex; it takes a lot of effort and insight to form love with another person. As complicated as love is, why people form these bonds is even more complicated. There is the more biological reasoning, supported by Barbara Fredrickson in “Love 2.0”, that says people need it to survive. As seen in Susan Faludi’s “The Naked Citadel”, love can also be formed to either replace an old love or guide one or both people. Continually, in Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together”, people form bonds of love because they love what they nurture. Since love is ingrained in human nature, there is often little choice …show more content…
The cadets at the Citadel feel this loss of love when they leave their mothers behind at the gates. Over the course of a few months, the boys change so much in their love with the upperclassmen that “‘Mothers can’t even tell their sons apart’” (Faludi 98). The Freshman’s new and harsh experiences make them want to latch on to their mothers, but the only people around are the other boys. As a result, they make connections with the upperclassmen because they want the love that they are being deprived of. While the love they form is like the one they had with their mothers, it is not a perfect replacement. Love can also seem unhealthy here because the boys are simply sustaining a love they cannot have. However, their relationship still opens them up for connections with these other boys they may not have had before. The boys need this love so much that it is better to replace it, even if it is not perfect, than to fall into a pit of despair without it. On the other hand, love is not always so easily replaced in the way the cadets replace their mothers. The children in “Alone Together” find that “They don’t like having a new creature in the same egg where their virtual pet has died. For them, the death of a virtual pet is not so unlike the death of what they call a “‘regular pet’” (Turkle 466). To them this love is not replaceable, if it is not the same it is not good enough. However, what makes love so amazing is that people do not need to have the same love with each person. It is why the kids can pick up different Tamagotchi toys but not reset the same one. If they reset the same one they expect the same type of love. Although, if they get a new one, they are simply replacing that love because they want to feel love in general. Replaceable love does not always have to involve the person but it can revolve around changing the type of love they had.
"Romantic love has been the norm since eighteenth-century Europe, when we began connecting marriage with romance." If people did not love each other, then there would be no relationship. Sure, they could try to make it happen, but what would be the point of having the relationship in the first place? If they are trying to escape from something and are not actually motivated by love, they are just creating a new entity to eventually want to escape from. Only love will cause people to remain and stay together in a relationship. According to a study done at Grand Valley State University, titled "The Social Psychology of Love and Attraction", it's true that "shared traits including similarity, religion, ethnic group and race were important features of the other person for over half the participants [in the study]. Each of these traits is linked to a commonality in background. People are subconsciously drawn to others who have the same familial background." This study shows that people do consider factors such as race and cultural identity when seeking a potential partner for a relationship. However, the study also shows that the most important factor in attracting a potential mate is personality. The second most is physical attractiveness. These traits are more important in deciding a potential mate than anything
Both author’s illustrate well, that a lack of love can have a profound effect on the behavior of a person. Whether a person has never experienced love by fortune or by design, the initial introduction of love into
Affection and attachment, wanting intimacy and closeness with someone is imprinted in our very DNA. Our true natures are revealed in the existence of our desire for love. When an ill-intentioned external force denies us that desire through the use of fear however, it has the detrimental effect of keeping us locked in prisons of confusion and despair. There is hope, however, that redemption can come by finding affirmation of our individual identity. There is hope in identifying and knowing the true nature of our identities, in being okay with who we are because others are okay with who we are. We love because we were first loved.
Love has been instilled as the "sexual desire...or blood ties of kinship...special bond and commitment" by society and mainstream culture and the new knowledge simply interrupt a well established and accepted idea. The reality of the biological aspects gives a demeanor of an attachment of two minds or two bodies parse rather than embodiment of love between two individuals. The experimental reasoning has not only stripped the attraction but sentimental aspect of love . It is often said that when people fall in love their hearts just know and they have a special feeling and that is what most people try to find, the emotion of love. The biology of love seems to detach the emotion from the individual by making love a matter of the brain rather than the heart. Furthermore, the notion behind "love at first sight" looses all meaning; as Fredrickson quotes from a collaborator, there must be "a true meeting of the minds- a single act, performed by two brains" , in essence the brains have to be coupling in order for the connection to truly forge and thus making "love at first sight" a thing of the past. The new insight forces an individual to
Love is one of life's great mysteries. People live and build their lives around love. For many people, love, or the quest to find love, is a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Love is arguably the most overwhelming of all emotions. Many ideals and religions consider the bond of love sacred. But, why do people fall in love? Is romantic love an enigma, or can it be reduced to the presence of certain chemicals and neurotransmitters within the brain at a given time?
Abraham Maslow, a well-known American psychologist, theorized that human beings have innate needs that must be met in order to have a happy, healthy existence. The most necessary is, of course, the fulfillment of basic physiological requirements, followed by a feeling of safety. If these are fulfilled, every mentally healthy individual begins craving love and a need to belong. Love and being loved in return is, in fact, vital to an individual’s mental state. This, in addition to the feeling of euphoria, pleasure and joy it provides, and the sensual experience of romantic love, makes it a great obsession in nearly every culture. This craving humans to have their unrequited love returned makes great fodder for movies, songs, and novels. Many
Love can influence people in mysterious ways, the underlying cause is promise, that there is hope for something greater than oneself. We also see how this can create a chasm between family members. The fact of the matter is, love can stem from various situations, memories, or personal thoughts. There are some forbidden marriages that turn out to be a good thing, there are also parents who want give a home to an unsuspecting child they never knew they wanted. Certain situations determine who a person is through the experiences they are given and the feelings that are felt from it. Most of the stories that have come along are giving to us with an example of separation, a longing for love, an outcome that may or may not be beneficial in the long
So, how is love brought about? Love can be created through emotions that two people share together. In order for a good structure to be built, there must be a good foundation. Love can be seen as a jigsaw puzzle in correspondence to how every piece must be put together in order for the entire image to be complete. Once complete, it cannot be changed unless a piece is taken away. A good foundation of love is built by people getting to know one another and creating strong bonds. Unity is important because it builds a trust bond between two people. Though love can be strong in person, there are still people that can confuse it because of objects or even words. An example of this confusion can be shown in the novel “The...
According to Aristophanes, “Love is the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the whole is called love.” (Page 8). Love is the name that human beings give to the desire for wholeness, the desire to be restored to original human nature. Love is important given the kind of creatures humans are; it is the only thing that can lead to happiness. Human beings innately find themselves as lacking – as incomplete and wounded. Love is important because it presents itself as a chance to heal this incompleteness. Just by existing, human beings feel this lack; it is innate. Love is the desire to fill that lack/incompleteness. Human beings fall in love in an attempt to become whole again.
Fromm describes the value of secure attachment, explaining that to a baby, “mother is warmth, mother is food, mother is euphoric state of satisfaction and security” (Fromm, 38). As they grow, children learn how to love and be loved through this relationship. The experience of being loved as a baby is described as a “passive one” because “there is nothing I [the baby] has to do in order to be loved” (Fromm, 39). Love, as a child may have learned about it, can only be received and “cannot be acquired, produced, controlled”, but the “capacity to love” can be developed; this is usually displayed in children starting at age eight (Fromm, 40). In a healthy learning journey, children come to learn that “love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love” (Fromm, 46). Children will seriously struggle - especially in regards to their ability to love and be loved - if they are deprived a comforting, present caretaker in their early years of
Robert Nozick’s Love’s Bond is a clear summary of components, goals, challenges, and limitations of romantic love. Nozick gives a description of love as having your wellbeing linked with that of someone and something you love. I agree with ideas that Nozick has explained concerning the definition of love, but individuals have their meaning of love. Every individual has a remarkable thing that will bring happiness and contentment in their lives. While sometimes it is hard to practice unconditional love, couples should love unconditionally because it is a true love that is more than infatuation and overcomes minor character flaw.
Why does one love? One loves for the sake of happiness. This was the common mindset in the pre-modern worldview from the time of ancient Greece. The ideas present in Plato’s The Symposium have however been replaced with a more contemporary view, particularly in Western societies. Allan Bloom details this transition in his work Love and Friendship. Bloom argues that the idea of “eros” has lost its true meaning; it has been morphed into a selfish and self-less act of mere sex: “Eros, in its Freudian version, is really all just selfishness and provides no basis for intimate human connection” (Bloom 24). Sex is no longer a form of a strong, intimate connection, but rather our contemporaries have allowed sex to become “no different from a description of eating habits” (Bloom 20). Society today sees sex everywhere, it is forced upon us by the media, but there’s no beauty in it. Love relationships once were for the purpose of exchanging knowledge, today it is a label frequently and erroneously used.
As any romantic will assert, love is by far the most powerful force known to human hearts and minds. This sentiment is espoused throughout history, almost to the point of cliché. Everyone has heard the optimistic statement, “love conquers all,” and The Beatles are certain, however idyllic it may be, that “all you need is love.” Humanity is convinced that love is unique within human emotion, unequalled in its power to both lift the spirit up in throws of ecstasy, and cast it down in utter despair.
Is love an emotion we feel naturally, or is it something that needs to be learned? Is the idea of loving someone a journey in which you grow together, or is there really such a thing as ‘love at first sight’? Vivek Shraya’s narrative She of the mountains and bells hooks’ perspective novel all about love dive into the ideas and definitions of love. Shraya’s novel She of the mountains explores how love is something we learn through experience, how our definition of love can be moulded and changed through those experiences, and how they are correlated to our individual identity and self-love. hooks’ all about love blames society for our reasoning why love fails and how we fail to have a sense of individual identity because of the idea of love
Love is arguably the most powerful emotion possessed by mankind; it is the impalpable bond that allows individuals to connect and understand one another. Pure love is directly related to divinity. Without love, happiness and prosperity become unreachable goals. An individual that possesses all the desired superficial objects in the world stands alone without the presence of love. For centuries love has been marveled by all that dare encounter it. Countless books and poems have been transcribed to explain the phenomenon of love, but love surpasses all intellectual explanations and discussions. Love is not a definition, but rather a thought, an idea. This idea, the idea of love, burns inside us all. Instinctually, every soul on Earth is