Wednesday, March 23, 2011

TR 11:15am

18 comments:

Kayla Delacerda said...

I hate defining love. I do not see how love IS manipulation. I believe love is an excuse to manipulate. Love itself also manipulates the one who loves. Love creates ownership. I don't even want to think about love in the context of "THE MARKET" cause it might make me sick. Some people who have never felt love might think they do because of whatever exposure they have gotten from the manipulation of "the system". Who is selling "compationate love"? All I know is that I love.

LYDIA said...

I do think it is possible to love and respect one another, but it can depend on upbringing, expectations, and sense of self. Love is not the same for everyone, but personally, I have a relationship with a man I love and respect and he reciprocates these feelings. If we argue there is never any name-calling, foul language, or bringing up past mistakes. I also work hard to have a good balance between my relationship and my sense of self. We do not spend every moment together. I have my own friends, interests, and activities. I’m not looking to be completed; yet when we come together we are fantastic. We live together but I have a space where I can shut the door and have privacy, a private phone conversation, or just relax after a long day of work. This may not be an ideal relationship for everyone, some hope to morph into a complete entity with their partner, or hope to spend every moment together, and share every detail of their life. I don’t. I feel there are things that are personal and private, even to my lover. This helps me never lose myself, and it also keeps me very thankful to be with a person who can respect that privacy. After four years I work hard at my relationship and still maintain the love and respect, it can exist.

Lydia Lane

Anonymous said...

I think this topic can be viewed in many different ways, and people make their opinion based on what we have been taught, seen others do or simply act just because you feel a certain way. I think that you can represent love in many ways. There are many ways how you can show love for someone or for an object. I think that you should show your love however you think its best, whether is by writing a letter to a boy/girl you like, or by dedicating a song, or just by saying it and having true feelings. Love is very strong and it can make you do many things. I think one of the most important things related to love, if it is not the most important, is respect. How can you be with someone that doesn't respect you? I think respect has to be one of the number one things there has to be in order for a relationship or friendship to work.
Patricia Santana

Stephanie Rosa said...

Love is something I think people misuse and abuse. I think a true loving relationship is one that is a compassionate selfless love. A love that is based on mutual respect and understanding is one that will be a lasting one as well. It will last because those relationships do not rely on superficial standards and the people in these relationships are not in it just for show/display, selfish desires, a need to not be lonely. I hate when I hear people say "He completes me" or "She completes me". NO, they really do not, so enough. A person should complement your happiness not supplement it. One should try to be happy on their own and happy with themselves. If you do not fit that requirement you have no business being in a relationship with another person because it will most likely end up with you clinging unhealthily to that person to make you happy. What are you going to do when that person leaves you?

Anonymous said...

Love is something that varies from person to person. A determined olympic athlete will love his training regiment and loves the feeling of running the fastest he can around the track field. For others, love can be related to a certain sensation including; taste, feel, smell, ect. The media has a huge roll on how we view this idea of love. Movies always have the beautiful woman falling madly in love with the MI:6 agent, James Bond. This is not real love, the woman always dies. Love is when two (or more depending on religion and other variables) people feel so strongly for each other that they make promises and vows to be eternally attached to that person for the rest of a humans life. In today's society, divorce is something that happens every day. This is not something people who were once madly in "love" would do. Divorce is a disease created by hollywood and the media. As children, girls are exposed to barbie dolls that have big breasts, blonde hair, long legs. Before a child can even read or write, they know what sexy is. Love is something you make with another person, object, or idea because of how strongly you feel for that.

Eric Langone

Zachary said...

I believe that true love is when two individuals care for each other. When two individuals would give up their life for each other. They may have a physical attraction, or an emotional attraction to each other, or both. They both share intimacy with each other. The media shows a different definition of love. A lot of female actresses are anorexic, because the media does not love an overweight, ugly woman on television. A lot of actresses feel like they have to be skinny to the bone to be loved. Love today is mistaken only by means of physical attraction. It takes more than just physical attraction to truly be in love with someone. If your love is just a physical one, than that love was never really there, or it will diminish quickly. Love is often confused by lust; they our totally different from each other. No I don’t think that love is a disease, I just think it is confused.

lstelford said...

I think we all have our own interpretations of what love is and can be. Firstly we have to love and understand ourselves forst in order to truly love somebody else. There are different types of love;loving a family member, falling in love and some people might say they love materalistic items. When loving someone we have to take them uncondintionally through their good times and bad, more importantly through the bad is when we tend to see how deep the love is.
Unfortunetly the media has portrayed love to be something it is not. So we are often looking for something that might not happen or somebody that does not exist. Love for evrerbody is not the same,and its not something you look for but rather appears when you do not expect or be ready for it. Love can be strong and frightening for some people. It might sound corny but I think when one shows love to everybody their life is that much happier.
I think people through the word LOVE around to easy and sometime the powerfullness of the word is lost.

Anonymous said...

Love to me is a want(or first order desires). Those desires are things we want instead of letting love come find us, we force or search to believe that we will be in love. When we are indeed thst we are "in love" we become angry and jealous which is why i agree that love makes us hate. What if instead of being either an option to what love is, what if love is an affectional bond disease based on the universal tendency for humans to seek closeness in order to experience security. To a response to Rubin's Elements of romantic love, is that physical attatchment can be overwhelming when the love turns into a obsessive love especially for those people who are clingy. While too much caring without valuing of a persons needs can turn into careless decisions. Intimacy refers to sharing thought and desires. But dating a jealous person lead to death. I think people can get passionate love while dating because it reveals sexual attraction intense emotions and feelings that last between 6-30 months. Compassionate love is more respect, affection, and trust. Which is more related to marriage and understanding. I think the key to a non-hatred relationship is to respect someone and love them as a friend. For example i love my Fiance' as the love of my life but i also respect her as a person because loving her as an ideal person is selfless. Even though i do call her my queen and everything is about her, my love is a form of conquest. Its hard for many people to admit that we need to seperate ourself from the desire of feeling attracted to people sexually. Its more than just being sexually attracted to a person, its respect. Respect and love do exist but we shouldn't respect and love because of our lovers or friends or family we should do it because we want to. Saine Stevens
TR 11:15

Malaïka WDW said...

Love is everywhere, and every one of us has a different definition of it. The first Love we usually receive is from our family. I have always been very close to my parents, brothers, grand-parents (…) and I think it is a huge chance. I share amazing moments with them and even though I am far now I am still close to every member of my family (thank you facebook and skype). Another example of the incredible family boundary is when I went to Cameroon for the first time (at 6). I knew that I was in my family. I felt really closed to them even though I had never met them before. This is real love for me. I think it is really sad for people not to maintain a close relationship with their families because they are the ones who – normally- would never turn their back to you.
Regarding “the other” Love, it is very difficult to define. As mentioned in the post Love can lead to really bad actions. I believe these terrible things happen because people loose themselves in the relationship. They hide and try to change to please the significant other but after a time, it does not work. They realize they have missed opportunities because of the relationship and instead of blaming themselves for being in this situation they blame him/her…
Before loving someone else, we have to love ourselves. In other words, know ourselves. And the best way to do that is by experiencing new things such as traveling. Do not stay in the same environment you have been all your life, get married and realize that you are stuck. I have already been in love but it did not stop me to go travel and do what is good for me. When I look back I am happy to have done these choices even if it was hard. Yet, I am a very romantic person and believe in true Love: intimacy + passion + commitment (as describe in Dr. Peter Salovey’s lecture). But before achieving the Love I want to know each part of the “equation” alone. Again, experiencing is the best way to know as long as you respect the other. Studies have shown that people who are relatively the same (grow up in the same area, have the same interests…) are more likely to end up together. Well, I think it is boring and sad. According to me there is nothing more beautiful and intense that two different people being together. I want to be with someone that I can learn with and teach him about culture language… anything. That would be the perfect Love for me.

Unknown said...

Love according to me, requires several stipulations from both persons in a relationship in order to occur. For example unconditional and uninterested love, love with honesty and loyalty. However even though those persons have achieved to compromise these and more stipulations, not do you love until you realize that you are more involved on that person than on yourself. That is a more deeper aspect than what most pretend or tend to believe when they feel in love or have found it. So in other words, love is very easy to imitate but not to understand it.

Julio Moreno

Anonymous said...

Love cannot be generalized because for every person and in every situation love is different. There may be instances when someone is genuinely in compassionate and passionate love with their partner. But there have been other times when someone desires another person because they need that person to survive. They are so comfortable with the idea of having that person and believe that they cannot live without them so they stay with them and call that “love.” I do think that some people may confuse love with ownership as well, once a pair is married and share everything including financial obligations. In this generation, love and respect have turned into a weak aspect in life. I feel like no one has respect for one another any more because if they believe what one is doing wrong then they have completely lost their respect for them. With that being said, without respect love is not possible.

-Victoria Puentes

Lithica Transparente said...

The topic of love always reminds me of that TERRIBLE song that goes: "What is love?! Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, oh no". Why? Because a lot of the time I view love as a form of constant delusional masochism. Some may call me a cynic for doing so but here's why. Consider the teenagers today who have sex at a quick pace, get pregnant too soon. It all started with an "I love you baby, I want to be with you forever." then the girl gets pregnant, the guy is running out the door as fast as he possibly can. Love for many people is a false idea. It's an "I NEED" idea. Whether its to satiate something they are lacking in their daily lives or if they're just recklessly hungry for pain, most people jump into love headfirst and don't really consider what it is or why they feel it. Do I believe there is true love? Oh yes. The possibility is out there. As my aunt said earlier in a conversation: "Everything is possible except the impossible." to a certain extent, it's true. Sometimes its not physically or naturally possible but maybe it can be created in our heads, making it possible in that realm. The story of Narcissus and Echo for example, Hephestus and Aphrodite. All being masochistic and complicated ideas of love. Why would the Goddess of Love be described so easily as fickle? Because love, often times, IS fickle. Humans make it so! Overall, most people are way too self absorbed to really truly love anyone else until they encounter someone whom they love more than they love themselves, and sadly, many people never find that person, and just settle for what is there at the time.

Christine Elias
TR 11:15

Anonymous said...

I LOVE love! It is one of the greatest abstractions in human life and whether people exploit the emotion for their own personal gain is irrelvant because several other emotions are equally explouted. For instance, hatred is captizaled on by war mongers who sell weapons and ammunition to anyone. I don't think anyone will ever be able to define what love is with certanity because it varies among different people and different relationships. You cannot compare the love between a father and son to that of the love between lovers, it's just different.
We humans have such a tendancy to try and explain every possible thing, from what the tiniest molecules are made up of to what created the universe to why we people fall in love with someone of the same sex, if it can't lead to procreation. I firmly believe we are not meant to understand or at least be able to equivocate what love is, but merely feel it and let me be one of those mysterious things that "we just know because we feel." To scientist and a philospher those words are like daggers because they do not explain any part of the human physique or condition.
Respecting and loving someone mutually is compatable, difficult, but nonetheless compatable and achievable. Respect for a person does depend on several factors, such as how much respect you hold for yourself, the environment you nutured in (did your parents respect you) and the type of genes you have inherited and if the other person has those similar traits. If all those conditions are met, respect can exist. Love is something that takes to develop for another person, but I feel respect is a necessary condition for love. How honestly and truly can you love someone you do not respect?
This posting was very intersting and made me question if the need for reproduction and advancing the species is so heavily embeded in our minds that this hidden want drives all our desires, makes us pursue certain mates and act irrational. If that is the case, that there is no such thing as love and we are just motivated by our animal desire to procreate than that is extremely liberating and freeing! No longer will we have to suffer over an unrequited romance because we will understand ourselves will enough to know that we did not really feel anything more for this person than an animalist attraction that we believed would be most advanteougs and that it can be applied to multiple "possible mates."
We can learn to concur our basic instincts; we have seen several examples in people who will deny themselves food or any nutrition as a way to protest an injustice. If we can learn to look at "love" as just a biological need we will rid ourselves of all the tears shed because of a break up, or the end of a friendship ( the "love" between friends could just be the exploition of a person who has some asset we desire ). All love can be broken down into a need for self preservation or as a way to advance or improve our lives. However, this might take countless hours of introspection and self understanding and we might even have to face the grim fact that love is an illusion or that the word itself is meaningles.

Do I believe in love? Maybe. I'm still very young and haven't experienced all the kinds of love mentioned in this blog, so it's possible to feel an emotion or sensation that proves love is real. But for now I believe that the idea of love, along with the idea of a soul mate, is silly. There are so many people on this planet more than one person can make you happy.

Anonymous said...

But everyday I hope I'm proven wrong and can find that kind of love that doess govern the majority of our media. I still have my hope...

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Love is a word that should never be used out of context, and if one does not know its true meaning, it should not be used at all. It is an intense emotion that when felt makes you experience life and every sound, sight, and feeling around you more vibrant and apparent. however, there is a difference between "having love" for someone, and "being in love" with someone. The way society addresses it today makes it lose its romantic connotation and the commitment behind it. It is possible to love someone and have respect for them. I believe they go hand in hand with one another. Its sad how the lack of disrespect exists these days not only in couples, but relationships in general. We all must truly find what the meaning of true love means to us and keep a grasp on it. Before our views get compromised with so much going on in the world today.

Anonymous said...

Love for me is the most powerful feeling there is. I would not be correct to say that love always brings positive things to our lives, but I know for sure that it can trigger us to create wonderful and horrifying things. For generations love has silently inspired our every action. Even wars have been motivated in some way by love. We achieve our biggest goals in life fueled love. It is the only thing that keeps human beings alive. Even though it has many self destructive characteristics, it ties us down to earthly pleasures. Love always wins the fight against evil. It is what keeps human beings close to one another. I much rather focus in the love for knowledge and love for live because this ways of love are less self destructive
PHI 2010
Estefanny Espitia

Anonymous said...

I believe that love has many different definitions. I don’t think that there is a right definition for love. Many people have been thought to love a different way, whether is sweet love or the type of tough love. We all are raised differently according to the definition of love. Love to many people is a type of affection and caring for another whether is your boyfriend, husband or family member ect. I think we are raised to love a certain way and throughout life we find the definition that fits love into our lifes. Some love starts out different and eventually changes into hatred and the opposite of what we believe is love. We become manipulative, jealous, violent ect. and that kills our love. It is possible to love and respect one another. For you to love is to be able to respect.

BY CHARLOTTE RUSSELL