The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle --
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea --
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
This poem (beautiful by the way) and the last 2 movies I watched on my TV, Love Actually and You got Mail got me thinking about "Love" as a concept. Penn and Teller's Bullshit! have a show on The Business of Love, watch it here:
We are all familiar with shows with the "they live happily ever after" endings. It's always "they" isn't it? It seems that a single "he" or "she" could not live as happily as a "they". With all this "love at first sight" and "riding off into the sunset", could we have been taken for a ride? Does the real world really works that way?
In the study of Sociology, we know that social conditioning can have a tremendous impact on people's behavior. We can predict at what age a person of a certain gender and social upbringing would want to get married, how many kids he or she would like and even what sort of person he or she is likely to marry. "Love" in this sense seems to be a very socially constructed arrangement. For example monogamy, which is not always the norm, has been taken to be a sign or criterion of "true love". Not too long ago, in a different culture setting, this Hollywood's ending would have little to do with one's "love" for a person.
"What is love" has always been a difficult question to answer, and is therefore a perfect philosophical question. Perhaps we could examine it using evolution, where individuals find that having a fixed partner have an added advantage in the division of labour. We can see the same partnership in countless animals such as lions, penguins , various mammals, and so on. Can their partnership be considered "love"? Could our "love" simply be a romanticised concept of choosing an advantageous partner to pass on our genes?
Does "Love" somehow involves the "Soul" or is it simply a chemical change in the brain?
Could we be spending a tremendous amount of time and effort chasing after something that doesn't exist in the first place?
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1 comment:
An animal can mate with any other animal of it's own species; humans do not. This is the difference. We give ourselves to only a select person/ persons in our life.
Seriously speaking, even though I've never had a gf, but since I've come very damn close quite a few times I would know better only realise this once you have mentally bonded and committed yourself to another. That is when you will know love on a different level.
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