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Sorry for the delayed response--not out of unwillingness, but busy-ness. Your original response made me think of a few questions, but I think in the end it boi

Sorry for the delayed response--not out of unwillingness, but busy-ness. Your original response made me think of a few questions, but I think in the end it boiled down to asking what is the goal or purpose of love? Does it dovetail with a goal of maximizing happiness? (It seems to me no--that love can sometimes work towards our personal happiness and other times against it.) We often use the word love in a multi-faceted way that would be better served by multiple words. The ancient Greeks had (at least?) four words for love that were roughly differentiated by familial love, friendship love, erotic love, and an unconditional love. They varied, I suppose, in goal, expectation, depth or quality of feeling, et c. It seems like this last love was the sort that the father shows to his son. There is no real hope of reciprocation, nor yet a sort of surface-level happiness—indeed, it would be a very unhappy business for the most part. And yes, I think to your point there is probably some sustaining relationships there, too. At the same time, I expect there was pressure against him: remove life support, your kid's a vegetable, no hope here, et c. This isn't a love-nurturing environment exactly. I guess what I'd say is that at least in some cases love seems to work against our personal best interest, not for it, and that our happiness sometimes realigns along different boundaries. I.e., that happiness is perhaps more flexible than we might assume at first, and love perhaps a little less flexible? Again, just some ponderables. Thanks for the comment.

Viliam1234 6y ago
> We often use the word love in a multi-faceted way that would be better served by multiple words. It would be nice if we just stopped using "love" as an emphasis for "enjoy". ("I love hamburgers" = I enjoy the taste of hamburgers.) Getting this one out of the way, it seems to me that the common component in other forms of love is something like "your well-being makes me happy". Mixing these two creates the greatest confusion, when "I love you" can mean "I wish that you be well" or "I enjoy being with you". Especially because these two do NOT have to be mutually exclusive: you can wish someone to be well AND enjoy their presence and interaction with you at the same time. But you can also enjoy interaction with someone, without caring about their well-being at all. This gives us three combinations of what one could mean by "loving" someone. And the confusion goes like this: First, it takes some maturity to notice that some people enjoy the presence of other people (because they can get fun or sex or services or resources from them), but don't actually care about those people's well-being at all. (In other words, they "love" other people in exactly the same way they "love" their hamburgers.) Then, the person who noticed this often over-reacts, and decides that if those two things are not exactly the same, then they certainly must be the exact opposites! It cannot be real love, if you derive any benefit whatsoever from the other person. If you are sexually attracted to them, it cannot be the true love! If you like it when they do something for you, or if they make you laugh and you enjoy that, it cannot be true love either! And even if you do something for them completely with no thought of reward, and you really get nothing in return, but then you suddenly notice that thinking about their happiness makes YOU happy... maybe deep down you were a horrible selfish monster all the time; you only pretended to love other people, but actually did this all only to give YOURSELF the happy feeling. Shame on you! I wish this was a strawman, but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(ethics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(ethics) -- a few famous philosophers actually supported this pathological, poisonous idea. It can seriously hurt emotionally fragile people when you expose them to this insanity pretending to be deep wisdom. "Wishing other people to be well" is a thing; "enjoying interaction with other people" is another thing; and when those two things happen to go together, there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing prevents you from genuinely loving people whose presence also makes you happy in other ways. It's actually easier than way, because one kind of positive emotion prepares the way for other kinds. > four words for love that were roughly differentiated by familial love, friendship love, erotic love, and an unconditional love. I'd say the last one is the unreciprocated love, and the first three include some kind of expectation (different kinds). Yes, even a father loving his son expects something in return; at the very least, that the son will not knowingly try to hurt him. But usually there is also some expectation of politeness, of possible cooperation in future when the son grows up, maybe of care for the father when he gets old. Enough theory. I guess the practical advice is to love others, love yourself, and don't feel confused or guilty when the love is reciprocated.

Viliam1234 6y ago

> We often use the word love in a multi-faceted way that would be better served by multiple words. It would be nice if we just stopped using "love" as an emphasis for "enjoy". ("I love hamburgers" = I enjoy the taste of hamburgers.) Getting this one out of the way, it seems to me that the common component in other forms of love is something like "your well-being makes me happy". Mixing these two creates the greatest confusion, when "I love you" can mean "I wish that you be well" or "I enjoy being with you". Especially because these two do NOT have to be mutually exclusive: you can wish someone to be well AND enjoy their presence and interaction with you at the same time. But you can also enjoy interaction with someone, without caring about their well-being at all. This gives us three combinations of what one could mean by "loving" someone. And the confusion goes like this: First, it takes some maturity to notice that some people enjoy the presence of other people (because they can get fun or sex or services or resources from them), but don't actually care about those people's well-being at all. (In other words, they "love" other people in exactly the same way they "love" their hamburgers.) Then, the person who noticed this often over-reacts, and decides that if those two things are not exactly the same, then they certainly must be the exact opposites! It cannot be real love, if you derive any benefit whatsoever from the other person. If you are sexually attracted to them, it cannot be the true love! If you like it when they do something for you, or if they make you laugh and you enjoy that, it cannot be true love either! And even if you do something for them completely with no thought of reward, and you really get nothing in return, but then you suddenly notice that thinking about their happiness makes YOU happy... maybe deep down you were a horrible selfish monster all the time; you only pretended to love other people, but actually did this all only to give YOURSELF the happy feeling. Shame on you! I wish this was a strawman, but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(ethics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(ethics) -- a few famous philosophers actually supported this pathological, poisonous idea. It can seriously hurt emotionally fragile people when you expose them to this insanity pretending to be deep wisdom. "Wishing other people to be well" is a thing; "enjoying interaction with other people" is another thing; and when those two things happen to go together, there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing prevents you from genuinely loving people whose presence also makes you happy in other ways. It's actually easier than way, because one kind of positive emotion prepares the way for other kinds. > four words for love that were roughly differentiated by familial love, friendship love, erotic love, and an unconditional love. I'd say the last one is the unreciprocated love, and the first three include some kind of expectation (different kinds). Yes, even a father loving his son expects something in return; at the very least, that the son will not knowingly try to hurt him. But usually there is also some expectation of politeness, of possible cooperation in future when the son grows up, maybe of care for the father when he gets old. Enough theory. I guess the practical advice is to love others, love yourself, and don't feel confused or guilty when the love is reciprocated.