I actually wonder whether love is an emotion, a physical drive, a result of hormones flooding the brain or something so beyond our comprehension we should just live with it. Or not , as the case may be. It seems to encompass so many different states, including pleasure, affection, attraction. kindness, compassion, desire......
Without love we wouldn't have relationships & the human race would possibly die out. Is that true? Seemingly it is possible to engage in sex without any love. Prostitution is the obvious example. You can have a child through surrogacy, IVF & using an upmarket chicken baster. So maybe the human race wouldn't come to an end if we didn't love someone. Loving someone more than ourselves - there's a challenge.
We can love our parents, a meal, a friend, a partner., an animal. ( Actually in some cases I think dogs are a lot easier to love than humans). Many people seem to find it very difficult to love themselves though, which seems rather sad. All the arts seem to extol the value of love to the human race. Some of the most sublime artistic creations personify love - in painting, music & writing.
Yet nowadays, so many people seem to be isolated and alone. So I find myself asking what happens to the human spirit when it is deprived of love? Can we exist fully in a void, without the simple joy of knowing that someone loves us just as we are? Without the caring & compassionate touch of another human being.
Sadly I think a lot of people do. They are nameless & faceless. The human flotsam of our modern world. We are pack animals with the ability to love someone else so much we would do anything for them & not count the cost to ourselves. How did we get to this state?
A whole can of worms in this one, Val!!
ReplyDeleteFrom a personal perspective, 'love' is a fickle whim which sometimes is deep & meaningful and at others, a flirtatious sensation but whichever applies to the individuals' at the time, procreation can often be both the intended & unintended consequence!
Many people can live contentedly is splendid isolation with either other animals or mythical beings, to sustain their lives without ever feeling attached to another person of the same or opposite sex, yet crucially, enough people do come together around the globe to produce too many offspring for the world to support!
Happier New Year!
PT
Very philosophical.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought that adults, particularly in the developed world, talk too much about their right to have children, & not enough about the rights of the child to be born into a loving family which can adequately support them emotionally & financially.
In my experience, most people don't give much thought to the ethics of bringing another child into our over populated world. The really sad thing is that there are millions of children in the world in desperate need of the basics of life - food, shelter & love.