will love ever die?

[trisherina]

People think of love as something that happens to them, like lust or infatuation or obsession.

Love (regardless of "type") is an activity. Up to you as an individual whether it dies or not. You feel it dying, go out and do some. Just mind you stay within legal boundaries for the reciprocal part.

As for the journalism:

He carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo.

Funny how some get cautious when they see a double-blind placebo-controlled RCT carried out by a facility that gets funding from pharmaceutical companies, but they swallow stuff like this whole in the next breath.

[topcat]

Originally Posted by trisherina

People think of love as something that happens to them, like lust or infatuation or obsession.







.

absolutly true. its called love at first site.

[Anna]

Originally Posted by brightpearl

But as for romantic love, I don't know. It does not exist in some human societies the way we Westerners think of it

I think we call that porn now

There's simply no way for people to continue as a species without that experience of bonding and shared consciousness.

I think people would survive, but quality of life and expectancy would decline. I also think love is limited to a certain number of people in the course of a lifetime, real love requires a lot of participation, tons of understanding and forgiveness, and who has time for that?!

What craig's article is getting at in light of our disposable anonymous (except for the government) internet lifestyle: 'Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect...' It's so easy online to walk away and never be seen again and with modern tech we can skip all that needless how-are-the-kids-get-to-know-you human interaction, except for the tech guy. The big lie was all this would make our lives easier and less complicated so we would have more time for our friends and family. On the upside, like everything else in life it's how we use it. The masses are never ready or prepared for anything new or revolutionary. Choosing to be a trailblazer in the world of technology is to lead a pretty isolated and lonely life. The struggle is and probably always has been balance.

[auntie aubrey]

you jaded "ain't no such thing as love" types are bumming me out.

there is such a thing. i can't argue you into believing that, though.

[Hyakujo's Fox]

Originally Posted by brightpearl

But as for romantic love, I don't know. It does not exist in some human societies the way we Westerners think of it

Yeah, I don't buy this. Arranged marriage based societies just have a strong interest in dismissing romantic love as a real phenomenon, but that don't make it so. In fact if it wasn't for romantic love, it would hardly seem necessary to have a system of strictly arranged marriages at all, since children wouldn't be strongly drawn to potentially socially or economically 'inappropriate' marriages.

[auntie aubrey]

it's just plain silly to think we're going to be able to take a quick glance at current social trends, extrapolate them out way into the future, and project massive consequences for our concept of life as we know it.

personally i think we're done evolving. maybe if grocery stores start stocking the veggies up on really high shelves, the tall and the long-armed will thrive while the short and stubby-armed will starve and eventually die off. then we'd see some progress.

but as it is, the tall people and the short people are breeding. the thin people and the fat people are breeding. diabetics have kids. midgets marry and have families. people with bipolar disorder, clinginess, bad breath, sexual addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder, chronic bad hair, misguided fashion sense, and unibrows are breeding and passing on their personal qualities.

at what point is evolution able to get a word in edgewise?

[topcat]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L--WvesoCf0

[Frieda]

Originally Posted by auntie aubrey

it's just plain silly to think we're going to be able to take a quick glance at current social trends, extrapolate them out way into the future, and project massive consequences for our concept of life as we know it.

personally i think we're done evolving. maybe if grocery stores start stocking the veggies up on really high shelves, the tall and the long-armed will thrive while the short and stubby-armed will starve and eventually die off. then we'd see some progress.

but as it is, the tall people and the short people are breeding. the thin people and the fat people are breeding. diabetics have kids. midgets marry and have families. people with bipolar disorder, clinginess, bad breath, sexual addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder, chronic bad hair, misguided fashion sense, and unibrows are breeding and passing on their personal qualities.

at what point is evolution able to get a word in edgewise?

by regulating breeding by diseases that spread through breeding i guess.. STDs, AIDS, etc.

also, natural disasters still work pretty well since people are still living in areas with volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and seas and oceans nearby that can flood. disasters like those make a pretty clever natural selection. and of course some people will eliminate themselves by getting their neckties stuck in the blender.. technology will definitely bite us in the ass.

not that it's fair, of course. but that wasn't the deal in the first place.

[Stephi_B]

@ CJ:
What concerns the pure possibility that love (and any other 'higher' emotions/behaviour patterns connecting people like friendship, trust, ...) could die out: yes, they once entered our gene code (I think they are mainly genetical) so they could in theory leave it again, either by natural selection or by genetical engineering (as science fictiony that may sound that, say a totalitarian regime will breed kinda organic robots). But, although it's true that the last 200 and more radically the last 50 years technology and society changed hugely, our gene code so far has not. What I, in a shorter perspective, say in the next decades, or the next centuries see more likely is: people still can (want to) feel love etc., but it becomes harder for them to express as well to live them in a society living more and more online, anonymous, as singles or in short-term relationships, and accordingly already grow up without constant/good emotional feedback, lived examples of love. Also pure 'online love', is becoming normal, already among today's young people. So it can be that one day love no longer (necessarily) contains the notion of physical closeness (sexual or otherwise - to cuddle, live together) along soul-mateness.

@ Perla:
To what Hfox already said concerning societies with arranged or strongly regulated marriages, is that also in these societies the idea of romantic love exists (again: literature, poems, songs - maybe even celebrating couples which against the will of their parents/society fought for their love), and that long before love marriages existed in our culture (only 150 years ago btw, up to then at least in middle, upper and aristocratic classes, 'rational marriage' was the common thing) it was an ideal, which is understandable for it symbolises the perfect (in theory only of course ) unity of two people: body, mind, soul.
Yes, and just like in very 'modern' societies, it is quite common in 'primitive' societies that young people find to each other on their own (though taking place at some fair/ceremony, with ritualised fertility dances and the like where kids of an age group are brought together - yeah well we call that discos/clubs ). Of course, just like with us, it's sexual attraction (+sympathy of course) rather than the ideal romantic love that brings folks together.
But I don't see why, if love can exist between blood relatives and non-related friends, and even between member of different species (human&animal, cat&dog) why love should not exist between two people who happen to share bed (and table maybe). It's a more complicated thing cos such (primal) emotions like jealousy and possession thinking enter, particularly when the sex-part is (temporarily) 'outsourced' by one or both partners...

[brightpearl]

Sorry to be a bummer, auntie. I'm very happy for your feeling that way yourself, of course.

I haven't meant to say I'm sure it doesn't exist; just that I don't know any more. I am still capable of feeling something like romantic love, and I know other people experience that feeling as well, but I'm not sure how that matches up in reality or what it means. Though I hope this isn't true for everyone, and though it has not always been true for me, my own real experience with romantic love has often been that it gets smaller over time -- more self-centered, less expansive, ownership may creep in. This has happened to me at the same time I've experienced other kinds of love, such as for my child, as continually and maybe infinitely expanding.

It's not that I don't still have a wish to find something that is like how I understand romantic love; I do. I now think of it as mostly about friendship, with physical attraction added on, and with a component of service to something larger. If that turned up, I would take it. (Warily. ) But I've lost my old faith that it's a phenomenon one can take for granted will occur. I've joked around here about being a nun, but it's actually something that's on the table for me as a possibility, later on. So take everything I say with a pound or two of rock salt.

And one thing I know for sure...I love you guys. This is a good place to manifest happiness.

[Stephi_B]

Finally read the above article, and indeed I have read it already when it came out in 06, but what took my full attention (irritation) was

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.
The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

That beauty=intelligence / uglyness=dumbness part royally pissed me off, and still does.

[brightpearl]

^ooooh, he must have been one of the monkeys in the wire mama group.

[Stephi_B]

^barb wire mama

[brightpearl]

^We should pity him for the damage clearly done by a severe lack of boobs in his life.

[Stephi_B]

^Oh, after he carried out the report he hopefully can watch the men's satellite TV channel he did it for for free.