will love ever die?

[lukkucairi]

^^^if you're denied boobs, do you grow up to become one?

(insert rimshot)

to paraphrase Spock, "it's love, Jim, but not as we know it."

I think it exists, but I think we've got the wrong idea of its purpose.

[brightpearl]

Bones: "He's dead, Jim."

Just kidding. Lukku is wise in such matters.

[Stephi_B]

^^Wow! Gotta meditate over the real purpose of love now...

[topcat]

Originally Posted by lukkucairi

^^^

I think it exists, but I think we've got the wrong idea of its purpose.

what do you mean? you love people differently. i see my neighbors who have been married of 50 something years. you just look at them, see them interact and you know how much they are still in love.

[lukkucairi]

why do you fall in love, tc?

[auntie aubrey]

Originally Posted by Frieda

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..

that's not evolution, that's just accidental death. evolution would be if there were people who mutated to form a resistance to lava, and people who lived at the base of volcanoes who didn't have that mutation died off, leaving the ones with the mutation to breed and pass that mutation on.

or like blender-resistant faces.

[auntie aubrey]

also that dude's got it wrong. i've got a big ol' butt sir mix-a-lot would love, but i'm as smart as a whip. or is it a tack? maybe if i were smarter i would know.

also the spouse is 6'3". we're going to breed tall, fat, smart kids. AND EVOLUTION WILL EFFIN' LIKE IT.

[Avalon]

why do you fall in love, tc?

Because he can and because I am already married.

HAHAHAAA...thought you would like that one, T.

ETA..the original question is beyond stupid...I hope that 'Ollie' is single or his arranged wife makes him lust after, then fall in love with a 300 pound green midget of questionable social status who then rejects him as unworthy.

[topcat]

Originally Posted by lukkucairi

why do you fall in love, tc?

yes i do.
i met a girl last winter in a bar in new haven.she was from seattle.she was also leaving the next day to go back to seattle. so after about an hour she was in my arms and i never felt better like she was made to fit next to me. her name was cara, and i told her that i loved her. never saw her again. never got her phone number. she didnt know when she was coming back. but i told her i would see her again.

[Anna]

Reading the comments and in no particular order.

Evolution Natural Selection - Evolution will never end. Take into account the dominant species man, and his intervention into evolution: stem cell research, the eradication of disease and deformities, breeding a superior race. It’s all in the literature.

Love – you can subscribe to Plato’s love, eros, philia, agape: passion, friendship, divine love or love of all things, but he does compartmentalizes.
Attraction is bio-chemical and these guys, , look like this for a reason. It’s nature’s way of an introduction. We are physically bound to that. Fantasies alone are worth billions in revenue.

Historically, love has meant and been many thing depending on the culture, but we are headed towards a one world blended species, with marginal differences. Never has that been more possible in the history of humankind than now, well in the near future, comparatively.

Love or acts of love can be what ever you want them to be; s/he takes out the garbage, sends you an anniversary hallmark card, flies you to Paris for dinner, indulges your fetish, tolerates your outbursts, raises your children or is there though thick and thin for the next 50 years. You can become a protector of the home, work in the streets helping the poor, devote your life praising God, or work towards world peace. I think love can be many things, but most of all it is the intent behind the action that matters most.

According to the article that’s going to change because we are isolating ourselves from chance meetings, the daily interactions, the physical presence as witness, understanding the intent; which in the past was forced upon us due to limits in communication. We know the mind online, but we do not experience the heart, warmth and understanding in the same way, we will have to learn to compensate develop new skills.

Can a mind really love a mind void of body thousands of miles away for any length of time? Can we love the dead? Without experiencing life as physical people, eyeball to eyeball, something deeper beyond passing friendships will always be missing. Of course we will adjust, but the question that is asked most, what are we giving up in exchange? I’m not saying there isn’t any value in this medium and the opportunities it provides, what I think the article hints at on a mass scale is, it’s a brave new world. Gum?

[lukkucairi]

Originally Posted by Anna

Can a mind really love a mind void of body thousands of miles away for any length of time? Can we love the dead?

1) yes, and have been doing so since time immemorial. people in my family have done this many recorded times in the past 80 years - with only the old fashioned postal service as connection.

2) yes. emphatically so. read the obituaries.

I think we're in a corridor. virtual tech will not always be text-based. even on a simple board, a lot of nuances come through.

plus, we adapt. and there's a continuing and compelling reason to fall in love. I don't think her name is cara

[Anna]

You've introduced something new into the conversation that the author didn't address, outside a test tube, family. There are years of former physical, eye ball to eye ball, interaction prior to USPS and death that connect and bond, much more than nuances, but if you want to toss the breakdown of the accepted family unit into the mix and where that is headed, I'm game.

cara is poetry, an old drug that is better than drink, but could drive you to it.

[lukkucairi]

people used to fall in love via snail mail all the time...

you can talk about family or not talk about family - mine has a history of letter writing is all.

if I'm engaging in this argument, it's to state my belief that the "requisite skills" have been around for a far longer time than the internet.

while I'm at it:
where are we going?

[brightpearl]

Dunno.
I drove home yesterday in the strangest, thickest late afternoon fog I've ever seen. I pulled over when I got to the ridge, and stood on the edge to look out into an absolute ocean of nothing. You couldn't see the trees just a bit down the slope, and there was not even the faintest hint of the usual infinite, hilled vista. Beautiful, and utterly, hopelessly unfathomable. No way of knowing what lay ahead. It was even silent, and oddly, I guess because of the topography, it was raining only right at the edge of the dropoff, in huge but infrequent drips. I knew even at that moment that for me, it was a metaphor for this thread.

Lukku mindmelds me all the time, so I shouldn't be surprised.

[craig johnston]

huge but infrequent drips

you mean like roez?