#emotion #social # [[Epistemic status]] #shower-thought # Related - [[Mind-tuning emotion]] - [[Purpose]] - [[Poetry]] - [[Alain de Botton - The Course of Love]] - [[Desire]] - [[Descriptive]] - [[Happiness]] - [[fs.blog - Friedrich Nietzsche On Love and Hate - Farnam Street]] - [[Unconditional love]] # Love [[There are two answers to this question, as to all questions: the poet's and the scholar's. Which one do you want first?]] ## [[Poetry|Poet]] >Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of >~ [[Viktor Frankl]] >For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. >~ [[Viktor Frankl]] >Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. >~ [[Viktor Frankl]]  >We do the same with an ideal or a belief. I believe in something, or I hold on to an ideal, and that gives me great comfort; but remove the ideal, remove the belief, and I am lost. It is the same thing with a guru. I depend because I want to receive, so there is the ache of fear. Again, it is the same when you depend on your parents or teachers. It is natural and right that you should do so when you are young; but if you keep on depending when you have grown to maturity, that will make you incapable of thinking, of being free. Where there is dependence, there is fear, and where there is fear, there is authority, there is no love. >~ [[Krishnamurti|Jiddu Krishnamurti]]   >Without love, life is like a shallow pool. In a deep river, there is richness and many fish can live; but the shallow pool is soon dried up by the strong sun, and nothing remains except mud and dirt. >~ [[Krishnamurti|Jiddu Krishnamurti]]  >We cling to the one we love, we are jealous, we miss him when he is not there and are utterly lost when he dies; and then we seek comfort in some other form, in some [[Belief|belief]], in some substitute. Is all this love? Love is not an idea, the result of association; love is not something to be used as an escape from our own wretchedness, and when we do so use it, we make problems which have no solutions. Love is not an abstraction, but its reality can be experienced only when idea, mind, is no longer the supreme factor. >~ [[Krishnamurti|Jiddu Krishnamurti]]  >The mind that records no insult, no flattery, knows what love is. >~ [[Krishnamurti]]   >If you have no love—do what you will, go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, enter politics, write books, write poems—you are a dead human being. Without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly. And with love, do what you will, there is no risk, there is no conflict. Then love is the essence of virtue. >~ [[Krishnamurti|Jiddu Krishnamurti]]  %% This is a beautiful descriptive prompt for stable diffusion about love Love is like a stable flame, never wavering but always growing. It is a slow, steady diffusion of warmth and light, radiating from the heart and spreading outward. It is a comforting presence, a constant reminder that no matter what life throws our way, we can always find refuge in its embrace. Love is a journey that never ends, a continuous cycle of giving and receiving. It is the foundation of all relationships, both romantic and platonic. Love is the bridge between two souls, connecting them in a way that words cannot express. It is the most powerful force in the universe, capable of transcending time and space. Love is the greatest gift we can give to one another, and its effects will last a lifetime.%%  >When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him. >~ [[Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet|Kahlil Gibran]]  %%A magnificent red rose lying by itself in a field illuminated by a sparkling sun, stunning, art, beautiful, 8K, painting by Van Gogh%% ![[abcb4c11-0024-4c3d-b1ff-b1e96abfe68c-0-743781843.png]]  >If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. >Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. >So if you love a flower, let it be. >Love is not about possession. >Love is about appreciation >~ [[Osho]]  %%A group of sheep led into it's field, some hearts fly high in the bright sky illuminated by the sun, stunning, magnificent, beautiful, painting by Van Gogh%% ![[e4b081da-4b05-498d-8da4-a140c3699a27-0-1522800380.png]]  >And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course >~ [[Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet|Kahlil Gibran]]  ![[DALL·E 2022-06-18 08.25.37 - Incommensurable love falling from the sky, enlightening a couple in the grass under the sparkling sun, oil on canvas.png]]  >Love is about opening doors and windows, not building prisons >~ [[Pierre Bottero]]  %% A big red heart sitting in front of a door, photography by Carr Clifton & Galen Rowell, 16K resolution, Landscape veduta photo by Dustin Lefevre & tdraw, 8k resolution, detailed landscape painting by Ivan Shishkin, DeviantArt, Flickr, rendered in Enscape, Van Gogh, 4k detailed post processing, atmospheric, hyper realistic, 8k, epic composition, cinematic, artstation %% ![[ac89e73e-1862-4b9d-8820-4b63599e23ee-0-1793230113.png]] %% ![[0413b255-8d12-42a7-b405-8d32c44cb2b5-0-1651185056.png]] ![[0b810cbb-5015-4542-9f47-1b1a88e5ce72-0-711073807.png]] ![[ec07575b-07f8-4d14-9d9c-546f2dca560c-0-1455836414.png]] ![[b829ff08-dfb5-48cb-8cef-6da3cd049b03-0-2067915961.png]] %%  >Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there’s tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. >~ [[Pressfield, Steven - The War of Art - Winning the Inner Creative Battle]]  %% Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there’s tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. Flying hearts in the wind by Van Gogh. Early stage of love. 4K. Hearts. High quality %% ![[67f2857d-4a91-4534-9018-f3189f84e616-0-2588453873.png]] >Love reaches a pitch at those moments when our beloved turns out to understand, more clearly than others have ever been able to, and perhaps even better than we do ourselves, the chaotic, embarrassing, and shameful parts of us. >~ [[Alain de Botton - The Course of Love|Alain de Botton]] ![[e1585d19-d798-464b-b881-88f088713f9d-0-156655859.png]] >Maturity means acknowledging that Romantic love might only constitute a narrow and perhaps rather mean-minded aspect of emotional life, one principally focused on a quest to find love rather than to give it, to be loved rather than to love. >~ [[Alain de Botton - The Course of Love|Alain de Botton]] %% ![[cadaa071-1eee-4605-b0f6-65b3db0d2bf7-0-1808504696.png]] ![[d86c8205-c7b5-4bd2-9f1b-75ddcbabc4d6-0-456676996.png]] ![[f49d924b-7de4-4b5d-8b33-bf92d99a30de-0-3439289252.png]] ![[75fed94a-6e40-4f62-b2cb-fb946a5ab8ed-0-2510085236.png]] ![[27cfa869-ad17-4656-9eac-1a856c488c1d-0-2338916164.png]] %% >When you love a woman, what do you really love in her? It will be different with different people and it will be different at different times. If love really grows, this is the way: first you fall in love with the woman because her body is beautiful. That is the first available beauty - her face, her eyes, her proportion, her elegance, her dancing, pulsating energy. Her body is beautiful. That is the first approach. You fall in love. > >Then after a few days you start going deeper into the woman. You start loving her heart. Now a far more beautiful revelation is coming to you. The body becomes secondary; the heart becomes primary. A new vision has arisen, a new peak. If you go on loving the woman, sooner or later you will find there are peaks beyond peaks, depths beyond depths. Then you start loving the soul of the woman. Then it is not only her heart - now that has become secondary. Now it is the very person, the very presence, the very radiance, the aliveness, that unknown phenomenon of her being - that she is. The body is very far away, the heart has also gone away - now the being is. > >And then one day this particular woman's being becomes far away. Now you start loving womanhood in her, the femininity, the feminineness, that receptivity. Now she is not a particular woman at all, she simply reflects womanhood, a particular form of womanhood. Now it is no longer individual, it is becoming more and more universal. And one day that womanhood has also disappeared - you love the humanity in her. Now she is not just a representative of woman, she is also a representative of man as much. The sky is becoming bigger and bigger. Then one day it is not humanity, but existence. That she exists, that's all that you want - that she exists. You are coming very close to God. > >Then the last point comes - all formulations and all forms disappear and there is God. You have found God through your woman, through your man. Each love is an echo of God's love >~ [[Osho]] ![[DALL·E 2022-06-18 08.27.06 - Incommensurable love falling from the sky on a couple in the grass under the sparkling sun, oil on canvas.png]] https://youtu.be/AVjRuM7Rong https://youtu.be/JxPj3GAYYZ0 >One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power. He can, however, promise those actions that are usually the consequence of love, hatred, or faithfulness, but that can also spring from other motives: for there are several paths and motives to an action. A promise to love someone forever, then, means, ‘As long as I love you I will render unto you the actions of love; if I no longer love you, you will continue to receive the same actions from me, if for other motives.’ Thus the illusion remains in the minds of one’s fellow men that the love is unchanged and still the same. >One is promising that the semblance of love will endure, then, when without self-deception one vows everlasting love. >~ [[Nietzsche]] >Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. >~ [[A History Of Western Philosophy - Russell, Bertrand|Russell - Bertrand]] ## Scholar answer ### Psychology >~ [[Ernest Becker]] >Rank could conclude that the love relationship of modern man is a religious problem. >We turn to the love partner for the experience of the heroic, for perfect validation; we expect them to “make us good” through love. >When we say that sex and death are twins, we understand it on at least two levels. The first level is philosophical-biological. Animals who procreate, die. Their relatively short life span is somehow connected with their procreation. Nature conquers death not by creating eternal organisms but by making it possible for ephemeral ones to procreate. >Is one oppressed by the burden of his life? Then he can lay it at his divine partner’s feet. Is self-consciousness too painful, the sense of being a separate individual, trying to make some kind of meaning out of who one is, what life is, and the like? Then one can wipe it away in the emotional yielding to the partner, forget oneself in the delirium of sex, and still be marvellously quickened in the experience. >It seems to be difficult for the individual to realize that there exists a division between one’s spiritual and purely human needs, and that the satisfaction or fulfillment for each has to be found in different spheres. As a rule, we find the two aspects hopelessly confused in modern relationships, where one person is made the godlike judge over good and bad in the other person. In the long run, such symbiotic relationship becomes demoralizing to both parties, for it is just as unbearable to be God as it is to remain an utter slave. ## rnd >Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme. >~ [[Esther Perel - Mating in Captivity - Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic]] ### Evolutionary psychology ![[Biology/Sex]] ### Disney and its Portrayal of Love[^1] The first era of princesses adhere to the idea of love at first sight. All of the princesses end up with a dashing prince, whom they barley know and have only met once or twice. No information is given on how their romantic relationships are formed and/or maintained. All of them fall in love, get married, and somehow live happily ever after (Tanner, Haddock, Zimmerman, & Lund, 2003). This also sends the message that when a man and woman meet, they instantaneously fall in love. No time is needed to elapse and no other common factors need to be in place in order for love to form (Tanner, Haddock, Zimmerman, & Lund, 2003). These three princesses fear ending up alone and even fantasize about the day they’ll meet their prince. They all sing about the possibility of falling in love and finding immediate happiness. Their entire narrative as a character is to find a happy ending through romance (Whelan, 2012). All three of the princesses are also saved by their male counterparts. Snow White and Aurora are both placed in a deathly coma. Their very lives depend on their prince finding and rescuing them with true love’s kiss. Cinderella’s life didn’t depend on her falling in love, but her livelihood was dependent on being saved by the prince from 16 enslavement (Junn, 1997; Whelan, 2012). The first era of princesses also engaged in more love-related behaviors than their male counterparts, such as making their desire for romance known. References to marriage and weddings were also highly common throughout the three movies (Junn, 1997). The emphasis for the second era of princesses is placed on ending up with a suitor whom the princess loves. They want to choose the right partner and still be able to fulfill their dreams (Whelan, 2012). The films from the second era actually refer to love 2.5 times more than the first era. Jasmine, for example, rebels against her arranged marriage and focuses on pursuing Aladdin because she falls in love with him (Junn, 1997). The ideas of marriage and weddings decreased as compared to the first era, which shows improvement because marriage is not their only end game. Mulan, for example, does not marry her love interest and instead decides to pursue a dating relationship (Tanner, Haddock, Zimmerman, & Lund, 2003). Pocahontas breaks this stereotype even more because her romantic relationship completely dissolves. She instead chooses the love of her family and stays behind with them (Aidman, 1999). Love also gets represented as something that forms over time, especially in Mulan and Beauty and the Beast which shows progress in how love is portrayed (Tanner, Haddock, Zimmerman, & Lund, 2003). Although the second era of princesses do break some of the traditional stereotypes concerning romance, their ultimate goal still remains to find a suitable partner for marriage (Do Rozario, 2004). This is present in Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid. Mulan does not marry her suitor in the end, but she does give up her tomboyish identity to enter a relationship with Shang. The film also alludes to the fact that they will enter a romantic relationship that will most likely lead to marriage. Love 17 and marriage serve as a way to tame and domesticate these rebellious women by having them settle down (Whelan, 2012). Their happily ever after still seems to be dependent on finding a man (Junn, 1997). Pocahontas, as briefly mentioned earlier, does not adhere to this stereotype. However, the interpretation of her story is completely distorted and historically inaccurate. Pocahontas never had a romantic relationship with John Smith and eventually does leave her family to marry and move to England. Therefore, one could argue that the historical facts reflect stereotypical portrayals of love (Superhuman4, 2015). Women’s attractiveness to men is also more apparent in this era when it comes to finding a suitable mate. Compared to the first era, these films show 7.5 times more sexually related depictions of women. The princesses engaged in more sexually provocative stances to try and attract a partner, such as striking certain poses and primping themselves before seeing their prince (Junn, 1997). These princesses are depicted as highly attractive and more voluptuous with bigger busts (Junn, 1997). In the first and second era, the princesses are shown as having to abandon their own desires in order to pursue marriage (Lee, 2008). They often have to overcome parental demands or leave their families and homes in order to marry and get their happily ever after. The princes, however, did not have external factors preventing them from marrying the woman of their choosing. They could choose their partners as they pleased and their happiness was not dependent on finding love, but simply a benefit (Lee, 2008). This shows how romance and the princesses happily ever afters are still dependent on finding a romantic suitor, even if they choose not to pursue marriage (Whelan, 2012). --- The Disney princess films important cultural artifacts when one considers the gender stereotypes, particularly roles of women, over the course of the last seventy years. I argue that the princesses in each of these films are positive role models of women who have slowly yet effectively challenged the gender restrictions of the past while advocating for equality and ultimate success for women. Snow White resembles the flapper and hardworking attitude necessary in the 1930s, Cinderella maintains a positive attitude for self-preservation, Pocahontas pushes societal expectations to advocate for herself, Merida refuses to conform to traditional expectations, and Anna and Elsa are strong confident women who are not afraid of success. Looking at the relationships between the princesses and the animals is important as these creatures serve as a crucial piece of evidence to the positive messages that viewers may deduce from the pieces. The animals highlight the strength, determination, spunk, and perseverance of the women in these pieces by advocating for their respective protagonist. Society has evolved to the point that these figures are no longer necessary and I predict that strong figures will continue to appear in Disney productions. This research is important to consider when one considers the Disney princesses as positive role models for women. As I have Page | 34 evaluated, there is much evidence to indicate they are progressive images of women should be appreciated by modern audiences.[^2] [^1]: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=edspec201019 [^2]: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=uhp_theses