CollioureViews
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What ya reckon?
You can select a maximum of two options, to reflect your spiritual versus worldly view of love.
You can select a maximum of two options, to reflect your spiritual versus worldly view of love.
1. Evolutionary view
2. Platonic view
3. Psychoanalytic view
4. Existentialist view
5. Marxist view
6. Christian view
7. Islamic view
8. Buddhist view
9. Hindu view
2. Platonic view
3. Psychoanalytic view
4. Existentialist view
5. Marxist view
6. Christian view
7. Islamic view
8. Buddhist view
9. Hindu view
- Love is just a poetic description of our evolutionary drive to survive. It's a cocktail of:
- Lust (testosterone/estrogen) to find a partner
- Attraction (dopamine/norepinephrine) to stay focused on them [your partner]
- And attachment (oxytocin/vasopressin) to keep you together long enough to keep your helpless offspring alive
- Notable Proponents: Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins
- An Ancient Greek take, found in Plato's Symposium. Love is an objective, transcendent cosmic force; one we are fundamentally incomplete without:
- Aristophanes shares a famous myth: humans were originally eight-limbed, two-headed creatures. The gods feared our power, so they split us in half
- We are driven to find our specific "other half" to become whole again
- Romantic love is a necessary bridge to the ultimate "Form of Beauty"
- Other regional myths bear some similarities, like the Red Thread of Fate in Chinese mythology
- Notable Proponents: Plato
- Love is a sophisticated projection based on your past, an illusion:
- When we "fall in love", we aren't really seeing the person in front of us
- We are projecting our unresolved desires, traumas, and attachments to our parents onto a blank canvas
- We seek to heal childhood wounds or regain the unconditional safety we once had
- Notable Proponents: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung
- Love is not safe; it's a high-stakes game that risks your freedom and plays with your anxieties of how you're perceived:
- It's a toxic battle between the autonomy of two people
- There's an inherent conflict with love, born of a struggle between wanting to possess the other person whilst trying to retain your own freedom
- True love only emerges with a mutual recognition of the other's freedom, not a demand for ownership
- Notable Proponents: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir
- Love is a cultural construct that conditions you to buy into romantic narratives, which are actually dictated by economics:
- It's a tool for economic stability and consumerism
- Marriage is a transaction, facilitating the formation of alliances, the transfer of land, or labour management
- Romantic love was weaponised in the Industrial Revolution to create the nuclear family, the perfect fuel for the capitalist economy
- Love is now heavily commodified through dating apps, jewelry, fine dining, and Valentine's Day
- Notable Proponents: Friedrich Engels, Eva Illouz
- Love is not a human invention or a biological accident; it is the fabric of the universe. It comes in several forms, but can only be fulfilled by sacrifice:
- Love is the essence of God. It is a self-sacrificing force that exists independent of human emotion
- God created all forms of love, including Storge, Philia, and Eros, which he calls "very good", but without Agape (sacrifice/charity), they will inevitably corrupt
- Love was personified in Jesus Christ, who suffered condemnation on the cross to redeem mankind after our fall
- We can only tap into love by dying to our desires and bearing our own cross to serve God and our neighbours, even our enemies, expecting nothing in return
- Notable Proponents: St. Paul, St. Augustine, C.S. Lewis
- Love is a mercy given by God to be used as a spiritual compass to annihilate our egos:
- Love is a divine quality involving mercy (Rahmah) and tranquility (Mawaddah) that ultimately acts as a mirror to the soul's love for the Creator (Allah, Al-Wadud)
- The Quran (Divine Revelation) and Hadith (recorded sayings of the Prophet) set an absolute and exhaustive criterion for love
- The Prophet Muhammad's life (Sunnah) is the perfect example in all aspects of life, including how to love in marriage, your community, etc.
- By participating in Earthly love, some traditions assert that this is a necessary purification of your soul to attain divine love
- Notable Proponents: Rumi, Al-Ghazali
- Love is a transcendent energy that serves to liberate all living beings from suffering:
- There is a universal loving-kindness (Metta) and compassion (Karuna) that encompasses a state of limitless good-will towards all living beings, entirely detached from personal desire
- Buddhism distinguishes between attachment-based love (Pema) and selfless-love (Metta)
- Pema is actually seen as a source of suffering
- Meditation is the means by which you expand your mind until you view a stranger, an enemy, and yourself with the same unconditional love
- Notable Proponents: Gautama Buddha
- The Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads provide a framework in Hinduism for understanding love as a tool to break through the illusion of reality to reveal that we are all ultimately one:
- There are different kinds of love, including devotion (Bhakti), desire (Kama), and pure love (Prema)
- Bhakti can actually be used to dissolve the illusion of separation (Maya) between the individual soul (Atman) and the ultimate reality (Brahman)
- All forms of love ultimately are fulfilled in liberation (Moksha), as illustrated through various stories of the Gods
- Notable Proponents: Adi Shankara, Ramakrishna
There are a ton of different ideas of love that might not be captured here. I just wanted to include the most widely accepted ones. I will not include an "Other" option for your weird ass self.
