This woman attempts to intelligently discuss the science of romantic love, yet can’t even distinguish between an unhealthy, dependent, drug-like addiction, and mature, romantic, reciprocal romantic love for an independent equal (autonomy and self-reliance being necessary components of mature romantic love).
This woman’s view of romantic love is the pinnacle of a reductionist view that is tantamount to saying “consciousness kills”. I find it abhorrent that this woman is considered as an “authority” on romantic love, but what else is new — the status quo is clueless, and the TED event puts any raving idiot on stage with a bunch of non-sense to spout off.
Putting a big projector screen behind someone does not grant validity to their ideas. Nice one-liner cliche’s though.
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If you want to learn something about romantic love, read this.
– Anthony Dream Johnson
Not really relevant, but you’ll like this:
http://cl.ly/3D24013r0D033d2w220e
I do =)
I can’t watch the video right now but if she’s talking about the hormones and chemical flood of the brain that takes place with sexual attraction/romantic love, yeah, everyone is talking about that now and its good that we can finally divorce the word “love” from a temporary buzz.
Traditionally marriage was not about romance and love and fluff but about an alliance between 2 families, perpetuating the line with descendents and practical stuff like that.
Even now in South Asia where arranged marriages along practical lines see very little divorce.
Of course there’s no reason why romance can’t be added into the mix and it very often is. It doesn’t take rocket science for a healthy young male and a healthy young female to become sexually attracted to one another.
OK I watched it. She’s correct wrt what scientists now know about sexual attraction, romantic love and attachment and the chemicals/hormones that govern them.
She then veers off into a sort of sociological commentary about how marriage and family structures are going to return to their pristine ancient form, a form that she says is more egalitarian and fair. I don’t know abou that. I don’t know that the ancients were any more fair or egalitarian than we are now, maybe they were, maybe not. Maybe we will return to that, maybe not. She’s just surmising.
I agree with her point at the end regarding anti-depressants and the effect they can have on love life.
So the beginning was good and the end was good, but she veered off in the middle.
My opinion is that the West’s obsession with romantic love and requiring it as a pre-requisite for marriage and family is a mistake.
This speaker seems to think sexual attraction and romantic love are paramount, so I disagree with her on that account. Other than that, I agreed with the science.
Here’s another take on why Western women are so damn unhappy. What do you think?
She failed to provide a definition of the concept love at any point. She described what she called ‘romantic love’ as not being an emotion, yet continued to label it as merely being a physiological response to particular stimuli, i.e. dopamine secretion. While she tried to distinguish between sexual attraction and the attraction that she calls romantic love, she is still describing two physiological processess which provide information on a perceptual level. I don’t see this as any different than emotions which have been shown to have particular neural pathways in the brain anyway and which respond to particular stimuli.
Sexual lust – romatic love – deep attachment
Her explanation of all of these things is by their biology, but to label one as love is inappropriate. All of them are physiologically driven and provide perceptual information from which to choose to act. If to love is to value then to label such things that we have no choice in as love is a mockery of the concept indeed. While I don’t doubt that all those processess exist and exert an influence on our behaviour, they still only provide perceptual information, in exactly the same way as our self evident sensual information, that we must choose to conceptualise and ultimately act upon. To hold any of them as love, independent of the context in which that information is provided, and independent of the current context of a persons knowledge regarding another person and whether that person holds an identity of value, is merely to state that love is a whim. Sure there are people who I feel a stirring in my loins for, people who create a physiological arousal within my body that I do not have ultimate control over because of the very nature of my physiology. But I don’t foolishly mistake that for love.
She also contradicts herself by stating love is not an emotion (so presumably a process of thought, by it’s exact definition, a judgment of value) and then saying that the majority of men and women would not marry someone, even if they had every quality they desired and valued, if they did not love them. All this shows is that the vast majority of the population have no idea of what the definition of love actually is and would choose their partner by a mere emotion that may be entirely contextual in and of itself anyway.
“the majority of men and women would not marry someone, even if they had every quality they desired and valued, if they did not love them. All this shows is that the vast majority of the population have no idea of what the definition of love actually is and would choose their partner by a mere emotion that may be entirely contextual in and of itself anyway”
This true in dating cultures. In arranged marriage cultures it is not true at all.
The word “love” is vague and covers many different emotions and thought processes. A father loves his child, a sister loves her brother, a man loves his wife, a high school girl loves her boyfriend and all of the above love their pets.
The same word for all of these very different types of relationships. Therein lies the confusion and vagueness of the word “love”.
Nonsense. Love has an exact meaning like every other word — to love is to value.
That is in the most general sense, yes, but by no means is it vague. And when you apply love to specific and certain contexts, you correspondingly specify the meaning of the term further, relevant to the context you are using it in.
Silly rabbit, vagueness is for kids.
Vagueness is for kids is perhaps why English has one word to describe several different emotional relationships while other older and more philosophically based languages have several words to describe them.
We are a young culture. Vagueness is for kids, indeed.