Should we

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I know sir, and it is your definition of love I disagree with. Strip away 'feelings' and it no longer qualifies as love. To equate love with 'taking care of the needs of those around you' does a disservice to the true nature of love. It really does.

A toaster acts without feeling and takes care of the needs of people who want to be fed. Does the toaster love the people it is feeding?!

A feeling justifies all kinds of things, anger, rage, and if we are to go by just feelings, then whatever feelings we have at the moment rules. So if love were just a feeling, and at some point you experience anger that justify anything in you, at that moment? If someone else were to be ruled by their passions and a feeling caused them to marry, would anger then justify hitting one's wife? Strip feelings away they come and go, but commitment, acts of will even when someone is angry and still does what is right by their family, that strengthens real love not weakens it.

@kellyjay said
Of course, there are feelings in love, but you cannot trust feelings, you can be stricken over someone, then someone else, then someone else. If you are in love with someone you can be stricken with them, but if a commitment is made that is love. Chasing after a feeling isn't to love, its self-gratification nothing more than wanting that feeling someone at the moment gives y ...[text shortened]... ore they have to move on to the next one to get it again, the pure selfishness of it is devastating.

I wasn't speaking specifically about romantic love (which can indeed be fleeting) but the enduring love we have for family and friends, the kind of love that we simply don't give to a stranger, even when caring for them.

I find it strange you would seek to play down the significance of feelings in such an emotion and replace them with commitment. You are turning love into a robotic, cold undertaking that is served up equally to everybody we encounter. That's not any love I recognise.

I believe the reason you have watered down love in such a manner is to be able to fulfil the commandment to love thy neighbour as you love yourself. It would be impossible for you to love a stranger the way you love your wife, so you seek to reduce love to something more economic and detached from true feeling, easily dispensable to every Tom Dick and Harry.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I wasn't speaking specifically about romantic love (which can indeed be fleeting) but the enduring love we have for family and friends, the kind of love that we simply don't give to a stranger, even when caring for them.

I find it strange you would seek to play down the significance of feelings in such an emotion and replace them with commitment. You are turning l ...[text shortened]... ething more economic and detached from true feeling, easily dispensable to every Tom Dick and Harry.

You find commitment a detachment? Nothing watered down with this, it stands the test of time, while feelings have destroyed marriages, because the fell out of love, or they found the love of their life and it wasn't their wife.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I wasn't speaking specifically about romantic love (which can indeed be fleeting) but the enduring love we have for family and friends, the kind of love that we simply don't give to a stranger, even when caring for them.

I find it strange you would seek to play down the significance of feelings in such an emotion and replace them with commitment. You are turning l ...[text shortened]... ething more economic and detached from true feeling, easily dispensable to every Tom Dick and Harry.

Why can't you love others with an enduring love?

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I wasn't speaking specifically about romantic love (which can indeed be fleeting) but the enduring love we have for family and friends, the kind of love that we simply don't give to a stranger, even when caring for them.

I find it strange you would seek to play down the significance of feelings in such an emotion and replace them with commitment. You are turning l ...[text shortened]... ething more economic and detached from true feeling, easily dispensable to every Tom Dick and Harry.

Love for my wife is not the same I have for my kids, this doesn't mean it isn't real.

@kellyjay said
Why can't you love others with an enduring love?

I think we, as humans, are capable of loving a great many people. But it is not something we give out equally to everybody we encounter or care for.

Trying to give love to somebody void of feeling is akin to giving somebody a balloon void of air. It's empty and meaningless.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I think we, as humans, are capable of loving a great many people. But it is not something we give out equally to everybody we encounter or care for.

Trying to give love to somebody void of feeling is akin to giving somebody a balloon void of air. It's empty and meaningless.

Greek translations of love would work better than the English language usage as well. Since love in English is not very precise, the same word carries so many different meanings none being unimportant.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I wasn't speaking specifically about romantic love (which can indeed be fleeting) but the enduring love we have for family and friends, the kind of love that we simply don't give to a stranger, even when caring for them.

I find it strange you would seek to play down the significance of feelings in such an emotion and replace them with commitment. You are turning l ...[text shortened]... ething more economic and detached from true feeling, easily dispensable to every Tom Dick and Harry.

What is enduring love if not couched in commitment?

@kellyjay said
Greek translations of love would work better than the English language usage as well. Since love in English is not very precise, the same word carries so many different meanings none being unimportant.

Now you seek to abandon the English meaning of love to make your square peg fit in a round hole?

😲

@kellyjay said
What is enduring love if not couched in commitment?

You say the English meaning of love is not precise enough and then set about trying to make it vaguer.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Now you seek to abandon the English meaning of love to make your square peg fit in a round hole?

😲

Just acknowledging the word love in the English language was translated from several different words. In our conversation, you highlighted some when trying to differentiate the different levels or meanings of the word.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
You say the English meaning of love is not precise enough and then set about trying to make it vaguer.

How can love be enduring without commitment? You believe anything goes, and if it real it lasts?

@kellyjay said
How can love be enduring without commitment? You believe anything goes, and if it real it lasts?

The 2 are not mutually exclusive. It was you who sought to replace feelings with commitment. I think genuine enduring love often features both, and is therefore not something we show to strangers.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
The 2 are not mutually exclusive. It was you who sought to replace feelings with commitment. I think genuine enduring love often features both, and is therefore not something we show to strangers.

I'm not at all suggesting replace feelings with commitment, and I challenge you to find one sentence where I have said that! What I have been saying is that with our emotions, there has to be an act of the will to commit, to do what is needed regardless of our emotional makeup at the time, otherwise stress can end a relationship, lust, and so on. Feelings come and go, and as I have also said, they vary, and if we love today and hate tomorrow is that justification for actions justified by hate? So doing good to those that need it, does not require I feel some lovey dovey feelings towards them, if they are in need they should be helped, love is much more than a warm and fuzzy feeling, that alone is to shallow.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
The 2 are not mutually exclusive. It was you who sought to replace feelings with commitment. I think genuine enduring love often features both, and is therefore not something we show to strangers.

The commitment towards strangers is being there for them, period. The importance of another human life is that it merely human life, a divine creature. Now if you think it is nothing but evolved pond scum you may have another view about human life and then have a scale of importance that is quite different than mine, one a little more selective on who is essential and who isn't.