What Is Love Article Assignment
Directions: Read the two articles below. Follow the annotation directions on the final page, then answer the questions. Be prepared to discuss and debate your ideas in class tomorrow. What you do not complete in class is homework.
Article I: What Is Love?
|UpdatedJul 05, 2012
By Sheryl Paul, International counselor for anxiety; Author, 'The Conscious Bride'
We live under a massive cultural delusion aboutthe nature of real love. Propagated by mainstream media, from the time you're born you're inundated with the belief that love is a feeling and that when you find "the one" you'll sense it in your gut and be overcome by anundeniable sense of knowing.When the feeling and corresponding knowing fade (for the knowing is intimately linked to the feeling) and the work of learning about real love begins, most people take the diminished feeling as a sign that they're in the wrong relationship and walk away. And then they start over again, only to find that the now-familiar knowing and feeling fade again... and again... and again.
If love isn't a feeling, what is it?
Love is action. Love is tolerance. Love is learning your partner's love language and then expressing love in a way that he can receive.Love is giving.Love is receiving. Love is plodding through the slow eddies of a relationship without jumping ship into another's churning rapids. Love is recognizing that it's not your partner's job to make you feel alive, fulfilled, or complete; that's your job. And it's only when you learn to become the source of your own aliveness and are living your life connected to the spark of genius that is everyone's birthright can you fully love another.
Although it's nearly impossible to capture this elusive word into a single definition, M. Scott Peck says it poignantly inThe Road Less Traveled:
Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
By stating that it is when a couple falls out of love that they may begin to really love I am also implying that real love does not have its roots in a feeling of love. To the contrary, real love often occurs in a context in which the feeling of love is lacking, when we act lovingly despite the fact that we don't feel loving.
And as my favorite fiction writer on real love, Kate Kerrigan (author of a must-read for every engaged and newlywed couple,"Recipes for a Perfect Marriage"), writes in her fabulous essay,Marriage Myths:
You don't have to encourage it, or welcome it, but you better learn to suck it up from time to time. We have mythologized love to such an extent that people are no longer prepared for the realities of long-term relationships. We are taught that it is good not to compromise, not to put up with anything we don't like, not to sacrifice our own beliefs for anyone or anything. Yet compromise and sacrifice are the cornerstones of marital love.
No matter what way you dress it up, the best thing you can bring to a marriage is not the feeling of 'being in love', but romance's poor relation: tolerance. Add to that enough maturity to be able to fulfil your own needs and you have some hope. Optimism and chemistry, which seem to be the bedrock of the modern marriage, just don't cut it, folks. And while I am pontificating, one more tip for the ladies: Try to find a man who has that most underrated of qualities: character. I did and so far my Oscar hasn't bothered him. Although I am still waiting for my cooked breakfast...
Sound pessimistic? It's reality, not a welcome word in a culture addicted to fantasy. But here's the good news: when the initial infatuation feeling fades and you do the real work of learning how to love and be loved, something infinitely richer and sustaining than flimsy infatuation flowers in the garden of your marriage. Over time, these plants grow roots that are sturdy and strong. They are nourished by soil that is well-worked as you've sat beside each other and yanked out the weeds of intolerance, impatience, frustration, and fear. It's work that can and must be cultivated over a lifetime, and yet we expect to enter marriage with a perfect, rose-filled garden. Again, this is the fantasy that our culture propagates and throws many young people into despair when their fledging relationship fails to measure up to these unrealistic and damaging expectations.
If you're in a fulfilling, long-term marriage, you know what I mean and I'm preaching to the choir. But for the women and men who I work with every dayin counseling, it's a crushing moment when the infatuation drug wears off and they're left to begin the real work of loving. And it's even more devastating when this happens during their engagement, a time our culture hammers into their head as the happiest in their life. It's time to send a different message to young people about the difference between infatuation and love. If we're going to restore marriage to a place of honor and respect, we must teach that the role of one's partner is not to save you from yourself and make you feel alive, fulfilled, and complete; only you can do that. It's time to teach a different message. Let's begin the conversation here.
Sheryl Paul, M.A., has counseled thousands of people worldwide through her private practice, her bestselling books, her Home Study Programs and her websites. She has appeared several times on "The Oprah Winfrey Show", as well as on "Good Morning America" and other top media shows and publications around the globe.
Article II: What is Love? (No really, what is it?)
By BeritBrogaard, DM Science, Ph. D
There is little dispute among most people that love is an emotion.Social psychologist Phillip Shaver and colleagues asked students(link is external)howconfidentthey were that items on a list of more than 100 emotion-related words referred to actual emotions, and “love” was the one that students were most confident signified a true emotion.
To many of us, the idea that love is an emotion is so obvious as to be banal. This view, however, has surprisingly limited popularity among philosophers and scientists, who also find baffling most people's fondness for the view that love involvesmore than one person. Aristotle thought of love as a union, saying, "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” (Diogenes Laërtius, Third Century AD).
Modern British philosopher Roger Scruton, who defends Aristotle’s view, likewise holds that love exists “just so soon as reciprocity becomes community. That is, just so soon as all distinction between my interests and your interests is overcome.” In a variation of this view, love is notitselfan emotion but an emotioncomplexconsisting of the emotions of two or more people. As Annette Baier puts it:
Love is not just an emotion people feel toward other people, but also a complex tying together of the emotions that two or a few more people have; it is a special form of emotional interdependence. (Unsafe Loves, p. 444)
This view is also encapsulated in sayings like, “Lovers’ hearts always beat as one"; “Love creates an us without destroying a me"; and, “Love is when two bodies become one sou." Or as Sean Penn once said, “I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one.”
But this "union view" is fraught with difficulties.
It implies that love cannot be unreciprocated and that one cannot love of a deceased lover or a hallucinated one. But it is hard to deny, to take just one example from real life or pop culture, that,in the movieThe Sixth Sense, thegrief-stricken widow of Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) still loves him, despite his death.
Avid defenders of the union view could argue that love is either a union among lovers or the anticipation of, or desire for, such a union. None of that helps.
You can love someone without anticipating or desiring that a union will come into existence, because—sadly—love isn’t always sufficient for initiating or continuing a relationship. “To blindly follow the heart is the maxim of fools," philosopher Aaron Smuts observes.
Some people say that love is a concern for another person for their sake rather than your own, an appraisal of the value of another person, or a bestowal of value on thebeloved. But none of these accounts of love can be accurate.
You can have a deep concern for another person without loving them, and you can love someone without having a deep concern for them. A nurse is expected to have a deep concern for his patients but he is not expected to love them. An incestuous, abusive mother may love her child but have no concern for him. Love mayinvolvean appreciation of another person’s value, or the bestowal of value on another person, but neither is sufficient for love. We can appreciate Jeremy Glick, who attempted to take down the hijackers on United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, without the appreciation adding up to love. We bestow value on people we admire but we need not love them.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher holds thatromantic loveisneveran emotion or feeling. It’s adrive, just likesexandattachment. Fisher’s argument is that romantic love is associated with increased activation of neurons in the midbrain that secretedopamine, and since the dopamine system is a more primitive system than the emotionalbrainand the cortical system, romantic love is not an emotion.
This argument, however, is not sound. Dopamine is one of the key neurotransmitters in the modulation ofanger. It can motivate enraged people to shout, throw things, seekrevenge, and even kill. Does that make anger adrive? Hardly. Anger is an emotion, even if it is associated with a strong dopamine response, the very chemical that can make people addicted to anger.
The same point can be made with respect tofear: Some people get severely addicted to adrenaline rushes caused by abnormally intense fear processing in the emotional brain. They cannot get enough of extreme rollercoasters, paragliding, parachuting, racecars, or rockclimbing without a safety line. They get addicted to visceral thrills because the adrenaline rushes cause a steep peak in dopamine levels. This heavy dose of the reward chemical is gratifying. Over time the system changes and a more intense adrenaline rush is needed to get the same pleasurable response. It is in part the peak in dopamine levels that prepares our fight-and-flight response in threatening situations. Dopamine motivates us to act now by either fighting off the danger or running away from it. But despite the close correlation between fear and peaks in dopamine levels, fear is anemotion. It’s even considered one of the six basic emotions—the others being surprise, disgust, sadness, anger, and joy.
The conclusion to draw from this is that whether or not a feeling is associated with a peak in dopamine levels has no bearing on whether it really is an emotion.
Fisher further argues that love is too long-lasting to be an emotion. But this line of argument doesn’t succeed, either. She mentions disgust as a representative example of an emotion, and it’s true that disgust, as consciously felt, usually doesn’t last long. But despite normally being treated as such, disgust may not be an emotion at all, but asensory reflex. What’s more, disgustcanbe long-lasting, just like anger and sadness. I don’t like fried liver. It has a mushy texture and a bitter iron taste. It’s repulsive. Nauseating. Vile. But my disgust doesn’t vanish when I amnotexposed to, or not thinking about, fried liver. I still find it revolting, and have for too many years to count.
Love is not a drive; it is first and foremost something we feel in our hearts.
It is when love manifests itself as an emotional experience that it is characterized by the sort of profound ecstasy or deep attachment that, when suddenly interrupted or unreciprocated, can cause intense suffering. Love is something for which we will give up eternal life. The main character in the movieCity of Angels, who gives up his wings in return for bodily sensation, and then loses his one and only beloved n a truck accident, says:“I would rather have tasted her lips just once, touched her skin, one time, and made love to her for one night, than spend the rest of my life without ever knowing that.”
Annotation and Questions
- Underline and label the author’s main idea (thesis) in both articles.
- Underline any evidence throughout the article that the author is using to support her main idea.
- Circle any words whose meanings you do not know. Jot down a brief definition for them in the margin.
- Respond to what you’re reading: if something confuses you, put a question mark or write a question in the margin. If it surprises you, jot down why you’re surprised in the margins. Record your own thoughts and ideas in the margins as you read.
- What do YOU think love is? How would you define it?
- Do you think teenagers are too quick to say they are in love? Explain.
- Do you agree or disagree with the commentary made by the authors above? What did they say that stood out to you? Explain.
- If you were going to debate, would you argue that love is more a feeling or more an action? Support your opinion with 5 reasons.