what is love.

[doc]

Love is the Fool's wisdom, and the wise man's folly

I'll go with that.

Oh, and it's all about lust too.

[sarah]

Wisdom, folly, fools and lust.

“He who lives without folly isn’t so wise as he thinks.”

“Folly follows us all through our lives. If one man seems wiser than his neighbors, it is only because his follies are better suited to his age and his fortune.”

François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld


“The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and Führer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity.”

Carl Jung


“Love talks and talks. Lust is brief and to the point.”

Mason Cooley

[doc]

Mason Cooley: He was professor emeritus of English, speech and world literature at the College of Staten Island. He was also an assistant professor of English at Columbia University from 1959 to 1967 and an adjunct professor from 1980 to 1988. He enjoyed long walks in the park and naked massages. Wikipedia

S0 much for his "authoritative" views...

I hope that one day, if I'm ever in wikipedia, I'm "known" for more than "enjoying naked massages..." lol.

[sarah]

Man of Lust

Doc, you'll be known for insatiable lust, surely.

[Beginner's Mind]

Wow, been away from the Russbo world a few years and now it's all love, lust and squiggly lines being drawn over anime pics... ..blimey!

Much of what Sarah and Splinter have written resonated with me. Some of Splinter's points make me wonder - why is it possible for us to see other people suffering do nothing? I wonder if it's to do with over-population, or at least population density - I work and used to live in London, a very crowded city, and there are just too many people who need help and love, so we all seem to put blinkers on and just ignore them.

I now live in a much quieter and less populated little town, and people act differently - we tend to smile or say hello to anyone we see while walking around, and there's only one homeless person, who everyone knows and talks to. I guess it's just not natural to be in so much competition for so few resources.

When I was a child growing up in inner city London, I wanted to bring home every homeless person or starving person on tv I saw. I still feel like that much of the time, I think it's only natural. I imagine this impulse worked when we all lived in small tribes/villages, we would collectively support the ill, the mentally ill (heheh - seems like that still goes on at times at Russbo), we would pride ourselves on giving the best hospitality to travellers needing shelter, etc. I guess also in those days almost everyone was pretty poor, so there was less to be lost when trusting strangers (the more we have, the more we fear)

I'm a hopeless optimist, so I like to think we all feel a basic level of love towards everyone else, but that social conditioning stops us exploring or even really feeling that love, certainly in a practical way. People I work with call me a soft touch, and I guess I am. They tell me "they'll only spend it on booze and fags" and I think "if I were homeless, I'd want to get drunk and smoke too - drugs and sex too if I had the money..".

We all have hopes and fears, a need for love and companionship, I don't understand why we're so cruel to each other. Hate, I understand, anger and violence I understand, but utter indifference is beyond me. Many people in the UK resent immigrants coming here. When I ask them why they think that just because they happened to be born on this little island, they deserve food when others should starve, safety while others live in fear, it's almost like they can't comprehend that it was only luck (/fate/God/whatever) that placed them in their fortunate position. I don't think they actually see the Rwandan woman they see on tv, raped multiple times just because of her race, as a woman like them/their mother/sister/friend, etc.

Still, it's not like I've devoted my life to improving that of others, so how can I talk? I feel a base level of love for everyone but I don't really act on it. Maybe that makes me worst of all....

[doc]

why is it possible for us to see other people suffering do nothing? I wonder if it's to do with over-population, or at least population density - I work and used to live in London, a very crowded city, and there are just too many people who need help and love, so we all seem to put blinkers on and just ignore them.

It's not uncommon for me to stop and give money to beggars who have obvious physical deformities; I do it here in Thailand most of the time, and I've done it occasionally in China. But, you raise a good point: when you're surrounded literally by hundreds of thousands of people, as you can be in Beijing, you start to realize that you just can't make a difference. When you're in a small village in Thailand, helping one guy seems to be worthwhile; when you're on the road near Tianenmen, it seems absolutely futile.

New Yorkers seem to go out of their way to help their lost that live on the streets, for a big town, it has neighborhoods, and therefore, a smaller town feel. But in Beijing, damn, it's just hard to really appreciate that an individual has a "life", or at least one worth taking care of, with all those people you see running around. I also think that people's attitudes towards the value of life is different in Asia than it is in the US.

You're hitting on a touchy subject here, one which no doubt will cause some to get upset. But it raises a good point about Asian culture which I've noticed over the years of living here.

[doc]

OK, not to beat a dead horse here, but my comments have just been refuted in the Associated Press. Interesting news article, I'll quote it here, from MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations.

It’s more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.

College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex — they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and “it feels good,” according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.

Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: “I was attracted to the person.”

Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years and their own money to study the overlooked why behind sex while others were spending their time on the how.

“It’s refuted a lot of gender stereotypes ... that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love,” said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the study’s co-author. “That’s not what I came up with in my findings.”

Few gender differences
Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, “the more we look, the more we find similarity,” said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn’t part of Meston’s study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems.

Meston and colleague David Buss first questioned 444 men and women — ranging in age from 17 to 52 — to come up with a list of 237 distinct reasons people have sex. They ranged from “It’s fun” which men ranked fourth and women ranked eighth to “I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease” which ranked on the bottom by women.

Once they came up with that long list, Meston and Buss asked 1,549 college students taking psychology classes to rank the reasons on a one-to-five scale on how they applied to their experiences.

“None of the gender differences are all that great,” Meston said. “Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex were there and available they would jump on it, somewhat more so than women. Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner.”

And, the top reasons why people have sex:

The top and bottom reasons for having sex from a list of 237 that college-aged men and women gave University of Texas researchers:

Men's top 10 reasons:
1. I was attracted to the person.
2. It feels good.
3. I wanted to experience physical pleasure.
4. It’s fun.
5. I wanted to show my affection to the person.
6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release.
7. I was “horny.”
8. I wanted to express my love for the person.
9. I wanted to achieve an orgasm.
10. I wanted to please my partner.


Women's top 10 reasons:
1. I was attracted to the person.
2. I wanted to experience physical pleasure.
3. It feels good.
4. I wanted to show my affection to the person.
5. I wanted to express my love for the person.
6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release.
7. I was “horny.”
8. It’s fun.
9. I realized I was in love.
10. I was “in the heat of the moment.”


Men's bottom 5 reasons:
1. The person offered to give me drugs for doing it.
2. I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease.
3. I wanted to punish myself.
4. I wanted to break up my relationship.
5. I wanted to get a job.


Women's bottom 5 reasons:
1. I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease.
2. Someone offered me money to do it.
3. I wanted to get a raise.
4. It was an initiation rite to a club or organization.
5. I wanted to get a job.

Source: The Associated Press

I guess that finalizes it, eh Sarah? It's all about lust. Not sure I understand that "I wanted to get a job" bit though...

[shaolinstylee]

Funny study...

oh, and going back a while in this conversation, yes, Apathy or indifference, however you want to put it...

Reminds of typical traits of a profession or two I can think of.

[doc]

Well, I think it was a good study. I mean, it's another viewpoint into the intricate thinkings of the average woman's brain. What makes them "fall in love", ie, have sex with you.

It all boils down to physical attraction.

Simple.

LOL...

[zachsan]

No offense, but this study doesn't really apply to the conversation. It doesn't even deal with relationships, it deals with why people have sex. The grand conclusion is that people have sex because primarily because they're attracted to each other. More specifically, college students have sex because they're attracted to each other. How did they get someone to fund this?

[doc]

Sure it does.

Physical attraction leads to lust.

Lust is love.

Simple? Damn, amazing how I figure these things out.

[zachsan]

Well sure, if you go by the assumption that lust = love, then this study has a lot to do with love. But of course, you can't use the study to prove that assumption.

[doc]

Z, we're assuming that it's not an assumption because we're assuming that it's a fact, which, if it isn't, it should be. And if it isn't, it's almost a fact, enough of a fact to warrant kind of being a fact. In fact, life is easier if you assume it to be a fact and not merely an assumption.

Right?

OK, more birthday celebrations tonight. Time to fall in love again.

[Fa Hui]

Plus if it's a survey about college girls, than well that's all the matters. Just as long as they're not fat....

[onesp1ng]

so, like... men want to give out sexually transmitted diseases more than women? i would have never assumed that...