Love: marriage, a legal institution frequently ending in divorce, child support payments, alimony, and other legal consequences. Why the hell would gay people want anything to do with this nonsense? Why would straight people want anything to do with this nonsense?
Freedom: citizenship, a legal institution where a person is trapped into a system of taxation and regulation which often ends in insurmountable debt obligations to private corporations. Why would anyone want anything to do with this nonsense?
Civilization: fuck you. Why would anyone want anything to do with this nonsense?
21 comments
How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?
The failure of love is unavoidable, because the ideal of love is rooted in a contradiction.
The contradiction is that, on the one hand, one wants to be loved by a freedom, to be freely chosen and cherished, brought into the center of the other’s orbit of commitments and concerns.
On the other hand, one aspires to achieve such complete control over the other’s freedom as to eliminate from it every aspect of unpredictability or ambiguity, every ground of possible suspicion or threat. One wants to process the other heart and soul.
Thus, to be in love is to want to became subject to the impenetrable mystery of the beloved’s freedom, while at the same time wanting to reduce the beloved to the status of an object wholly at the mercy of one’s own calculations and will. One dreams of being the center of the other’s world, and thus subject to the other’s freedom, but also of bringing the other into the center of one’s own world.
Love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.â€
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Love isn’t love. Marriage isn’t marriage. Freedom isn’t freedom. Civilization isn’t civilized.
Everything is doublespeak. We are taught to pull the wool over our own eyes.
We are taught to hold incompatible ideas and ideals as “truth,” creating the cognitive dissonance that allows us to be manipulated by the systems created to keep us controlled.
Real Love… Real Marriage… Real Freedom… Real Civilization… all ideals i could get behind; if only they existed in reality, instead of just in our minds.
Most people just keep dreaming of their own utopian afterlife… while so very few ever do anything to manifest those utopian ideals into real life.
It’s not even that there are too few people who understand, but rather that there are far too many who do not want to understand things differently than what they want to think and believe. There are too many people satisfied with not understanding the world… which only leads them to perpetuate the problems stopping us from turning it into what it should be.
Love: I wonder why any couple in love would need to enter a contract to establish their love in society’s eyes. I guess there are tax benefits, insurance benefits, etc, but would that offset the ridiculous expense of a wedding? My dog loves me more than any human could. If my dog doesn’t need a ring or certificate to prove it, why should anyone?
Freedom: The sad thing is if you renounce citizenship and declare yourself stateless, no country will let you in. The USA will probably lock you up. So I guess “freedom” means living on a honemade boat in the middle of the ocean, eating seaweed and drinking rainwater.
Civilization: couldn’t have said it better myself. Fuck it.
And yes I’m a hypocrite because I cling to all these things even though they are destroying me.
@Left22-
I disagree with the “love is about control” angle. For me it isn’t. I don’t want to have to control someone into behaving as though they love me. I want someone to discover aspects of me to which they choose to willingly expose themselves.
If you have to “control” or “manipulate” someone into behaving as though they love, then it’s not real. I’m not looking for something i have to create, or an illusion that must be maintained. I’m looking for someone who wants to be around me, more than they want to be around any-and/or-everyone else.
But i don’t think i have ever, or ever will become “good enough” for any woman to naturally and willingly define me as her favorite person.
So, while i technically think that “true love” does actually exist, i don’t think it’s common or even attainable for me, in this life. And since nothing else is all that appealing to me, i don’t think all the pain i’ve experienced, and will experience, has ever been, or will ever be worth suffering… because the only thing worth so much strife, is out of reach, for me.
I think that if the right people got together and began to hack reality, they could potentially figure out what must be done, to make the world the better place it could be. The probabilities of that happening and resulting in success, however, are pretty low… virtually implausible.
So idk. Life doesn’t seem to matter all that much, aside from all the miserable suffering being so unwelcome.
Inner peace and acceptance of mortality, seems just about the only thing available worth reaching for. Everything else is just another fantastical diversion.
you have to live with the fact that life is not perfect. but i’m a little confused, why is that such a revelation now? of course none of the things you mentioned is perfect. but hey, i would rather live in a civilization then out there in the woods with little to help or sustain me. there are more resources out there that can help you than you might think, if you just look for them and ask
@dman5505-
rarely are such useful resources ever obtained by simply looking and asking. Almost always, anything useful is restricted by barriers of compliance. If you don’t think or act or believe a certain way that appeases those who own the “help,” then they won’t give it, and thus, have control over the quality of your life, and can make things virtually impossible for people who need said help, but refuse to comply with a broken (and possibly malevolent) system… and any thinking person can see that the systems are built more for control than simply for facilitation of availing helpful resources.
In fact… you could take it further and assert that those who “need help” the most, are the least likely to get it… because no one wants weak people procreating and weakening the genome.
I think it’s a little ridiculous to oversimplify the OP as “just now realizing life isn’t perfect.” It’s not about “perfection,” but rather validity and legitimacy… or rather, the lack thereof.
So many things are simply not what they are said to be… many of which are almost exactly the opposite of ideal.
Well if we consider walden who left all of his lifes luxuries to live in nature we can see that maybe you don’t need the modern worlds resources :3 ah walden how i prefer emerson over you >:3
Oh and on the notion of freedom. Don’t forget it was Rousseau who described this exact system in which to have security and “freedom” in a world full of lawlessness we must have a social contract in which we give up rights to a governing system that will engorce rules and regulations to provide life, liberty, and security. It’s a false sense of liberty thiugh and security because no one really has to agree to this social contract which is what crime is.
@ clevername
I’m not sure we disagree
It is not that “love is about control†but that loves ideal is rooted in contradiction.
On the one hand we desire to enter into the freedom of the other
On the other hand we desire for the other to enter into our freedom.
We desire to lead and follow, to see and be seen, to love and be loved.
In the best of moments both elements of the contradictions are experienced at the same time.
Love held within the contradiction.
The failure of love is when it becomes one sided, and one sided becomes something else.
As others have noted Freedom is also contained in contradiction as freedom can only be expressed and experienced within boundaries. No boundaries no freedom. Freedom and Love are interrelated.
At the extremes of the contradiction you have total control and total submission selecting “one hand†and cutting off the other hand would deny the contradiction and denied no longer love. Love is the contradiction of the experience of entering into freedom and having one freedom entered in the same moment.
Opening oneself to others freedom can be very freeing but to far can become servitude?
Having someone enter into our freedom where our essences is seen and acknowledged by another can also be very freeing but comes with a huge responsibility. If our sense of self only exists through the eyes of the other we may want to control those eyes.
Bruno Mars song Grenade is a example of the one sidedness of the contradiction of Love.
He sings of an unconditional love but with the one very significant condition.
“I would die for you but you would not do the same for me.â€
The condition of my unconditional love is that your love be unconditional.
The condition of my love is that I be loved back. But now that Love has become something else.
We hear it all the time “I would die for youâ€. And I wonder what is really meant by that
Truth is I would rather die for you then you die for me and me having to live with the weight of your sacrifice on my shoulders. I don’t want someone to die for me; but rather my love to inspire To Life and far the other to Become.
The irony being that, as Clarissa Pinkola Estés, notes Love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. But despite what we say the one thing we refuse to do is trust the life, death, life cycle, of love and “die for youâ€
Not allowing for the cycle our love can Literally Love someone to death. Interesting because when most people use the words “I love you to death†they don’t really realise what they are saying. To love someone to “death†is an agreement to accept and participate in the life, death, life cycle that is Live and Love, and you might as well just Laugh. Live, Love, Laugh
What good is dying for someone?
The idea is to live for them, but also for yourself.
Unconditional love bears no conditions, not even the condition that it must be reciprocated.
True Love is unconditional, despite the desire for it to be reciprocated. Most people are apparently not developed enough to understand this. Desire versus expectation. Manifested behaviors may change based on presence of reciprocation, but True Love does not simply cease, when one party no longer wants it.
True freedom exists despite boundaries.
Sure, you can say that society needs constructs, as to deter via consequence, those who might prefer to harm others… but despite laws and consequences, people are free to harm others and incur consequence, as they see fit.
Civilization requires rules, simply because people have freedom to do as they wish. In theory, it would be possible for humans to symbiotically coexist without rules… but that would require everyone reaching the same conclusions about secular, humanistic morality… and with the current religious systems in place, that’s just not going to happen.
I disagree that love must automatically be contradictory.
I disagree that freedom can only exist within boundaries.
I disagree that civilization requires rules.
All of those assertions seem to require a similar assumption that, people need someone else to think for them, because we are unable to make appropriate choices on our own. I disagree with that assumption.
It’s just that the systems in place steer us in these directions… in a seemingly Hegelian way. Create stupid people, so you can be in charge of their decisions, so you can control them through illusions of things like Love, Freedom, and Civilization.
The systems aren’t here to make us better. The systems are designed to use the many to benefit the few… while, ironically enough, the lofty platitude of “sacrifice the few for the sake of the many” gets repeated ad nauseam.
It’s all doublespeak and psychobabble. It’s meant to keep us confused and helpless. As long as we’re helpless, we’ll need leaders and rules and conditional love.
The majority is almost never right… and yet, the idea of “democracy” is prevalent.
The real problem is: “how do we determine who is truly qualified to know what’s best for everyone?” There is too much corruption for “trust” to be a legitimate method of choosing leaders. Our systems lack integrity, and typically corrupt all who enter.
I want to be held and I want to hold. There are times when it is right just to be held and times just to hold.
The best moments though are when I hold and am held. In Love there is always tension between the two.
Here when I use the word tension I do not intend a negative but instead a connection.
We are connected by thin strands of a web and if there is no tension in the strands we will never be able to feel the presence of the other and they will not be able to feel us.
This is a paradox of a relationship of love; to express it well requires respect and acceptance of tension.
Love fails when we deny and or fear any tension
My experience is that the concept of unconditional love creates more problems than solves and even gets in the way of true and honest relationships.
There are very few people if any are capable of unconditional love or understanding it.
I respect the numinous quality that is ‘unconditional love’, that it exists as a “sense of†being, allowing and responsible.
There is the limitation of words in that they create boundaries, and doing so distort the very thing they are meant to be a symbol for.
Any objectively speaking of unconditional love undermines it, the dragon/snake eating its tail and devouring itself.
Personally I think an expectation or even longing that someone we are in direct relationship in love us unconditionally is un-loving and mean – that when the concept of unconditional love, followed through to the end, actually negates life.
As a general concept, at a distance, as a way of being sure; but one on one everyday living, sharing the same space, taking out the garbage, closing the toilet lid…. life… the life we actually live… a expectation of unconditional love will only confuse the relationship and isn’t even required.
My problem with un/conditional love is this:
How can you say “i’m only going to love you if X”?
How can you say “i love you, unless X”?
That seems artificial, to me, as though it’s just something someone is pretending to feel, because they get some sort of appealing benefit out of you thinking they love you.
You’re right though, most people don’t seem to grasp what “true love” actually is. It still baffles me how so many people can “mistake” love. It doesn’t seem possible to me. The fact that so few are even capable of understanding Love, combined with the facts of my own defects and deficits, makes it entirely implausible that i will ever again encounter that experience.
And so that leaves me to look more closely and deeply at all else this life in this world has to offer… and i’m just not impressed. I don’t see anything worth living a loveless life. There is no amount of material acquisition or principled accomplishment that can compensate for the lack of what i really want.
Were everyone is allowed the freedom to do as they wish there would be no understanding or consciousness of freedom. It might exist we we would not know it.
If there was no awareness of white there can be no awareness of black
Consciousness, awareness… requires the tensions between the opposites.
To experience love means to also know the experience its absence.
Working with and embracing the tension of opposites, the letting go and holding on, the life-death-life cycle, unconditionally, in the same moment is Love
Why do we need to understand freedom? Were we simply free, we wouldn’t need to worry about whether or not we understand it. We would just be free.
Actually, why do we need to understand, or even be aware of anything?
Why do we need to be conscious?
Why must i experience anything, in any way, at all?
Living for something that doesn’t exist and can’t be reached, just because i want to believe it does exist, and can be reached… doesn’t make sense to me. That’s exactly the same thing religion does.
So maybe Love is my religion. I believe in it, i feel as though i’ve experienced it, but i can’t seem to find it anywhere, and i can’t seem to prove that it exists. At some point, i think we start trying to fabricate evidence to support what we want to believe, rather than accepting that it’s not a reasonable belief, rooted in reality. Perhaps “true love” does not exist, except for in our minds.
Sex is the reason we are all here. It is our origin, and the most enjoyable part of life. It is the only reasonable answer to “why?” I don’t think i’ll have many, if any, more chances to do that… so i can’t reconcile the agony of being alive. Not enough sex happened, and everything else is a waste of time. That’s my reason, regardless of how i know so many would criticize. The miserable futility of my life, utterly negates any and all external opinions and judgements. It doesn’t matter what any or everyone else thinks. It matters what i think, what i feel, what i want… what i can’t find… what i’m not allowed to live.
So yeah, it’s all stupid.
How can you say “i’m only going to love you if X�
I think I see it now.
We are confusing Love and Relationship.
Without Love there can be no relationship, however love does not necessarily mean or ensure the success of relationship.
There is a part of love, even unconditional, that is responsibility
I love you by holding you accountable and that means if you do X, say beat me, it is because I love that I end a personal relationship. It is a sad truth
I have heard a person in relationship say to their partner. I am only going to love you as long as you remain healthy and continue to have a good job.
This condition may is reasonable with regards to being honest with and establishing one needs. But isn’t about love. that’s about living together.
Another couple fights about the toilet seat. Minor but perhaps not as unconsciously it shows the contradiction that lies within love, a unconscious expression of control and freedom.
It is a sad truth of devoice that its pain is often the motivation for growth. That had the couple been able make the same changes while together would have keep them together. That the life, death, life cycle of Love
“How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?” fight club
I’m not “confused” in the slightest.
Love doesn’t bail when life presents challenges.
Love doesn’t end when the relationship is destroyed by someone’s unfair conditions, or refusal to cooperate with a mutually beneficial arrangement.
True love doesn’t say “i’m going to fuck someone else, and never speak to you again, because you’re involuntarily experiencing hardship.”
In the end, I would agree that the question of freedom, free will, and determinism becomes unhelpful, if unknowable.
My own thinking is that by the age of five by nature and nurture how we will respond and react to life’s events is pretty much set.
If freedom exists, based only on my own observations, is nuanced, perhaps no more than a intention that creates change that happens very slowly then all at once.
“Why do we need to be conscious?â€
I believe the longing to die is exactly that a wish to be unconscious.
Unconscious we are allowed to remain in the “Garden†but only as long as we remain ignorant that we are there.
The knowledge of the opposites, of good and evil – not what is good or evil – just a sense that something’s are experienced as being better than others and then the frustration that some times what is better in one moment isn’t in the next or what is experienced as good to me is experienced as bad for another.
Is it no wonder we are filled with neuroses!
The return to the “Garden†is cut off from us by “flaming swards†(symbolically swards represent the ability to cut through and separate for example the good and the bad)
One we ask the question, and become aware of the question we can’t un-ask it, we are thrown out into the world.
I have to run but might come back to your thoughts on “Love and religion.â€
Thanks for the dialog
Love doesn’t bail when life presents challenges. – I would agree
Love doesn’t end when the relationship is destroyed – I would agree
Love is
Love as a way of being remains
However that does not mean relationship stays the same.
Because you may be able love unconditionally does not ensure the success of a relationship, or that that unconditionally love will be returned. (Unconditional love does not change in anyway if it were not returned. it is a state of being.
With regards to relationships, as they are, not as we wish they were, my observations is that the dream of unconditional love becomes very controlling and leads to unhealthy relationship.
The confusion is on my part as I assumed we were talking about the something we might not be.
t appears to me that you are using the words Relationship and Love interchangeably.
Your expression of Love is as it Ideal my comments are about our limited ability to reach that ideal and how not accepting that reality can really mess up relationship.
You have experienced the disappointment of Love and even its betrayal?
If your experience was similar to mine, you’re disappointed, confused, depressed and maybe even mostly angry.
She told me she loved me, I know it was real, I know it! But then the shit of life got in the way, and she bailed. Worse she bailed by burning the bridge and fucking someone else.
Was it all a lie? Why the fuck isn’t Love enough? Why wasn’t my Love enough?
I look around and I see the same scène played over and over, why is Love not enough?
We have to believe that Love is all things, that love can conquer all things, don’t we?
But that’s not our experience. Something must be wrong with us or it’s all a lie, everyone lies, we lie….
The problem with an ideal is that it can only be a target, something we aim at where one moment we get close, but in the next we miss. We can improve our skill but there is always room for improvement, always something to aim for. On the best days we hit 100 out of 100 but then it rains or the wind blows or our arm gets tired, or shit happens.
(Interesting note: the English word sin comes from an archery term where it means to miss the target. When the archer misses the target he sin’s. When we miss the ideal that is Love we sin and we are all sinners!
We are human and we all miss! )
You say you can love unconditionally, but if that is true where is the anger coming from, when all that happened was that someone was unable love us in the same the way we needed them to. When all that happened was that a human missed the target?
That’s the thing, where human, our shit gets in the way and stops us from seeing clearly.
Love is not a guarantee of seeing clearly, love, as the saying go is blind, so no wonder we miss.
That’s the thing though if Love is Bind, Relationships are not. In fact Relationships are the most certain constructs that will reveal all of our shit. There are many who would argue that that is its perpose.
In relationship we get to see and work thorough our shit – thus a “series of deaths and rebirthsâ€
A healthy relationship creates consciousness and when between two very conscious people can be the foundation of wonder and growth. Unconscious pain and sorrow….
A healthy relationship expects and allows the misses, it doesn’t panic.
But Look around, and the message of our society is that if you miss, panic, three strikes and you’re out,
Your Ideal of unconditional love is getting in the way and preventing you from entering into the “series of deaths and rebirthsâ€. Your expectations of what unconditional love is, actually nullifying it.
Everyone at some time or another is betrayed by Love, and nailed to the cross, where were wither and struggle in pain. Only we do not die because we do not let go, we do not love unconditionally, we are not prepared to be a sacrifice to Love. We hold on and so no rebirth is possible.
You want to find Love, stop looking.
You want relationship, to find someone to share your life with. Don’t push them away with some ideal. With some target hundreds of yards away. You can move the target; it will allow itself to be moved but only for a time. Stuck to long at one distance, it will turn on you, with a vengeance. Place it closer, practice, move it further away, practice… repeat.
That is the story of life
There are those who say Life is not a practice but if life is anything, that’s exactly what it is!
We never get it right, we miss, those we care the most about miss and things can always be done better.
We can panic, get angry or maybe our only freedom, laugh and cry and love it all?
I want to respond to various points, but it might take me a while. I really don’t think i’m using “love” and “relationship” interchangeably. If anyone knows they are not the same thing, i do.