*Love and Value Judgements*

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Taking up fom where I left off, more or less, on the "Science and Value Judgements" thread, ( at: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp2196602html#2196602 ), I was wondering who or what determines/controls the label "love" in our society.

Who, or what, sets the specifications for "love", and what are they? What steps are required to produce something which qualifies for the label "love"? What things must be "present" for something to be called love? And who or what gains from controlling this set of standards?

Is the label/value judgement "love" as ( relatively ) "dead"/non-credible in our society as religion? Or does it have as much cachet/clout as "science"? "Love" is like "religion" in there are understood/believed to be several different kinds. For some this is just a semantic problem, ( there should be more words for the different kinds ); for others this fundamentally undermines its credibility as a value judgement.

I think most people still believe that a sexual relationship which does not involve "love", whatever this value is, is worth considerably less than one which includes it. Love in general is considered to be a good thing. But what is it exactly?

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You are attempting to generalize very individual personal relationships which very frequently do not fit any particular standards. Love is one of those peculiar words that can mean anything from a delight in vanilla ice cream or pizza to an overwhelming desire to go to bed with someone to a long lasting relationship of mutual respect and devoted attention. It is a standard sloppy smear word that basically is useless without very precise clarification.

Not generalising about relationships at all. Attempting to work out what the word/symbol love refers to, what it constructs and is constructed by, etc.


In the same sort of category then as truth, justice, god, beauty etc.


It has power as a symbol, like the word god, or beauty, but it's not clear what it is referring to. I agree. Clarification of what it means to people, is what I'm interested in/looking for.
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Last edited by ouinon on 14 May 2009, 8:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

How does our "reading" of it impact on our lives?

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It very much depends upon the definition and the context. Pornography is a big business.

Now that's a very good example of the kind of organisation/business which might be benefiting from a certain construction/definition of love.

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Oh well, considering their problems, the Catholic Church isn't doing too bad a job in the same business except it's a kind of negative porn. But since Catholics have a reputation for a high reproduction rate I'm not sure how to rate their efficiency.

On an interpersonal basis, I think the idea of love is very much alive - no one doubts that many mothers love their children, for example. When we are in the depths of romantic love, we believe - it is only when the love weakens or is withdrawn that we doubt. And because most love is interpreted on a personal to person basis, it is less susceptible to outside influences... the "he's just not into you" movement is an attempt to explore the validity of attachment/like/love from one perspective; that seems to be changing somewhat how people talk about it ... but will it change the actual patterns of behavior that people fall into (which have a strong biological basis)?? I don't think so.

Of course, having only one word for love is very limiting. The Greeks had it much closer to right with multiple words: eros, philos, agape, storge, thelema, etc. In theory, we could do the same and say "affection", "familial love", "romantic love", "lust", etc ... but we lack the semantic discipline, and experience communication problems as a result.

You say "of course", and that in itself is interesting. Because it would have seemed very odd to the greeks. There is in fact something significant about our society only having one word for "it". I don't think that it is anywhere near as simple as a "lack of semantic discipline".

... As I can't get a handle on the "outside" perspective on "love" the label yet, I was thinking about what it meant to me, ( incoherent whitterings follow ... ).

I was wondering whether in our society "love" often means that someone finds something "easy". Which is why people say they "love pizza", because pizza is "easy". Many people tend to feel love for things they find easy. Oddly enough my title turns out to be very relevant here, because I think the more value judgements we "believe in"/are attached to the harder it is to love, ( much ).

I feel love for those things which do not challenge my value judgements. I will not be able to love much if my perspective on life/the world is cluttered with value judgements, or will only love those things which chime well with them. If I have many many value judgements I will find it difficult to find anyone or anything which matches those criteria/standards, and "love" will elude me.

Most people can love objects. I love nature because it doesn't upset my value judgements. I tend to love films which express/embody/reinforce my deepest value judgements. I tend to "hate", or at least dislike, films etc which challenge them.

This would be why people tend to fall in love with reflections of themselves, either real or imagined, and why they fall out of love when it turns out that the person does not in fact reflect/reinforce their value-judgements. As soon as it becomes "difficult", challenging to our value judgements, most/many people stop feeling love.

In the case of families though, the mother in most cases can not leave her child however much its behaviour challenges her value judgements, and the child can not leave either. Sometimes the mother will change her own value judgements to allow her to continue loving her child, but the child generally does most, ( if not all ), of the work, or loses its mother's love.

Love is something you feel, ( and act on ), in an interpersonal context, when you do not experience a threat to your value judgements. That's my first take on it. You can feel more love by reducing your load of judgements. That's why babies love so absolutely. The amount of love you feel depends on how much your value judgements are being challenged, ( in inverse proportions ).

I don't think that it's love which fuels the effort to detach from value judgements, in order to feel more love, or simply to continue loving, ( as in longterm relationships ); I think that's something else to do with a long term vision for one's life, value judgements about the best way to approach life in general.

I'm just brainstorming here. This is still in the realm of "believing" the label is the thing. Feel free to discuss/dismiss!

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Last edited by ouinon on 15 May 2009, 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

excellent point

But Of Course! I agree that it is significant.

When I use the word semantics, I am not referring to something trivial, as most people do ... people tend to dismiss things with phrases like "that's just semantics!" I think semantics is about more than mere words - it is about words and meanings, and it can shape and limit how we think and communicate. So a lack of semantic discipline is not merely forgetting to proof-read a composition for English class ... it implies a degeneration of thinking and communicating. If we were passionate about a subject, we would be more explicit and clear about how it was discussed.

But I don't think it is lack of discipline. I think that it is a symptom of a particular mindset/social system. And in fact very disciplined.

For instance: my post above about love being what you feel in an interpersonal context when your value judgements are not under threat, or less so than normal. It occurred to me that there are two faces to this;

One face is when very few of one's value judgements are under threat because one has very few of them, or is not very "attached" to them, and the other face is when few of them are under threat because the person that one is with has very similar ones.

One of these "faces" is on the road to universal love, and the other is on the road to investing in the individual, valuing the "same", and reinforcing "belief in" the value of "value judgements" throughout society.

By having only one word, for even the two kinds of "love" of my analysis, people are encouraged to conflate universal love with individual love, to highly value the individual with their individual value systems, because it produces feelings of "love", which is seen and promoted everywhere as a very good and noble thing, ... and lose sight of the other.
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Last edited by ouinon on 15 May 2009, 11:16 am, edited 3 times in total.

We cling to our value judgments because our personal identity is wrapped up in them, i.e., we identify with them. Whatever we identify with--is sacred territory precisely because our mental/emotional stability depends upon their reinforcement. To a large extent, our day to day survival hinges on these values. We need them to survive, or that is the program we have engaged. Reprogramming and rebooting is a messy affair, we'd rather avoid.

When we identify with certain people--enough to love them--and then they challenge our value judgments....the very basis of our sanity and stability is under fire, questioned, challenged.....it's as if we're being attacked in our solar plexus. Kicked or punched hard in the stomach, and the wind is knocked out of us. This is why it is very hard for some people to trust. And then there are dependency issues. What we love we are often inclined to lean on, sometimes too much...and we lose our balance/our center.....that which drives and focuses our existence.

For perhaps most of us, these value judgments are the foundation of our existence.

I love nature too because it's what I am and relatively easy to figure out.....the soothing comforting mother that I never had. Mother nature. It may be partially that I find it comforting because it doesn't challenge my value judgments. But there seems to be a whole lot more to it than that.

There are some things the mind will never be able to grasp. We can only BE love. We can't understand it mentally. Matters of the heart can only be properly assimilated by the heart organ. The brain has nothing to do with it. Overanalyzing only makes a mess of it.

It really is amusing that all the marvelous vicious turmoil of life and living things is so easily accepted as love. Every square inch of Earth, every bit of sunlight and nourishment on this planet is violently contested for by every living thing determined to survive and reproduce. To characterize this as love is one of the more fascinating definitions of the word.

I'm not sure who you're replying to here.

I certainly don't believe that definition of the word. When I say "I love nature" I mean it in the context of objects "easy" to feel love for because it doesn't challenge my value judgements. Or rather nature, excluding my own body, does not challenge them.

But then I have a very distant relationship with the rest of nature most of the time, like a sexual partner on the other side of the world. Easy to love. I probably wouldn't feel that way about it if I had to deal with it every day, and as intimately as I do my body.

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But that, ( most, but not all, of what I posted at length on page 1 ), is looking at "love" as if the label is the thing.

What makes us label feelings/experiences as "love"? If look at it like I was looking at science, at what point do our feelings/experiences etc get given the label "love"?

For some people it seems to depend, for instance, on how many times they have already used the label. And/or what the outcome was. The criteria change. It can get harder and harder for experiences to qualify for this "label of quality", because that is what it is; a value judgement on our feelings.

At least it would seem that, in contrast to science, we are supposed to be qualified to apply this label ourselves, and not rely on a small group of experts to say whether it is or not. So at what point do we, the jury, deem our feelings/experiences to be such as to qualify for the label?
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Last edited by ouinon on 16 May 2009, 3:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.