Love's highest state: Altruistic

[Skhandelwal]

Personally, I believe there are 4 kinds of love.

At its most basic stage, this is what it starts from.

1. Religious - Lazy men's slave ~ god
2. Romantic - someone to fulfill our craving with
3. Platonic - someone to seek help from
4. Patriotic - to make us feel secured.

What I find common in all of these categories is help and protection. So my question is...what is love?

At the beginning, love is associated with materialist gain...but later...as our insecurities get fulfilled...we start becoming nonselfish and realize this is where the substance lies which makes life worth living.

"Temporary things do not contain happiness"
What makes nondeep things like lust unfulfilling?
Ex. eating a tasty meal might give pleasure...but not as much as giving it to someone else who actually needs it.

 

[PhY]

Love is in 3 groups or so I was taught in Theology class.

Agape- (perfect love) -Altruism, love thy neighbour (christian) - Ubantu (african). To love generally and unconditionally.
Eros - Sexual desire based, short lived, because of high pleasure in short time causing a burnout of dopamine, lack of care plays a part of the relationship strength.
Philia - Dispassionate love, non sexual. Loyalty..family, community and friends.. (Mafia is highly powerful because of Philia love), at some point unconditional and powerful in various sub types (although it is widely disputed that a mothers love for her child is not philia, but agape).

Love centres around happiness and brain stimulated pleasure. Agape being the most powerful, rarest and hardest to achieve, perfect love, which is near on impossible to achieve on a general level.

An example of Philia : Father of strong character whos son is in a car accident is emotionally breaking up, with worry and fear of his son losing his life.
An example of Agape : God
An example of Eros: Meeting a girl at a club who really blows your mind after a great night.

Also I did a search on wiki, to see if I was correct and i was a bit on track... i did theology like 4 years ago.

Theres also The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis.

Nothing as close to your assumptions.

Love is about the Chemicals in your brain making you feel Euphoric associated with another being and not a drug.
One can love eating pasta, but its not love...
One can love sleeping with Jane...its Eros Love.

Hope this answers your question of what is love.
Ever had a girlfriend...that drug feeling she gave you, whenever you saw her face and you felt all your problems go away ...thats love ..thats it.

 

[viet_jon]

Personally, I believe there are 4 kinds of love.

or they are 4 different things with a common name.

 

[pace]

Eating a tasty meal sure tastes better when it has some other meaning attached to it, eg eating it with others, or maybe to a movie, or while meditating perhaps.

 

[JoeDawg]

Personally, I believe there are 4 kinds of love.

Sounds completely subjective to me.

Off the top of my head...

Self love
Familial love
Best friend love
Romantic love
Parental love
Love for an ideology
Love for a pet/slave

you can draw lines where ever you like, even to the point of saying you love every person differently.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Personally, I believe there are 4 kinds of love.

1. Religious - Lazy men's slave ~ god

Love of God is the truest form of altruism since by definition it covers the rest.

 

[PhY]

;
Off the top of my head...

Self love -
Familial love -
Best friend love -
Romantic love -
Parental love -
Love for an ideology -
Love for a pet/slave -

They Not really types of love, but rather cases of love.
I have read a bit more about it and refreshed my memory here and there.
And I've found that Agape, could be used to denote love of a spouse or family, as well as an ideology and a God.
Best friend love -philia (brotherhood and non sexual affection/ non sexual affection).
Pet is vague, philia (non sexual affection)
Romantic love is also vague, but if you are referring to the RL effect on the brain it is Eros, which could transcend to Agape.
Self love is also vague, it could be a love of a philia or eros, but never agape.

 

[Skhandelwal]

"Love is in 3 groups or so I was taught in Theology class.

Agape- (perfect love) -Altruism, love thy neighbour (christian) - Ubantu (african). To love generally and unconditionally.
Eros - Sexual desire based, short lived, because of high pleasure in short time causing a burnout of dopamine, lack of care plays a part of the relationship strength.
Philia - Dispassionate love, non sexual. Loyalty..family, community and friends.. (Mafia is highly powerful because of Philia love), at some point unconditional and powerful in various sub types (although it is widely disputed that a mothers love for her child is not philia, but agape)."

Perhaps you are right...but may be...these can also be 3 stages of love...first is truly based on selfish cravings...second is based on selfish desires...and third is based on unselfish love.

I just feel like if I can unify all kinds of love...b/c they are what gives us the reason to live...I have a strong feeling they all have something in common. May be I was not close at all...may be I need to take another approach...but my intuition tells me that all love are one.

"Love someone greatly in one direction, love everyone more in all direction"

"The calmer we are...(satisfied cravings)...the more love we feel b/c we are not in taking mode"

 

[PhY]

"Love is in 3 groups or so I was taught in Theology class.

Agape- (perfect love) -Altruism, love thy neighbour (christian) - Ubantu (african). To love generally and unconditionally.
Eros - Sexual desire based, short lived, because of high pleasure in short time causing a burnout of dopamine, lack of care plays a part of the relationship strength.
Philia - Dispassionate love, non sexual. Loyalty..family, community and friends.. (Mafia is highly powerful because of Philia love), at some point unconditional and powerful in various sub types (although it is widely disputed that a mothers love for her child is not philia, but agape)."

Perhaps you are right...but may be...these can also be 3 stages of love...first is truly based on selfish cravings...second is based on selfish desires...and third is based on unselfish love.

I just feel like if I can unify all kinds of love...b/c they are what gives us the reason to live...I have a strong feeling they all have something in common. May be I was not close at all...may be I need to take another approach...but my intuition tells me that all love are one.

"Love someone greatly in one direction, love everyone more in all direction"

"The calmer we are...(satisfied cravings)...the more love we feel b/c we are not in taking mode"

Well I could be wrong, but I did make a project about it in Theology, there can never be one kind of love.
I used to have a best friend (a girl), I used to tell her I loved her all the time, and the way i loved her was different to the way her Boyfriend loved her.
It was Pure philia love, we called each other as brother and sister and we had a strong bond, we would spend 3 hours talking alone about deep stuff and joke all the time.
Albeit we were only best friends for a year (now we common friends after a huge fight lol..dont ask), we were never attracted to each other sexually, although I did spend 2 weeks flirting with her before she told me she was with a guy for 3 years haha...
Good times ..Good times...I'm glad I warmed up to the idea of being her friend.
Best year of my life. good times.

Love is different in many ways.
She used to make my day feel brighter, but I never loved her in the way a boyfriend would.
And I have gone with a girl that I loved, because I was sexually attracted to and it was mind blowing, but it was short lived.
Which is why now I wait for the right girl, I can have real love with..a strong unbreakable bond...Agape love..

 

[Skhandelwal]

I just feel that sexual attraction has nothing to do w/ love. The more satisfied we are with are cravings, which is, the more we become aware of our power of making choices, the more we understand others...and it is this compassion which is the essence. Hence, Buddhas don't marry but they claim to be in ecstasy due to love.

"A true yogi is drowned in the bliss of sharing all beings sorrow."

I just think that when you share someone else's sadness...in a strange manner, it turns into bliss...make us all feel connected. Similar to ho person pain goes away the more as we share it w/ others and how they understand us.

Let give you an example...suppose you fall in love w/ a girl online...if you are truly in love(I understand its relative), even if you find out you can never meet her...you will continue to chat w/ her daily...now here, your desire is not to have sex w/ her...but to do whatever will make her happy...there comes a point in life where love goes beyond physical bounds...the person's inner satisfaction rises to such a level that he doesn't even need respect from the person he loves...he can just happily sacrifice himself.

And it is this feeling I believe we can experience at the end of all kinds of love. Which is why I believe love starts from selfishness but ends at selfless awareness; a state when a person truly known who he really is...when faced with no more desires...he can actually follow his will, instead of being a slave to his cravings.

 

[Crosson]

Associating Platonic love with non-sexual boy-girl relationships is a modern bastardization. It's fine, since we all know what you mean by Platonic love, but let me tell you about the love Plato actually had in mind (which is the highest love).

Plato was interested in Love itself. Not love confused with anything else, but pure Love itself (which is the highest form of love by definition, but I have not said anything of substance yet).

In the Symposium Plato writes about how soulmates in Love travel through the world of pure essences, learning the true nature of Beauty, Truth, Justice and all the other manifestations of Goodness itself, which is the essence the soulmates come to know lastly and finally. The soulmates can use sex to know the form of Love itself, and eventually to know the form of the Good itself (but sex alone is not suf
ficient of course).

Also, remember that in the historical sense Platonic love is (sexually consumated) love between a man and a boy.