« A Letter From The Editor | Main | Beware of Stale Coffee! »
September 18, 2005
Cognitive Associations: Love
“It is a strange paradox. When we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted on us. It contains in it the contradiction… an attempt to return to the past… and the attempt to undo the past. We need to remember that when we are born, we need a good deal of love to persuade us to stay in life.”
-Professor Louis Levy (fictional), from the Woody Allen film Crimes & Misdemeanors
LOVE
Go ahead. Let that word sink in for a moment...take a breath, and let it sink in.
LOVE
What comes to mind when you think of that word? Don’t rush; absorb the word and examine your associations with it. What is your cognitive map of that word?
LOVE
I don’t know a whole lot about linguistic epistemology, but I think the word ‘love’ is so subjective, so colored by a person’s experiential associations, that it is utterly meaningless, useless. The word evokes something entirely different in every person, so that its every use is completely confusing: if someone uses the word love, almost more than any other word, we have no idea what they are talking about because we don’t know the user’s personal associations with the word. ‘Love’ has no describable value - the values ascribed by its proper definition are so different than most peoples’ subjective values for the word - making it a very problematic term.
I guess I’ve had about fifteen or twenty “girlfriends” in my life, and I've told almost all of them that I ‘love’ them, but mostly I didn’t know what I meant when I said it, or said it in response to hearing it said to me. In some cases I meant 'you have a great personality and I'm really attracted to you,' or 'I really enjoy our conversations, you are brilliant,' or 'I respect you,' or 'please don’t leave, the sex is wonderful.' I think I’ve really only felt ‘in love’ twice, and those ended up being the most painful relationships of my life.
The fist time I felt ‘in love’ was with a girl (she will remain anonymous, for her sake) I dated for almost two years. She was intelligent, beautiful, independent, creative, opinionated, sexually adventurous, respectful, and caring – the total package in other words. I was intoxicated. We talked about getting married. I was maybe a little too intoxicated, held a bit too tightly, and got jealous (of nothing). I went to her apartment one day and the first words out of her mouth were “I don’t love you anymore.” If you’ve seen the ending of the film Closer it was basically like that. It felt as if my heart had been dipped in liquid nitrogen and hurled against a wall - a million frozen, scintilating shards tinkling across the floor.
The second time was a couple of years ago. The girl (who also will remain anonymous) had a ton of wonderful qualities, but she talked about her ex-boyfriends a bit too much and, considering I couldn’t think of anything but her, I realized that my feelings for her weren’t exactly reciprocated. I still think of her all the time. I still think to myself that I love her, but even I don’t know what I mean, or what I actually feel for her. When I think of her I smile at first, and then get really sad.
Can a word like ‘love’ have any objective value? There is a very good episode of This American Life that deals with some of these questions (Episode 247 -What Is This Thing?). When I have felt ‘in love’ it was almost a kind of nervous queasiness, but it was foreign to me, and completely indescribable. I don’t like to use that word anymore; my cognitive associations are too painful.
I think there is a lot of wisdom in the words of Professor Levy from Crimes and Misdemeanors. I think that he is right that we look to our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that early parents or siblings inflicted on us. Also, once we’ve had our hearts broken, we seem to look to our beloved to correct all the wrongs that previous lovers have inflicted upon us as well. That is how I feel. Whenever I am attracted to someone the feeling is something like “Oh look how beautiful, smart, creative, and caring she is. Surely she can put my heart back together.” No one can put anyone else’s heart back together though. Once it has been shattered, it is shattered, and there is nothing left but the memory of what once was.
I think though, if I look for something besides 'Love' (which I’ve already explained is a terrible and meaningless term) I might actually find ‘something.’ No one can find something that doesn’t exist, and I don’t think that love, at least by its conventionally understood values and implications, actually exists.
“This love means an affirmative desire towards the Other - to respect the Other, to pay attention to the Other, not to destroy the otherness of the Other - and this is the preliminary affirmation, even if afterwards because of this love, you ask questions.”
-Jacques Derrida
“A togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement that which robs either one party or both of his [or her] fullest freedom and development. But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
“It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.”
-Charles Bukowski
Etymology of the term Love:
| By Joshua Daniels | 7:17 AM