»What is 'love'«

[straitens tie] I wondered why humans had such a thing as 'love'. I hear about it all the time on TV advertisements for web sites for people to find mates and even children at school talk about it on the playground and some experiment with sex and get pregnant. Yes, love has alot to do with hormones and such...

But what is love really?

An addiction? Yes.

Something the species needs? Maybe.

In the animal kingdom all creatures have the sexual urges and to mate but most never do have what human's call 'love'. Only few have what would actually be considered true love. For instance, some birds mate for life and help with rearing the kids.
That led me to think that 'love' [between a male and a female]in general has only to do with reproduction.

The reason it exists is to keep the two together to create kids and for the man to remain around long enought to help raise and protect the kids. Otherwise the male would probably impregnate the female and leave like alot of animals in the animal world do. So in truth love is just another form of control. Thats why I am not married!

This came from the mouth of an Agent by the way! I must notify my colleagues of my findings and tell them not to fall under the addiction of love!

In the early pages of this thread CaptPostMod mentioned how the brain gets wired a certain way to produce identities based on feelings and memories (Reference: What the Bleep do we know). I just wanted to add a quick reminder to all potentially free minds like myself that they have an expanded version of that film now called What the Bleep do we know: Down the Rabbit Hole that I find incredibly helpful in my pursuit of truth. Referencing the opening story of religion versus science and the beautiful pending reunion of the two, and the shorty film within the film "Dr. Quantum visits Flatland" a story of perspectives.

Anyway, my opinions on love are simple, and are not based on my experiences because anyone familiar with my story could tell you not to listen to me because I am "bitter". However, my views are that love is just as Rama puts it, "A word that describes a connection". Let me explain. If you are TAUGHT from birth that when someone says the word "love" they point to an object, say an apple. Then when you repeat the word "love" they hand you an apple for you to eat. If you have made the mental association that the word "love" is what the rest of us, who speak english, call an apple, then you have been misusing the word. Therefore, the word "love", or any word for that matter is as V says "a symbol", and we all know that "symbols are given power by people". So just because we all use the word "love" to describe the connection we feel when we "love" someone or something, doesn't necessarily mean that "love" real or fake.

The connection felt is definitive, whether the connection be to an artificial object or being, or to oneself. The programs that "love" in the Matrix weren't programmed to love. The idea, I believe, The W's wanted was that the individual programs were created to serve their individual purposes and the consciousness given to the machine began manifesting and evolving into complex cognitive simulacra capable of higher emotions like "love". I could very well have been a connection felt by Rama for Sati and his confusion concerning this "feeling" he had that led him on his pursuit to discover what the "feeling" was. This could have led him into the Matrix where he found out about the word "love" which he then used "sybolically", as we do, to describe the connection he was experiencing.

That is my personal interpretation. In application in my world I use love to describe connections I feel connot be described with any other "word".

Perhaps the best thread I've read here.

I MUST bring this up!

(Although most of the current frequent members of the forums are the writers of this thread. Oh well.)

* BTW I'm moving it *

Funny how stereotypes can be so off sometimes. Here we have a thread where the American (me) espouses a heavily Nietzschian outlook on love and hate while the German (tozy) portrays love in a Quixotically romantic light

CaptPostMod wrote:

the German (tozy) portrays love in a Quixotically romantic light

Eh! ....

"I lied to myself that it was over. I was still alive, my loved ones were still dead. It wasn't over."

[...]

"Now, like all my loves, she is mine forever. She has brought me here, to this moment of clarity, where time slows down, and I choose to look back, to see myself. And in that act of seeing, I am reborn."

[...]

"The past is a gaping hole. Your only chance is to turn around and face it. but it's like kissing the lips of your dead love, darkness waiting in the hole of her mouth. We are willing to suffer, to die for the things we care about. For love, for the right choices."

[...]

"This is love. When someone drags you from the wreckage when you have given in, ready to just lie there and die. This is love. When someone, no matter what the cost, shows you there is hope, a choice, that you can put down your gun. This is love. Love hurts."

en.wikiquote.org...

Call me crazy but I think that some of Payne's quotes fit perfectly with the Matrix Trilogy.

PS Sam Lake rocks! en.wikipedia.org...