testimony

[asanley 1,009]

If the emotion we call love isn,t exclusive to humans , wouldn,t that bring into question the whole theory of humans being the only animals with a soul.?

[andyfr1968 772]

We're programmed to feel it and give it to those closest to us, to protect and nurcher our children and family. It's a very clever mechanism that nature has given us to preserve.

 

f*****g everything in sight and hoping most of the offspring survive seems to be doing it for nearly every other animal?

 

It's maybe one of the things that separates us from other animals then, same as religion.

[blan89 159]

A dog has a devotion to its master.isnt that a form of love

wolves have evolved to live in packs where they are pretty much all related,a wolves cubs have better chance of survival if the pack is strong,so those who displayed more altruistic (see link above) behaviour survived to breed those who were selfish at the expense of the pack as a whole may have lived well themselves,but the pack would of suffered and their offspring would of been less likely to survive (natural selection).

 

it's the same with people.

[Malt 379]

 

Language can never convay a thing such as love that's so deeply embedded within ourselves without resorting to cliches, how many songs have been sung and poems written and yet none of them truly express love only one individual's interpritation of love and how they felt about it at the time.

 

We're programmed to feel it and give it to those closest to us, to protect and nurcher our children and family. It's a very clever mechanism that nature has given us to preserve.

 

Maybe you're right and language can never fully describe of put into words what love is, but here we are using our language to talk about it!

 

Greater minds than us all have debated this subject for thousands of years and still there isn't a definite answer, only the same old questions!

 

 

Suppose it keeps life interesting..

[WILF 48,121]

Ladies and Gentlemen.............its been very interesting,

 

I have been Pope WILF

 

Thank you and gooooooddddd night!

 

 

[Malt 379]

Ladies and Gentlemen.............its been very interesting,

 

I have been Pope WILF

 

Thank you and gooooooddddd night!

 

 

 

It sure has Wilf, and if there is a god up there then he should be thanked for giving us all the free will & inquisitiveness to be able to ask these questions about ourselves in the first place..

[just jack 998]

do we have any HAMISH in the house?

fook me people, that was strong!!

i think after that i will only throw half a bucket of water over the Jovo's when they come knocking at my door

[scothunter 12,609]

A dog has a devotion to its master.isnt that a form of love

 

 

I think its a form of love , its unconditional on the dogs part , Elephants form strong family bonds & grieve for dead members of there families, i found watching Elephants cry tears for lost family members choking , very little moves me but that does

 

i have read on two cases i can only remember the name of one,and that was lord canavan,who died on his deathbed.the very second when he died.his dog(think it was a terrior) howled out and died on the spot.im sure the other one was some american general in the civil war.

[Ideation 8,216]

Crikey, this is deep Do any animals love? Or is it instinct or pack structure or something else?

 

maybee,,, but then is that what our love is,, just a pack type instinct???

 

couriouse point,,, why go to church for a year for a christning,, and im asuming you dont go now???

 

I think you are right with the first bit mate. I think many anthropologists would argue that love is ultimatly a way of ensuring security through a pack /tribal / community structure etc.

 

..or maybe love is unique to man because we're the only ones capable of the use of language to describe what would otherwise be nothing more than a raw, primal instinct..?

 

Well mate, that calls in to question how we define 'language', a lot fo what we think and discuss we do so from an ethnocentric viewpoint. I.e "we have language, the 'animals' just make noises", but language being a means of communication, and animal 'noises' and other physical actions etc doing the same, kind of muddys that.

 

But yes i think the ability to have that 'inner voice' that can describe what we experiance, is the basis of our ideas of 'soul' and higher levels of thought.

 

Love is a very subjective thing which means very different things to different people, but through media, art etc, we form an 'ideal' around it.

 

Think about the members of the animal kingdom that mate for life, and will not even take another mate when one is available in order to further their genes?

[Kay 3,709]

A dog has a devotion to its master.isnt that a form of love

 

 

I think its a form of love , its unconditional on the dogs part , Elephants form strong family bonds & grieve for dead members of there families, i found watching Elephants cry tears for lost family members choking , very little moves me but that does

 

i have read on two cases i can only remember the name of one,and that was lord canavan,who died on his deathbed.the very second when he died.his dog(think it was a terrior) howled out and died on the spot.im sure the other one was some american general in the civil war.

 

I remember reading about this earlier this year , not sure if the dog did die because of a broken heart , but it makes you wonder

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362275/Bomb-sniffing-Army-dog-dies-broken-heart-Taliban-kill-master.html

[asanley 1,009]

This thread has made me think.........and now my fkn head hurts.

[Ideation 8,216]

Crikey, this is deep Do any animals love? Or is it instinct or pack structure or something else?

 

maybee,,, but then is that what our love is,, just a pack type instinct???

 

couriouse point,,, why go to church for a year for a christning,, and im asuming you dont go now???

 

I think you are right with the first bit mate. I think many anthropologists would argue that love is ultimatly a way of ensuring security through a pack /tribal / community structure etc.

 

..or maybe love is unique to man because we're the only ones capable of the use of language to describe what would otherwise be nothing more than a raw, primal instinct..?

 

Or is love an emotion only found in humans because we have the ability of a deeper bond due to our superior intelignence, thought process and ability to reason?

 

Possibly, some psychologists argue that every facet of our very consciousness stems from the human ability to form and use an infinitely complex, structured language. They also argue that we derive our own, personal view of the world from the very language we speak, so the next question could be: Does love feel & mean different things to different people from around the world depending on their world view and the different structures of their language?

 

100% right malt, our world view shapes our language and our language shapes our world view. Look at metaphors and language for example. In western society 'time is money', so you 'spend' time, 'save' time, live on 'borrowed' time and many more, this is not true for eastern buddhist cultures and the same metaphors literally translated make very little sense.

 

Argument is another example, most of our descriptive language around arguments use warfare as the metaphor whereas in other cultures it is balance.

 

If you want to read some very interesting and mind blowing stuff on love, society, child rearing and most of all language, then look into / study the innuit and innkatatut (sp) peoples of the north.

 

A slight tangent but interesting is that they do not have group nouns, so there is no word for 'bird' only a word for every individual type of 'bird', same for emotion, there is no word fo it, only for individual practical feeling that we describe as emotion.

 

My argument about love would perhaps be, that it is a natural, raw, animal survival emotion, and all we do is seek higher meaning in everything and therefore create an entire culture and mystique about it, and try to make it some 'deeper' more 'romantisied' idea, kind of like the whole religion thing that we started this conversation on.

 

Apparently the entire concept of religion started when one person tried to fathom the difference between life and death, between him being alive and the other person he was with ceasing to be so.

 

Finally the below statement you made is in many ways untrue!

 

"I think people in less developed countries with high mortality rates would probably come to accept loss easier than us. In places like the UK, long lifetimes of settled attachment have been the norm for some time now, but would the love they felt be any weaker or stronger than ours?"

 

you need to define what you mean by 'less developed' because in smaller tribal society, the death of the individual is far more important and has far greater resonance than in ours (unless it was princess di!).

 

In larger scale societies with a higher mortality rate, there tends to be a stronger presense of religion, usually with an angle toward ressurection etc, as it is a way of making it easier for people to come to terms with greater numbers of deaths, i.e hindu or muslim society, same with us if you go back a long time. Religion makes it easier for us to accept stuff like people dying.

 

But that doesn't affect level of that thing we term 'love'.

 

P.s i just woke up so i doubt any of that makes any sense, and i'm going to cringe when i read it tomorrow.

[Ideation 8,216]

If the emotion we call love isn,t exclusive to humans , wouldn,t that bring into question the whole theory of humans being the only animals with a soul.?

 

 

Aye, the theory, created, held and promoted by humans. It's a means of assertion that we are dominant, the most important and therefore have a right to do what we like with the other species.

 

I think in the bible it says something like god created man in his image and all the other animals were created for man.

 

Therefore we are somehow elevated and have free reign to abuse all the other species.

 

Of course this is a judo-christian thing.

 

If you look at most 'anamist' or 'totemist' religions or first people, such as the bushmen, pigmys, native americans, then you see that they maintain from day 1 that everything has a soul and an equal place on the earth. And to be fair their way of looking at the world is a lot less destructive and better in the long term than ours.

[scothunter 12,609]

A dog has a devotion to its master.isnt that a form of love

 

 

I think its a form of love , its unconditional on the dogs part , Elephants form strong family bonds & grieve for dead members of there families, i found watching Elephants cry tears for lost family members choking , very little moves me but that does

 

i have read on two cases i can only remember the name of one,and that was lord canavan,who died on his deathbed.the very second when he died.his dog(think it was a terrior) howled out and died on the spot.im sure the other one was some american general in the civil war.

 

I remember reading about this earlier this year , not sure if the dog did die because of a broken heart , but it makes you wonder

 

http://www.dailymail...ill-master.html

 

does make you think.

[andyfr1968 772]

If the emotion we call love isn,t exclusive to humans , wouldn,t that bring into question the whole theory of humans being the only animals with a soul.?

 

 

Aye, the theory, created, held and promoted by humans. It's a means of assertion that we are dominant, the most important and therefore have a right to do what we like with the other species.

 

I think in the bible it says something like god created man in his image and all the other animals were created for man.

 

Therefore we are somehow elevated and have free reign to abuse all the other species.

 

Of course this is a judo-christian thing.

 

If you look at most 'anamist' or 'totemist' religions or first people, such as the bushmen, pigmys, native americans, then you see that they maintain from day 1 that everything has a soul and an equal place on the earth. And to be fair their way of looking at the world is a lot less destructive and better in the long term than ours.

 

It's the same thing with all the Abrahamic religions, the idea they promote that humans are supreme and that all the other animals are there to serve or service us in some way.

 

It could almost make one think that most (all..??) of the main religions were either invented or manipulated to serve some kind of agenda or maybe even to control their people through fear