Religious views

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Main article: Love (religious views)

Love in early religions was a mixture of ecstatic devotion and ritualized obligation to idealized natural forces (pagan polytheism).^{[citation needed]} Later religions shifted emphasis towards single abstractly-oriented objects like God, law, church and state (formalized monotheism). A third view, pantheism, recognizes a state or truth distinct from (and often antagonistic to) the idea that there is a difference between the worshiping subject and the worshiped object. Love is reality, of which we, moving through time, imperfectly interpret ourselves as an isolated part.^{[citation needed]}

The Bible speaks of love as a set of attitudes and actions that are far broader than the concept of love as an emotional attachment. Love is seen as a set of behaviors that humankind is encouraged to act out. One is encouraged not just to love one's partner, or even one's friends but also to love one's enemies. The Bible describes this type of active love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:

“

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

”

Romantic love is also present in the Bible, particularly the Song of Songs. Traditionally, this book has been interpreted allegorically as a picture of God's love for Israel and the Church. When taken naturally, we see a picture of ideal human marriage:^[17]

“

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealously unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.

”

The passage dodi li v'ani lo (Hebrew: דודי לי ואני לו), i.e. "my beloved is mine and I am my beloved", from Song of Songs 2:16, is an example of a biblical quote commonly engraved on wedding bands.

The Bible states love is a characteristic of God. I John 4:8 states "God is Love". In essence, God is the epitomy of love - in action and relation. It is God that first loved mankind and desired a relationship. (John 3:16-17) Love is the underlying drive in most people.^{[citation needed]} The search for love seems endless within the human race, throughout the ages.^{[citation needed]} The Bible defines God as being the completeness of love. Love, as being defined by Him, is demonstrated in his character and personality. Another way of defining this type of love is "godly love", a love shown through the example of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. However, this "sacrificial" love can also be expressed by humans, although imperfectly. For example, the love of a mother for her child. Many mothers would sacrifice anything for their children. It is this type of love that the Bible teaches us to follow and to share with one another. Love, in the end, is truly a sacrifice, ultimately expressed in the crucifixion of Jesus as described in the New Testament. C.S. Lewis discusses Christian ideas about love in his book The Four Loves

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, defines Love as one of 7 synonyms for God. This indicates that Deity is more than a being that has benevolent concerns for mankind, but rather that God is Love itself. Love is also synonymous with Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, and Truth and indicate the depth and wholeness of Love.^{[citation needed]}

In Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, there are six words for Unconditional Love (Kenoota, Khooba, Makikh, Abilii, Rukha and Dadcean Libhoun) which are untranslatable and are all translated as the one word “Love” in the English Bible. They are explained here

The Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, helps devotees to see that love conquers all. It says, "Sattva—pure, luminous, and free from sorrow—binds us to happiness and wisdom" (Number 6). Sattva, translated as purity, helps one to see that love evolves from selflessness.

Cultural views

Main article: Love (cultural views)

The traditional Chinese character for love (愛) consists of a heart (心, in the middle) inside of "accept", "feel", or "perceive", which shows a graceful emotion.

Although there exist numerous cross-cultural unified similarities as to the nature and definition of love, as in there being a thread of commitment, tenderness, and passion common to all human existence, there are differences.

This short section requires expansion.

Chemistry of love

See main: Interpersonal chemistry and human chemistry.

Front cover of 2007 book Human Chemistry (Volume One) by American chemical engineer Libb Thims in which love is viewed as a purely chemical reaction.^[7][8][9]

Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive, much like hunger or thirst.^[10] Helen Fisher, a leading expert in the topic of love, divides the experience of love into three partly-overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust exposes people to others, romantic attraction encourages people to focus their energy on mating, and attachment involves tolerating the spouse long enough to rear a child into infancy.

Lust is the initial passionate sexual desire that promotes mating, and involves the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen. These effects rarely last more than a few weeks or months. Attraction is the more individualized and romantic desire for a specific candidate for mating, which develops out of lust as commitment to an individual mate forms. Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side-effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a half to three years.^[11]

Since the lust and attraction stages are both considered temporary, a third stage is needed to account for long-term relationships. Attachment is the bonding which promotes relationships that last for many years, and even decades. Attachment is generally based on commitments such as marriage and children, or on mutual friendship based on things like shared interests. It has been linked to higher levels of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin than short-term relationships have.^[11]

In 2005, Italian scientists at Pavia University found that a protein molecule known as the nerve growth factor (NGF) has high levels when people first fall in love, but these levels return to as they were after one year. Specifically, four neurotrophin levels, i.e. NGF, BDNF, NT-3, and NT-4, of 58 subjects who had recently fallen in love were compared with levels in a control group who were either single or already engaged in a long-term relationship. The results showed that NGF levels were significantly higher in the subjects in love than as compared to either of the control groups.^[12] In 2007, building on German polymath Johann von Goethe's theories of amorous Elective Affinities between couples, American chemical engineer Libb Thims published a two-volume book on the subject of the chemistry of love, in which people are viewed as reactive chemical species that form bonds, break bonds, and evolve according to the laws of chemistry, particularly the combined law of thermodynamics.^[7][8]

Psychology of love

Further information: Human bonding

Psychology depicts love as a cognitive and social phenomenon. Psychologist Robert Sternberg formulated a triangular theory of love and argued that love has three different components: intimacy, commitment, and passion. Intimacy is a form by which two people can share secrets and various details of their personal lives. Intimacy is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs. Commitment, on the other hand, is the expectation that the relationship is going to last forever. The last and most common form of love is sexual attraction and passion. Passionate love is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love. This led researchers such as Yela^{[citation needed]} to further refine the model by separating passion into two independents components: erotic passion and romantic passion.

Following developments in electrical theories, such as Coulomb's law, which showed that positive and negative charges attract, analogs in human life were developed, such as "opposites attract". Over the last century, research on the nature of human mating has generally found this not to be true when it comes to character and personality; people tend to like people like themselves. However, in a few unusual and specific domains, such as immune systems, it seems that humans prefer others who are unlike themselves (e.g. with an orthogonal immune system), since this will lead to a baby which has the best of both worlds.^[13] In recent years, various human bonding theories have been developed described in terms of attachments, ties, bonds, and affinities.

Some Western authorities disaggregate into two main components, the altruistic and the narcissistic. This view is represented in the works of Scott Peck, whose works in the field of applied psychology explored the definitions of love and evil. Peck maintains that love is a combination of the "concern for the spiritual growth of another", and simple narcissism.^[14] In combination, love is an activity, not simply a feeling.

Philosophical views

People, throughout history, have often considered phenomena such as "love at first sight" or "instant friendships" to be the result of an uncontrollable force of attraction or affinity.^[15] One of the first to theorize in this direction was the Greek philosopher Empedocles, who in the 4th century BC argued for the existence of two forces, love (philia) and strife (neikos), which were used to account for the causes of motion in the universe. These two forces were said to intermingle with the classical elements, i.e., earth, water, air, and fire, in such a manner that love served as the binding power linking the various parts of existence harmoniously together.

Later, Plato interpreted Empedocles' two agents as attraction and repulsion, stating that their operation is conceived in an alternate sequence.^[16] From these arguments, Plato originated the concept of "likes attract", e.g., earth is attracted to earth, water to water, and fire to fire. In modern terms this is often phrased in terms of "birds of a feather flock together".

Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of "absolute value", as opposed to relative value. Thomas Jay Oord defines love as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being. Oord means for his definition to be adequate for religion, philosophy, and the sciences. Robert A. Heinlein, one of the most prolific science fiction writers of the 20th century, defined love in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land as the point of emotional connection which leads to the happiness of another being essential to one's own well being. This definition ignores the ideas of religion and science and instead focuses on the meaning of love as it relates to the individual.

Also, an ancient proverb states that love is a high form of tolerance. This view is one that many philosophers and scholars have researched, and is widely accepted.

LOve

Love is a constellation of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness.^[1] The meaning of love varies relative to context. Romantic love is seen as an ineffable feeling of intense attraction shared in passionate or intimate attraction and intimate interpersonal and sexual relationships.^[2] Though often linked to personal relations, love is often given a broader signification, a love of humanity, of nature, with life itself, or a oneness with the Universe, a universal love or karma. Love can also be construed as Platonic love,^[3] religious love,^[4] familial love, and, more casually, great affection for anything considered strongly pleasurable, desirable, or preferred, to include activities and foods.^[5][2] This diverse range of meanings in the singular word love is often contrasted with the plurality of Greek words for love, reflecting the concept's depth, versatility, and complexity.

Definitions

The definition of love is the subject of considerable debate, enduring speculation and thoughtful introspection. The difficulty of finding a universal definition for love is typically tackled by classifying it into types, such as passionate love, romantic love, and committed love. These types of love can often be generalized into a level of sexual attraction. In common use, love has two primary meanings, the first being an indication of adoration for another person or thing, and the second being a state of relational status. Love is an act of identifying with a person or thing, capable of even including oneself (cf. narcissism; reverence). Dictionaries tend to define love as deep affection or fondness.^[1] In colloquial use, according to polled opinion, the most favored definitions of love involve altruism, selflessness, friendship, union, family, and bonding or connecting with another.^[6]

Thomas Jay Oord has defined love in various scholarly publications as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being. Oord means for his definition to be sufficient for research in ethics, religion, and science.

The different aspects of love can be roughly illustrated by comparing their corollaries and opposites. As a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like), love is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more mutual and "pure" form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is commonly contrasted with friendship, although other connotations of love may be applied to close friendships as well.

The very existence of love is sometimes subject to debate. Some categorically reject the notion as false or meaningless.^{[citation needed]} Others call it a recently-invented abstraction, sometimes dating the "invention" to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages.^{[citation needed]} Others maintain that love really exists, and is not an abstraction, but is undefinable, being essentially spiritual or metaphysical in nature.^{[citation needed]} Some psychologists maintain that love is the action of lending one's "boundary" or "self-esteem" to another.^{[citation needed]} Others attempt to define love by applying the definition to everyday life.^{[citation needed]}

Cultural differences make any universal definition of love difficult to establish. Expressions of love may include the love for a soul or mind, the love of laws and organizations, love for a body, love for nature, love of food, love of money, love for learning, love of power, love of fame, love for the respect of others, etc. Different people place varying degrees of importance on the kinds of love they receive. Love is essentially an abstract concept,^{[citation needed]} easier to experience than to explain. Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of common proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to The Beatles' "All you need is love".

broken heart

Philosophical views and popular references

For many people having a broken heart is something that may not be recognized at first, as it takes time for an emotional or physical loss to be fully acknowledged. As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson states:

Human beings are not always aware of what they are feeling. Like animals, they may not be able to put their feelings into words. This does not mean they have no feelings. Sigmund Freud once speculated that a man could be in love with a woman for six years and not know it until many years later. Such a man, with all the goodwill in the world, could not have verbalized what he did not know. He had the feelings, but he did not know about them. It may sound like a paradox — paradoxical because when we think of a feeling, we think of something that we are consciously aware of feeling. As Freud put it in his 1915 article The Unconscious: 'It is surely of the essence of an emotion that we should be aware of it.' Yet it is beyond question that we can 'have' feelings that we do not know about.^[1]

This biblical reference highlights the issues of pain surrounding a broken heart:

Psalm 69:20 Insults have broken my heart and left me weak, I looked for sympathy but there was none; I found no one to comfort me.

In this Psalm, King David says that insults that have broken his heart, not loss or pain. It is also popular belief that rejection, major or minor, can break an individual's heart. This heartbreak can be greatly increased if rejected by a loved one or someone whom you respect.

In Shakespeare's 'King Lear' Lear dies of a broken heart, amongst other causes, in Act 5 Scene 3:

EDGAR : He faints! My Lord, My Lord!

KENT: Break heart; I prithee, break!

In many legends and fictional tales, characters die after suffering a devastating loss (see above - King Lear). But even in reality people die from what appears to be a broken heart. Broken heart syndrome is commonly blamed for the death of a person whose spouse is already deceased, but the cause is not always so clear-cut. The condition can be triggered by sudden emotional stress caused by a traumatic breakup, the death of a loved one, or even the shock of a surprise party.^[2] Broken Heart syndrome is clinically different from a heart attack because the patient have few risk factors for heart disease and were previously healthy prior to the heart muscles weakening. The recovery rates for those suffering from "broken heart syndrome" are faster than those who had heart attacks and complete recovery to the heart was achieved within two weeks.^[3]

The symptoms of a "broken heart" can manifest themselves through psychological pain but for many the effect is physical. Although the experience is regarded commonly as indescribable, the following is a list of common symptoms that occur:

• A perceived tightness of the chest, similar to an anxiety attack
• Stomach ache and/or loss of appetite
• Partial or complete insomnia
• Short/Long term paralysis
• Nostalgia
• Apathy (loss of interest)
• Feelings of loneliness
• Feelings of hopelessness
• Loss of self-respect and/or self-esteem
• Medical or psychological illness (ie Depression)
• Suicidal thoughts (in extreme cases)
• Nausea
• Denial
• Fatigue

[edit] Treatment

Because "heartbreak" is a subjective emotional trauma and not a medical condition, conventional treatment does not exist. Depending on the psychological nature of an individual and the severity of the trauma, the length of time for the symptoms to disappear naturally will greatly vary. In most cases effects will last for a period of months. However, there are cases in which longer time is required to recover. In cases of limerence the average recovery time ranges from 6 to 18 months. It is claimed that the only cure for a broken heart is time, or acceptance of the loss.

[edit] Biological extent

[edit] In animals

Some scientists believe, when studying cases concerning animal sentience, that animals are conscious and have emotions such as joy/laughter. However, animals do not seem to suffer physical, emotional or psychological effects, such as a broken heart, from losses of any category. However people continue to question these issues. There are of course, exceptions. There have been reports, in nature based magazines, of a fully grown chimpanzee who stopped eating and died a few days later after the death of his mother. Also, elephants are known for mourning the death of a herd member.

Its been viewed in dogs who howl and grieve over the loss of a puppy who has died at birth. As well as in famous, and well documented stories of such dogs as Hachikō and Greyfriars Bobby who grieve over the loss of their masters. This somewhat emotional bond between master and dog was also observed by the media following the murders of many farmers in Zimbabwe by Robert Mugabe's forces. Subsequent to these murders the farm-dogs would stay with the body of the dead master until the body was removed.