Love: The final frontier -- The world's design is smarter than Intellient Design
There's a lot of talk that frames romantic love as a failing institution.
This talk often confuses 'marriage' for 'love'--marriage is an institution; not love.
Then there's talk of the duration of love as a measure for its success---I didn't know it was a long-distance race!
There's also talk of love related to possession, interchange, and interaction---I didn't know love is born during or at the onset of some interpersonal interaction; I thought it was born far before, and I thought it could continue afterwards!
This world isn't perfectly designed in the ways that Intelligent Design promotes. A reason I believe in "god" is due to a design that allows for continually-expanding frontiers. Utopia is not an ideal solution for human existence. Human existence thrives on frontiers, be they small and individual, or large and collective. Struggle is crucial and fundamental to development, throughout all species including humans. Love is just another frontier, and I don't think we're all quite there yet, collectively-speaking. Its success will not be measured by the duration or ability to attain "forever" or "marriage"---its success will be measured by an individual's ability to attain "forever" with another individual *should s/he so desire such a thing*. It's about choice, freedom of the spirit, and the intrinsic abilities underpinning such a choice. The most progress will come if folks can do such a thing out of pure choice, rather than choosing to love in order to fulfill a perceived lacking within oneself or to abate pressure from society or others or comitting to something that they aren't quite ready for. Freedom of choice. Love starts as much (or more) in the self and those who surround and become part of the self than it does in the other person(s) who are loved.
The perceived imperfections of the world are what truly make it "perfect", I think. Part of our perceived "perfection" is a function of who we are, so it's recursive/redundant to say what is perfect because we are not very able to extract ourselves from the very perception of what is "perfect"....but, even being human and still working on extracting myself from my own perceptions, I can't imagine a richer world, a more ideal world, a more perfect world. We all have our individual notions of what would make it more "perfect", but those individual notions are the most untrustworthy things I can think of, which is why politics is also one of the most untrustworthy things I can think of. I think the world will become more "perfect" as we go along. There's so much gaping potential for it to do so. As we exhaust the technological-scientific boom of progress, we'll be left looking at ourselves, redeveloping, reinventing, with plenty of such frontiers to conquer. Science and technology are *not* the final frontiers--they're just the beginnings.
This talk often confuses 'marriage' for 'love'--marriage is an institution; not love.
Then there's talk of the duration of love as a measure for its success---I didn't know it was a long-distance race!
There's also talk of love related to possession, interchange, and interaction---I didn't know love is born during or at the onset of some interpersonal interaction; I thought it was born far before, and I thought it could continue afterwards!
This world isn't perfectly designed in the ways that Intelligent Design promotes. A reason I believe in "god" is due to a design that allows for continually-expanding frontiers. Utopia is not an ideal solution for human existence. Human existence thrives on frontiers, be they small and individual, or large and collective. Struggle is crucial and fundamental to development, throughout all species including humans. Love is just another frontier, and I don't think we're all quite there yet, collectively-speaking. Its success will not be measured by the duration or ability to attain "forever" or "marriage"---its success will be measured by an individual's ability to attain "forever" with another individual *should s/he so desire such a thing*. It's about choice, freedom of the spirit, and the intrinsic abilities underpinning such a choice. The most progress will come if folks can do such a thing out of pure choice, rather than choosing to love in order to fulfill a perceived lacking within oneself or to abate pressure from society or others or comitting to something that they aren't quite ready for. Freedom of choice. Love starts as much (or more) in the self and those who surround and become part of the self than it does in the other person(s) who are loved.
The perceived imperfections of the world are what truly make it "perfect", I think. Part of our perceived "perfection" is a function of who we are, so it's recursive/redundant to say what is perfect because we are not very able to extract ourselves from the very perception of what is "perfect"....but, even being human and still working on extracting myself from my own perceptions, I can't imagine a richer world, a more ideal world, a more perfect world. We all have our individual notions of what would make it more "perfect", but those individual notions are the most untrustworthy things I can think of, which is why politics is also one of the most untrustworthy things I can think of. I think the world will become more "perfect" as we go along. There's so much gaping potential for it to do so. As we exhaust the technological-scientific boom of progress, we'll be left looking at ourselves, redeveloping, reinventing, with plenty of such frontiers to conquer. Science and technology are *not* the final frontiers--they're just the beginnings.