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Love

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). 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”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love

Emotion

Emotion is complex, and the term has no single universally accepted definition.[1] The study of emotions is part of psychology, neuroscience, and, more recently, artificial intelligence.

According to Sloman,[2] emotions are cognitive processes. Some authors emphasize the difference between human emotions and the affective behavior of animals.

In Paul D. MacLean’s classic Triune brain model, emotions are defined as the responses of the Mammalian cortex. Emotion competes with even more instinctive responses from the Reptilian cortex and the more logical, reasoning neocortex. However, current research on the neural circuitry of emotion suggests that emotion is an essential part of human decision-making and planning, and that the famous distinction made by Descartes between reason and emotion is not as clear as it seems.[3]

Emotion is generally regarded by Western civilization as the antithesis of reason. This distinction stems from Western philosophy specifically stoic and Cartesian dualism approaches, and is reflected in common phrases like appeal to emotion or your emotions have taken over.

Emotions can be undesired either to the individual experiencing them, but also can be undesired to the other persons, groups of persons, organizations, sub-cultures, and civilisations such as Western civilization, which can be viewed as the emotion being subjected to the individual’s or someone else’s discouraging meta-emotion about the undesired emotion or can be even repressed by the meta-emotions. Thus one of the most distinctive, and perhaps challenging, facts about human beings is this potential for entanglement, or even opposition, between emotion, meta-emotion, will, and reason.

Some state that there is no empirical support for any generalization suggesting the antithesis between reason and emotion: indeed, anger or fear can often be thought of as a systematic response to observed facts. In any case, it is clear that the relation between logic and argument and emotion is one which merits careful study.

Emotion as the subject of scientific research has multiple dimensions: behavioral, physiological, subjective, and cognitive. Sloman argues that many emotions are side-effects of the operations of complex mechanisms (e.g. ‘alarm’ mechanisms) required in animals or machines with multiple motives and limited capacities and resources for coping with a changing and unpredictable world, just as ‘thrashing’ can sometimes occur as a side-effect of scheduling and memory management mechanisms required in a computer operating system for purposes other than producing thrashing. Such side effects are sometimes useful, but sometimes they are dysfunctional. Other theorists, often influenced by writings of Antonio Damasio argue that emotions themselves are necessary for any intelligent system (natural or artificial).

Psychiatrist William Glasser’s theory of the human control system states that behavior is composed of four simultaneous components: deeds, ideas, emotions, and physiological states. He asserts that we choose the idea and deed and that the associated emotions and physiological states also occur but cannot be chosen independently. He calls his construct a total behavior to distinguish it from the common concept of behavior. He uses the verbs to describe what is commonly seen as emotion. For example, he uses ‘to depress’ to describe the total behavior commonly known as depression which, to him, includes depressing ideas, actions, emotions, and physiological states. Dr. Glasser also further asserts that internal choices (conscious or unconscious) cause emotions instead of external stimuli.

According to Damasio, feeling can be viewed as the subjective experience of an emotion that arises physiologically in the brain. [4]

Many psychologists adopt the ABC model, which defines emotions in terms of three fundamental attributes: A. physiological arousal, B. behavioral expression (e.g. facial expressions), and C. conscious experience, the subjective feeling of an emotion. All three attributes are necessary for a full fledged emotional event, though the intensity of each may vary greatly.

Robert Masters makes the following distinctions between affect, feeling and emotion: “As I define them, affect is an innately structured, non-cognitive evaluative sensation that may or may not register in consciousness; feeling is affect made conscious, possessing an evaluative capacity that is not only physiologically based, but that is often also psychologically (and sometimes relationally) oriented; and emotion is psychosocially constructed, dramatized feeling.”[5]

In pop culture there are sub-cultures which cultivate the expressions of anger and rebelliousness even when they are not really angry, its members encouraging each other to express the anger by internalizing meta-gladness about it. Encouragement (i.e. meta-gladness) and discouragement (i.e. psychological repression) of selected emotions - instead of mere awareness and equal interest in all emotions - can be considered as additional source of organizational climate, family dynamics, psychodynamics, personality traits, and of mental disorders, including depression among others.

Hate

Hatred is an emotion of intense revulsion, distaste, enmity, or antipathy for a person, thing, or phenomenon, generally attributed to a desire to avoid, restrict, remove, or destroy the hated object. Hate can be based on fear of an object or past negative consequences of dealing with that object. People may feel conflicting and complicated emotions or thoughts involving hate, as in a love-hate relationship.

Often the verb “to hate” is used casually as an exaggeration to describe things one merely dislikes, such as a particular style of architecture, a certain climate, one’s job, or some particular kind of food.

“Hatred” is also used to describe feelings of prejudice, bigotry or condemnation (see shunning) against a class of people and members of that class. Racism is the most well-known example of this. The term hate crime is used to designate crimes committed out of hatred in this sense.

According to evolutionary psychologists, hate is a rational reaction to people whose interests consistently conflict with one’s own. Hate is an emotion, hence it serves the protective mode of a person. People whose behavior threatens one’s own survival interests are to be hated, while people whose behavior enhances one’s survival prospects are to be liked or even loved (as in the case of offspring and other genetic kin).

The passions of hate arise from several features of our thinking process. These include a desire to strengthen our community and to alleviate our fear. The ability to quickly separate friend from foe is essential to self-defense and safety and provides the origins of hate.[1]

Also, the feelings of hate can arise unexpectedly. If one has experienced maltreatment in the past, it is proven that one is more likely to maltreat and learn to dislike or “hate” people before they get to know the person. This is shown clearly in the pattern of people who are abused, ignored, neglected, or maltreated by their parents, and those children’s tendency to become abusive or angry.