Love
is Nothing? Love is All?
Richard Dawkins, an outstanding biologist, said about our lives
and its biological essence: «Life is just bytes and bytes and
bytes of digital information».
In the same line, wouldn’t it possible to reduce love to bytes,
bytes, and more bytes, or to any other measure rather close to
nothing?
Think of romantic love, for instance. We may see it as mere
illusions of our mind, as a mechanism induced by genes, driving
lovers to see enchanted princes and princesses in banal beings,
before they sink again into reality.
And concerning our other loves, aren’t they basically private
islands, things that genes feed and death extinguishes and takes
with it? And as to our collective lives, isn’t it true that they
are mainly ruled by competition and egoisms, or by the law of
profit, and not exactly by love?
Yes. It’s possible to diminish love into insignificant unities.
Or, if we want, to reduce it to bytes, bytes and more bytes.
But there is another view: without love, what would our lives
be? Which would be their meaning? Without friendship, love
experiences, would it be worthwhile to live?
We may not always note it, but love is peeping into many of our
daily acts and into multiple recesses of our private life.
Without love we wouldn’t be humans. Without the feelings linked
to love – brotherly acts, generosity, sympathy – society would
be an uninhabitable jungle, and man would be simple machines.
After all, love is much. It’s not all, but it’s impossible to
reduce it to just bytes, bytes and more bytes.
Books, Films,
Cultural Stuff on these and
other related issues? See
Love Essays Store
(in association with Amazon)
Great authors Quotations
The importance of love
J. W. Goethe
There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved.
Only the soul that loves is happy.
J. W. Goethe, 1749-1831, German writer, Egmont
Corinthians
Even if I speak all the languages of men and of angels, if I
don't have love, life became sounding brass, and a clanging
cymbal.
Bible, Corinthians
Maturama
We human beings are animals dependant on love.
Humberto Maturama, in E. Morin Method V
E. Morin
The poetry of life, with the love it contains and that contains
it, is the only response to death.
Love makes us tolerate destiny, and makes us love life.
Love is the great poetry in the prosaic modern world.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V
Stanislas-Xavier Touchet
The two wings of our souls, immune to any gust of wind, are
true love and faith.
Attributed to Stanislas-Xavier Touchet, 1848-1926, French
religious
Saint Augustin
I loved not yet, yet I loved to love… I sought what I might
love, loving to love.
Saint Augustin, 354-430, Theologian, Confessions
Irving Berlin
There may be trouble ahead,
But while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance,
Let’s face the music and dance.
Irving Berlin, 1888-1989, American songwriter, Follow the
Fleet
William Congreve
Say what you will, ‘tis better to be left than never to have
been loved.
William Congreve, 1670-1729, English writer, The way of the
world
Bertrand Russel
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are
already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russel, 1872-1970, English philosopher and
mathematician, Marriage and Morals
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most
fatal to true happiness.
Bertrand Russel, 1872-1970, English philosopher and
mathematician, Mysticism and Logic
What's Love? See also:
What's Love
Contradictions
of Love
Love of People
Mockeries
on Love
Love cycles:
time to war, time to love
Love, time, habit
Love
and art
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