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Posted: 11/7/2009 1:16:19 AM | | ^^^ Superior intellect? Nah, I am in no way, shape or form superior to anybody else. I just over analyse and attempt to find the root behind seemingly simple things because I cannot be happy with just accepting things as a given. There is always an answer, even if it is not what we want to hear (read) | |
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Posted: 11/7/2009 1:31:58 AM | ^^^ Let's not call it superior then. Let's just say that you're not a brainless bint, gormlessly stumbling through a largely unexamined life... like a vast majority of people seem to be. Although you are, of course, a slut.
And smart enough not to call yourself superior, because the smartest people are the most aware of the magnitude and scope of all that they don't know or understand.
The larger the intellect, the higher the awareness that one can indeed amass absolutely huge amounts of knowledge, and yet still know almost nothing in comparison with all there is to know. In this case, one is often humbled by just how un-superior one really is. That is why people who are 'up themselves' come across as so dumb.
God, I really need a cup of tea now.
Warning: Today's LULT posts are brought to you by PMT Inc. - a subsidiary of Fukkin Hormonal B!tches International Pty Ltd. | |
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Posted: 11/7/2009 1:48:40 AM |
While I don't agree with the concept of me flapping around
I don't either, and personally I thought Scholar's comment in that regard was playing the man and not the ball...and a tad patronising. The last thing the world needs is more young men (or indeed people of any age/gender) who don't apply conscious thought to the way they live their life...and I'd say you're more analytical than 'clinical'. "An unexamined life is not worth living". More power to ya Nick. 
In part, I think you are just making people uncomfortable. Cos as I said in my initial post...nobody wants to admit that relationship choices might be calculated to any degree. We much prefer charming explanations of life where we are swept along by romantic notions, possessed by Cupid, operating under the influence of the heady scent of Jasmine in spring. I prefer that view too actually...I just don't happen to think that what you are saying has to preclude those things. But see, the minute you say "calculation" and "equation", people are hearing "intellectual calculation" and "intellectual equation"... and assigning clinical overtones to it...but probably the calculation you are referring to is emotive, not intellectual.
I will say that when I am first dating someone I am constantly going through this process of subconsciously asking myself...and how do I feel about that...until I decide if it's right for me or not. It's calculation but it's emotive rather than purely intellectual...it's how do I feel about that, not what do I think about that....but it's not without consciousness. So I think the truth about partner choice falls somewhere in the middle of calculation, feelings, and biological forces.There is some degree of calculation going on, based on feelings and responses, and fueled by brain chemicals ...the bits over which we have no control.
and perhaps my theory does not apply to all aspects of love as such
Probably not...but you were originally talking about initial partner choice and why we end up deciding to enter into relationships with the people that we do...not love for children, family, or love that was pre-existing and then circumstances changed...those things were brought in later.
if you see your own downfalls and move to change them to effectively increase your odds, then you stand a much better chance of finding a partner eg
The simplest example is that if a man who smokes gives up smoking the number of women who will be interested in dating him will go through the roof, the majority of emails that I receive on POF say exactly this in no uncertain terms. I'd have to say...by my calculations...*dons reading glasses in order to look smarter, the effect of which is totally lost given lack of visuals*... there is an inverse relationship between making a change *just* for the purpose of expanding your dating pool, and your chances of finding a relationship that will endure. You might be working with a decreased dating pool to stay your true imperfect self, but I believe that from within that smaller dating pool you have a better chance of finding a relationship that will last....change yourself with the sole intent of increasing the dating pool and you merely increase your chances of finding more of the wrong partners. (Not to say there isn't something to be said for making changes to become the person we ourselves wish to be...nor for doing the slow reveal when it comes to our more, errm, in-your-face traits, for that matter.  ) | |
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Posted: 11/7/2009 1:57:55 AM | Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you - works for self as well, hence the Latin would be;
Nosce te ipsum | |
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Posted: 11/7/2009 3:36:56 AM |
Effectively, what I am suggesting is that we can become any personality we want, to become the RIGHT person for someone else, but then it becomes a question of how much we are willing to put in to become that person.
Its not selling out, and it's not being someone you're not, because you have all those things in your persona (or on your mixing board) but your environments dictate how much of those qualities are allowed to show.
analogy of sound mixer is extremely good. I have been having some interesting conversations across generations about this very thing and whilst one can quote plato, aristotle satre whoever you want and maybe even put capitals in front their names (for an english lit nut I is seriously lazy at editing) when discussing these things with others I keep coming back to a more modern and probably fatuous maybe even facile but I debate that ....hollywood movie with of all people Julia Roberts (ah ha the capitals are coming back..beware of random capitals!!). I agree that you do accentuate and modify certain traits according to which partner you are with...I went twitching for effs sake (bird watching) for some seriously lost canadian red legged goose in Wales...that is serious compromise of my own personal tastes....I have made one poor but brave man sit through a classical music concert and bless him he was so right.....what a waste of time and effort for such lousy music.....Bartok.  But back to the movie.....it was the Runaway Bride and Richard Gere (excuse me whilst I swoon just a tad) points out that she has never worked out how she likes her eggs...she merely eats the preference of her partner (hmm jokes about contraception come to mind but too difficult to make cohesive)...anyhows it got me thinking...seriously thinking....it was such a simple concept and yet I too had fallen into the trap....I only like poached eggs...I will eat whatever is put in front of me but in 15 years of marriage I never owned a poacher (and don't bang on about swirling water, drops of vinegar...I like them neatly alien saucer shaped on toast with danish butter and cracked chilli peppers...quite precise really and yet I had never stood up for my preference). So now when young people come to me with their relationship problems with particular reference to new partners and should they, shouldn't they continue (and weirdly it happens a lot) I tend to give them that thought to leave with. i.e. you really should not compromise on personal preferences, it only leads to mismatched omlettes, sinking souffles and spilt milk. It depends on where you see yourself long term and if you are compromising now, right at the beginning, it is only going to get worse.
Has any of this answered your question????????? | |
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Posted: 11/7/2009 3:55:14 AM |
You are exactly right, and that’s what I was meaning. My apologies for coming across as negating another persons free will. But yes, if you see your own downfalls and move to change them to effectively increase your odds, then you stand a much better chance of finding a partner.
Well as I said you change the size and composition of the search pool, but you don’t necessarily increase you chances of finding a partner because all choices have costs including search and your capacity to search and the efficiency to search is not changed. If you are looking for a needle in a haystack adding more hay is not likely to make finding the needle anymore likely. This only makes sense if you want to search for a different kind of needle in a different haystack, if instead of searching the haystacks that are known to have silver needles, you want to do what ever you imagine it takes to be allowed to search the haystacks that are know to contain what you imagine are gold needles.
The trouble is that silver and gold are just electro plating that has been applied to exactly the same needles, it is like the person on another thread that only wanted to date women who had degrees, well if that is what, for example, you wanted to do you can increase you changes of doing that by getting a degree or two yourself but that takes time and has far more costs than most people imagine and of course now you have just had yourself replated but underneath were it matters you are still the same silver needle that you were in the beginning Now you don’t quite fit to the women who have had these kinds of educations in the normal course of events you just don’t seem quite right you don’t have the tastes and manners that they would expect and to the women that you would have dated when you were silver you just don’t seem quite right either and perhaps a little intimidating. The result can be that you can actually reduce the chance of finding someone just right for you. It is an interesting problem isn’t it, the point is that if you want to change yourself for your own sake than that is to be commended though it can end up being far more expensive than you imagine at the time but to do it simply to increase the perceived quality of the search pool you are invited to rake through like a crazed squirrel doesn’t seem to be likely to have the desired effect in terms of finding a partner with whom you can build a relationship which will endure.
The point is that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill, that life is short, joy if fleeting, love is rare and a life lived under constant repair can quickly pass you by. Of course I am sure that after I have had the Pierce Brosnan, James Bond cosmetic surgery package with ball room dancing lesson and learn to speak French my luck is bound to dramatically change; though probable not much more than just giving up smoking would.
So what I am trying to tell you is that if when I was your age and realised that being effectively functional illiterate and chronically unemployed did not make me a catch among the women in my social circle and I had just fixed that, got some help and went to night school did the twelfth grade and become the a slightly older apprentice carpenter I would now doubt have ended up married to a women who, is still a friend of mine and would have been happy to help me do these things but I got carried away “fixing” myself which has had the unintended consequence to increasing my search pool beyond my wildest imaginings but the only women in it that pool I am ever drawn to were once like the girls from the neighbourhood; now the upper end of the neighbourhood to be sure but still the neighbourhood. | |
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Posted: 11/7/2009 2:29:16 PM | | Scholar, you first have to get yourself a French Dictionary, and a grammar book would help, and I will post to you in French, not the whole post of course but little tit bits. Starting today. To what you just posted I have to say...C'est la vie, Monsieur Scholar, mais bien sur, quelle dommage. Now that will take your mind off your woes, the bitter truths of reality and give you a new arrow for your bow. | |
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Posted: 11/9/2009 3:13:53 AM | Ah, bien sur c'est la vie. Putetre (spelling) Monsieur Scholar aimes la vie de frommage et vin et il perdue la vie ce n'est pas dommage mais joie de vivre regardless of the womans social status or his....yeah yeah been twenty years and boy does it show.   But thanks for that I love speaking French. | |
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Posted: 11/12/2009 9:22:49 AM | I was reading back through this thread and noticed that Nana, wise as usual posted a link to an article on the four ancient Greek words that are usually translated into English as love, leaving us without anyway of distinguishing which meaning was intended by the authors of the translated document other than at best the context. Given that so much and so many of our philosophical and theological ideas of what love means and is about, come from documents originally written in ancient Greek these distinctions are undoubtedly more important than we might care to imagine.
The three words that are relevant to this thread are eros , agape and philia . Eros is of course romantic love, that dizzy dancing way, we vaguely remember feeling in those long lost days before we abandoned all hope for a life filled with the predictable comfort of caring for cats and it is largely involuntary and determined by brain chemicals of one kind or another. It is the kind of love that suggests to us nothing more than that we have finally meet someone with whom we might like to spend a delightful Sunday afternoon attempting to close the circle of life, out on the patio. Philia is the love which is normally associated with the love we have for family, for those to whom we are genetically related and for friends, or for example, adopted children. This is a consequence of humans having evolved in an environment in which everyone of the opposite sex our ancestors encountered would have been either a potential mate or in someway related to them and so our capacity to form deep and abiding friendships is in some sensible sense a consequence of these emotions mistaking those in close proximity to us for relatives of some kind.
At weddings when two young people in love stand and make their vows, the groom looking awaked in the only suit he has ever warn in his life and the bride cleverly disguised as meringue and delighted to have finally been given the opportunity to have her closest friends appear in public, as ludicrously attired as is possible; without them actually having to balance a fruit basket upon their heads; though apparently that is not unheard of either. I expect that between the playing of predictable songs that would make anyone sick, someone, who has in someway, been invested with some sort authority and is consequently wearing a costume will read from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians “love is patient, love is kind”, “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres”, “It never fails and without it we are nothing” and I imagine the most of the participants and onlookers at this expensive demonstration that hope springs eternal will imagine that when Paul speaks of love he is refereeing to some charming combination of eros and philia ; it is after all a wedding.
I wonder if the divorce rate would be a little less disheartening if someone bothered to explain to the eager beaver and the bubbling caldron of fertility, before they actually get down to the serious business of trying to download people into the universe that in each and every instance the love of which Paul speaks is agape the love that proceeds from conscious choice, it is voluntary, it is a love that we call into existence through our own words and actions and so it does not of its own accord simply arrive or thrive.
Surely no one would make this same mistake and imagine that when Jesus, no doubt somewhere that I thankfully cannot recall, suggested it might be wise to “love your neighbour as yourself” that he was recommending to frustrated women the idea that they should go out into the streets searching for other women whom might like to have a helpful hand to click their mouse.
The point is that any romantic relationship might be initially motivated by some combinations of feelings akin to eros or philia but in the end, it is only though the purposeful nurturing of agape that we can ever really expect our romantic relationships to become companionate, truly passionate and enduring. 
I wonder if any of that made any sense at all. I suppose I will just have to wait for Nana to turn and see if I got this right; maths is so much easer than this slippery soul stuff | |
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Posted: 11/12/2009 12:01:31 PM | Eros is of course romantic love, that dizzy dancing way, we vaguely remember feeling in those long lost days
This kind of "love" sounds incredibly like that fun little feeling I tend to get on a Saturday night.... and most other nights for that matter. Lust?
Methinks the dizzying effect of Eros (Erotic? Erotica?.... A link perhaps...?) is more related to the fact that;
Blokes were given two heads, but only enough blood to run one at a time.
that in each and every instance the love of which Paul speaks is agape the love that proceeds from conscious choice, it is voluntary, it is a love that we call into existence through our own words and actions and so it does not of its own accord simply arrive or thrive.
Hang on......
Does this mean you're in agreement now? | |
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Posted: 11/12/2009 12:18:30 PM | ^^Well no it means that I am in agreement with Paul and myself and think that when I previously said that:
<div class="quote"> The chance that you two will still be together in thirty years time is no different to that of those who spent an inordinate amount of time looking for just the right person. This should tell you that happiness has more to do with the effort you put into a relationship once you have one than how much effort you put into choosing who to have it with.
I think that I was saying the same thing that Paul is getting at, though the point here is that the quotes are lifted out of context for weddings and are often misunderstood and believed to be referring to Eros rather than agape neither of which 't actually means lust but that is another matter again.
EDIT:
I think that LULT covered the difference between the feeling of in-love-ness and lust on the poetry as foreplay thread about as well as it can be done you might want to read that again. Though to be honest 30 years ago I too would have had a hard time telling the difference. | |
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Posted: 11/12/2009 11:06:21 PM | I wonder if any of that made any sense at all. I suppose I will just have to wait for Nana to turn
Just wanted to say.. although quite a few women.. ok.. dykes.. have tried...... Nana ain't ever gunna turn..........
I accept I'll be alone for the rest of my life... but turning.. or batting for the other side... don't interest me....
I will have to answer you later... but agape... would be the foundation...of self love...
you know how they say.. first you need to love yourself before you can love someone else?....... love dose'nt appear out of thin air.. it's either in you..
to share or it's not.......You can't give something to someone if you don't have it...
everyone has a different experience or concept of love..... so it can be hard to even describe,... (cause if someone sees emotion or lust as love.... well they probablly have'nt experienced agape..)
agape.. transcends... human interaction.. (from my experience..).. and it is soooooooo
good.. you could happily choose celebacy.. if you have it.. cause.. it's seriously better.. than.. any human interaction.. (although.. it is what will sustain the human love/commitment...and to experience between humans... is blissful.. and the part in us.. that probably we crave love ... why.. we search..... and why we don't like to settle...if it's not there....)
I think once you've experienced it.. it's hard... to accept... anything less....
same as if someone had experienced passion... and someone else hasn't... they wouldnot know what they were missing out on....it's hard to just accept.. mediocre...
if you have experienced passion or agape..
peace | |
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Posted: 11/12/2009 11:10:27 PM |
I think that LULT covered the difference between the feeling of in-love-ness and lust on the poetry as foreplay thread I did? Must have been one of those sapient episodes I keep having. 
we have finally meet someone with whom we might like to spend a delightful Sunday afternoon attempting to close the circle of life, out on the patio.
Out on the patio? I don't think that's appropriate behaviour. I'm sure the neighbours would complain. | |
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Posted: 11/12/2009 11:37:41 PM | ^^^
I did? Must have been one of those sapient episodes I keep having.
You have so many sapient episodes that it seems that there is barely a space between them. I am sure that everyone can see you rapidly converging upon a state of perpetual wisdom.
Out on the patio? I don't think that's appropriate behaviour. I'm sure the neighbours would complain.
Only once and only if they have never meet you
Just wanted to say.. although quite a few women.. ok.. dykes.. have tried...... Nana ain't ever gunna turn....
Oops I think that should have said “I will have to wait until Nana turns up to see” , sorry.  | |
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Posted: 11/15/2009 5:01:24 AM | OP there is a well thought out answer to your original question which I paraphrase as:
Why does A falls in love with B and reject C while both B and C fall in love with A and there appears to be no obvious difference between B and C that A can see or describe?
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860 introduced the notions that at heart we all have a “will-to-life” the interests of which are hidden from our conscious minds and compels us to look for a partner who strengths and weakness when combined with our own will result in a child that is in some sense “better”, “healthy and well balanced” than either ourselves or our partner. It is an amassing idea when you consider it was suggested before Darwin, Freud and of course Evolutionary Psychology though understandable many of his examples are either demonstrable wrong or simply trivial.
Nevertheless this idea that this unconscious “will-to-life” overrides reason and deludes us, with those in-love feelings, into believing that if we can make a marriage with a particular individual we will live happy ever after, when in fact all that has happened is that our “will-to-life” has, behind the back of our conscious minds as it were, recognised another person as a suitable co-parent, is interesting to say the least.
What he is suggesting is our future happiness, has nothing to do with feelings of being in love, which are just part of a co-parent selection process going on quietly behind the scenes. The implications of the idea is that when we attempt to explain to ourselves or others why we have fallen in love with a particular individual our conscious mind just cobbles together a story that makes sense to us that revolves around observable aspects of the other persons physical charms and/or personality and character traits which from the point of view of our “will-to-life” might very well be, in whole or part, as irreverent as our future happiness is, once these “better” “healthy and well balanced” children have been conceived. I just love it.
It also implies that when we have been rejected it is not because we are considered to be deficient in terms of or observable charms or that the object of our unwanted affection might not have been happer spending their life with us, it is just that their “will-to-life” has decided that they would have “better” children with someone else and therefore you shouldn’t take it personally. It does of course follow that when you are bumped or rejected you shouldn’t bother to stay around to listen to the great long list of what is wrong with you, because that is as much a just so story cobbled together to make sense of the feeling the other person now has, as the plaudit and laurels that would have been bestowed upon you if your affections had been reciprocated.
The thing to do is to move on and hold on to the hope that your “will-to-life” will soon delude you in respect of a person whose own “will-to-life” has them equally deluded about you and then all will be well. Marriage, children, divorce then dating site and if you hurry and are lucky you get to go around again because you “will-to-life” isn’t a learner and doesn’t care about you.
I find this whole idea charming and given the divorce rate and the tendency of a great many people to seek out the same obviously unsuitable kind of person over and over again, it does in some sense seem to capture some of the most eye rolling aspects of life.
Or as I recently said to one of oldest and dearest friends “don’t worry I am sure that sooner rather than later your will-to-life will persuaded you that another inarticulate, violent, drunken bully is a prince, lets just hope that this one doesn’t have a diagnosed mental disorder”.
She didn’t think that it was funny at all. 
It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Posted: 11/15/2009 5:19:49 AM | the tendency of a great many people to seek out the same obviously unsuitable kind of person over and over again, it does in some sense seem to capture some of the most eye rolling aspects of life.
Or as I recently said to one of oldest and dearest friends “don’t worry I am sure that sooner rather than later your will-to-life will persuaded you that another inarticulate, violent, drunken bully is a prince So given that in my case I managed to get the "will to life" thing happening with the wonderful man I married (and then we both thumbed our noses at that by reaching agreement about his choice to get a vasectomy...take THAT mother nature!) ... I have every chance of seeking out the same obviously suitable and wonderful kind of person next time around? Woohoo.
Perhaps might mean that I am the inarticulate, violent, drunken bully with a mental disorder in the relationship though.
Ah fukc it...it works for me. | |
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Posted: 11/15/2009 5:55:52 AM | ^^^This theory doesn't say that your "will-to-love" always picks someone unsuitable only that it doesn't care one way or the other, so you might have just been lucky and we can only hope you are lucky again but that is a matter for the Goddess of Fortune.
An alternate explanation is that you two just stayed deluded, just stayed in love and if that is true the rest of us can only hope that one day we get a a turn at being as wonderfully deluded as you two.
As for you being the “inarticulate, violent, drunken bully with a mental disorder in the relationship” I won’t have put it quite that way myself but I suppose that “wonderful” had to balance something out, though nothing comes to mind; honest. | |
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Posted: 11/15/2009 6:34:09 AM | ^^^ I might get shot (or committed) for saying this, but maybe you can trick nature/biology into letting you stay deluded and in love by not giving her what she seeks and not producing babies. That way she never gets to just sit back and congratulate herself on a job well done...she has to keep plugging away, keeping you attracted to each other, circulating all those feel good hormones in her endless attempt to meet her agenda. Cos she's a sneaky one. (I am fairly sure she is also the one who commissions all those nappy commercials that show happy babies and well-rested mothers.) Maybe you can basically beat her at her own game, take all the oxytocin she peddles to lure people in, use it for your own selfish purposes and keep telling her...yerr oneday...we're trying!
Edit
As for you being the “inarticulate, violent, drunken bully with a mental disorder in the relationship” I won’t have put it quite that way myself but I suppose that “wonderful” had to balance something out, though nothing comes to mind; honest.
lol and ...meh. I still say I am on the preferable side of the equation. :) | |
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Posted: 11/15/2009 7:02:06 AM | ^^^ Well you have suggested a testable hypotheses though I am not sure that the data is likely to support it; nature has a way of figuring out what we are up to eventually.
Of course you are on the preferable side of the equation, isn't that what I said, you maths might be a little rusty.
An interesting aside is that Schopenhauer was the first major philosopher to be a passionate advocate and supporter of animal right. I suspect that his ideas were informed by the idea that we are animals and mate for the same reasons as other animals but give our cognitive powers there had to be some special mechanism that prevented most of us from choosing not to reproduce because if their wasn't no sane person would want to spend their life changing nappies when they could be out riding motorcycles and so nature invented that in-love feeling to get us to cooperate.
Now of course this assumes that ducks, for example, don't have that in-love feeling but surely that can't be right? | |
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Posted: 11/15/2009 7:48:26 AM | there had to be some special mechanism that prevented most of us from choosing not to reproduce because if their wasn't no sane person would want to spend their life changing nappies when they could be out riding motorcycles and so nature invented that in-love feeling to get us to cooperate.
As far as I was aware that is lust's job... luring us to procreate is the role of various pleasurable physical reactions, not the least of which is orgasm. And love's job is moreso for the purpose of getting the parents to stick together for a couple of years to increase the chances of the survival of the newborn human... given how helpless we are at birth compared to other animals, and how it therefore made sense to have a nurturer and a bringer of food. I've read that the in love sensations tend to fizzle at about the stage where the child is between 4 and 7, their job having been done, according to nature. Of course, family law decisions about child support payments have proven far more enduring than this love caper that nature managed to come up with. :p
Now of course this assumes that ducks, for example, don't have that in-love feeling but surely that can't be right? Wild ducks are different but I have seen drakes and ducks amongst my lot that I would consider to be more in love more than some married humans, and certainly I have seen how they grieve for partners who have died. But their breeding habits are held distinct from their emotions for their partners. My ducks usually team up with another female duck and share a nest/child rearing duties. The drakes concerned have nothing to do with the kids, nor do the ducks seem to want them to as single motherhood seems to suit them just fine. After the children are raised, the ducks go back to hanging out with their drake of choice, and seem as close as they had been before the babies. It seems all a very conscious choice...nobody ever accidentally hatches an egg... and in fact a couple of my ducks have chosen to never sit on eggs. Of course clearly this demonstrates our superiority over ducks, given that they are obviously not advanced enough to argue over child access visits and who gets the CD collection and the garden furniture. | |
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Posted: 11/16/2009 12:58:03 AM |
As far as I was aware that is lust's job... luring us to procreate
Ahh mate....so naive for one so ....umm......young
Its actually alcohols job.....just so you know!! | |
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Posted: 11/18/2009 2:17:12 PM | | Statement: Money will get a fat, bald, middle aged man laid. | |
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