Poetry and Storytelling by Kai
WORDS BY KAI. This site is the home of creative expression fueled by passion and inspired by the sparks of a my starlight muse. On these pages you will find my creative voice in lines of poetry, thoughtful essays and commentary, creative storytelling, and in an array of beautiful words to inspire the logophile in us all.
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- ORIGINAL POETRY [A -F] [G-M] [N-Z]
- THOUGHTS AND COMMENTARY - [Personal Narratives] [Informative Articles] [Social Commentary]
- CREATIVE STORYTELLING
Learn new words with the Word of the Day and the topic Word Lists. Build your new vocabulary with new words, old words, obscure words and untranslatable words from faraway lands.
THOUGHTS AND COMMENTARY
Directory Informational Articles
Commentaries and essays on a variety of topics including parenting, the capacity for love, emotions, mindfulness and social issues.
Our Capacity for Love
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states. It could be caring, trusted and comfortable, a passionate romance, nurturing and maternal or a deep affection. Or it could be something you can’t define. At its core love refers to a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment. There are many theories surrounding this concept we will explore here.
Love can be considered to be a positive and negative.
In its various forms love acts as a major facilitator of relationships and, because of it’s psychological importance, it is one of the most common themes in the creative arts like writing and poetry.
The diversity of definitions and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define compared to other emotional states.
The word "love" can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contexts. Many other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that in English are simply called "love.” For example the plurality of Greek words for "love" include “agape” and “eros.” Agape is the spiritual or charitable love and Eros is a deep and passionate love of desire.
Although the essence of love is a subject of debate, defining features of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love isn’t (antonyms of "love").
Other Thoughts
BIOLOGY
Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive much like hunger. Behaviorists divides the experience of love into three partly overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment.
NEUROSCIENCE
Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including the neurotransmitter hormones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, that all stimulate the brain's pleasure center and lead to side effects such as 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.
Triangle Theory
The triangular theory of love argues that love has three different components: intimacy, commitment, and passion.
All forms of love are viewed as varying combinations of these three components. Non-love does not include any of these components.
Psychologist Erich Fromm states that love is not merely a feeling but is also actions, and the "feeling" of love is superficial in comparison to one's commitment to love with a series of loving actions over time. Fromm held that love is ultimately not a feeling at all but rather is a commitment to and adherence to the loving actions towards another, oneself, or many others, over a sustained duration. Fromm also described love as a conscious choice that in its early stages might originate as an involuntary feeling, but which then later no longer depends on those feelings, but rather depends only on conscious commitment.
Charles Darwin identified unique features of human love compared to other mammals and credit love as a major factor for creating social support systems that enabled the development and expansion of the human species.
Biological models of love tend to see it as a mammalian drive, similar to hunger or thirst. Psychology sees love as more of a social and cultural phenomenon. The conventional view in biology is that there are two major drives in love: sexual attraction and attachment.
The traditional psychological view sees love as being a combination of companionate love an and passionate love.
Greek Definition
Ancient Greek philosophers identified five forms of love: familial love (Storge), friendly love or platonic love (Philia), romantic love (Eros), guest love (Xenia) and divine love (Agape). Modern theory has distinguished further varieties of love including unrequited love, empty love, companionate love, consummate love, infatuated love, self-love, and courtly love.
Agape (ἀγάπη agápē) means love in modern-day Greek. The term s'agapo means I love you in Greek. The word agapo is the verb I love. It generally refers to a "pure," ideal type of love, rather than the physical attraction suggested by eros. However, there are some examples of agape used to mean the same as eros. It has also been translated as "love of the soul."
Eros (ἔρως érōs) (from the Greek deity Eros) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Greek word erota means “in love.” Plato refined by saying that eros is initially felt for a person but with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person or beauty itself. Eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros. Some translations list it as "love of the body".
Philia (φιλία philía), a dispassionate virtuous love, was a concept addressed and developed by Aristotle. It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality, and familiarity. Philia is motivated by practical reasons; one or both of the parties benefit from the relationship. It can also mean "love of the mind."
Storge (στοργή storgē) is natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring. Xenia (ξενία xenía), hospitality, was an extremely important practice in ancient Greece. It was an almost ritualized friendship formed between a host and his guest. The importance of this can be seen throughout Greek mythology—in particular, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
RELIGION
Christianity
The Christian understanding is that love comes from God. The love of man and woman and the unselfish love of others are often contrasted as "descending" and "ascending" love, respectively, but are ultimately the same thing.
We see the Greek words for "love" again here and they are regularly referred to in Christian circles.
Christians believe that to love God with all your heart, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself are the two most important things in life. The Apostle Paul glorified love as the most important virtue of all. Describing love in the famous poetic interpretation in 1 Corinthians, he wrote, "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, and always perseveres."
He also wrote, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." (John 3:16–17, NIV) Finally John also wrote, "Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:7–8, NIV).
In Christianity the practical definition of love is summarised by St. Thomas Aquinas, who defined love as "to will the good of another," or to desire for another to succeed. This is an explanation of the Christian need to love others, including their enemies. As Thomas Aquinas explains, Christian love is motivated by the need to see others succeed in life, to be good people.
Buddhism
Buddhism, Kāma is sensuous, sexual love. It is an obstacle on the path to enlightenment, since it is selfish. Karuṇā is compassion and mercy, which reduces the suffering of others. It is complementary to wisdom and is necessary for enlightenment. Adveṣa and mettā are benevolent love. This love is unconditional and requires considerable self-acceptance. This is quite different from ordinary love, which is usually about attachment and sex and which rarely occurs without self-interest. Instead, in Buddhism it refers to detachment and unselfish interest in others' welfare.
Hinduism
In Hinduism, kāma is pleasurable, sexual love, personified by the god Kamadeva. For many Hindu, it is the third end (Kama) in life. Maara is another name for kāma. In contrast to kāma, prema – or prem – refers to elevated love. Karuna is compassion and mercy, which impels one to help reduce the suffering of others. Bhakti is a Sanskrit term, meaning "loving devotion to the supreme God."
Political
The term "free love" has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It claimed that such issues were the concern of the people involved, and no one else.
Many people in the early 19th century believed that marriage was an important aspect of life to "fulfill earthly human happiness." Middle-class Americans wanted the home to be a place of stability in an uncertain world. This mentality created a vision of strongly defined gender roles, which provoked the advancement of the free love movement as a contrast.
The term "sex radical" has been used interchangeably with the term "free lover".[citation needed] By whatever name, advocates had two strong beliefs: opposition to the idea of forceful sexual activity in a relationship and advocacy for a woman to use her body in any way that she pleases.These are also beliefs of Feminism.
As you can see, love is a universal language that is defined differently by cultures, religions, philosophies and science.
Take a look at the expressions of love to see the different ways people refer to love.
See Also:
Love can be considered to be a positive and negative.
- The good manifests in human kindness, compassion, loyalty, affection and concern for the good of another.
- On the opposite side representing human moral flaw is vanity, selfishness, and egotism, mania, obsessiveness or codependency.
In its various forms love acts as a major facilitator of relationships and, because of it’s psychological importance, it is one of the most common themes in the creative arts like writing and poetry.
The diversity of definitions and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define compared to other emotional states.
The word "love" can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contexts. Many other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that in English are simply called "love.” For example the plurality of Greek words for "love" include “agape” and “eros.” Agape is the spiritual or charitable love and Eros is a deep and passionate love of desire.
Although the essence of love is a subject of debate, defining features of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love isn’t (antonyms of "love").
- Love contrasted with hate
- Love contrasted with lust
- Romantic love is contrasted with friendship or platonic love
Other Thoughts
- Aristotle defined love as will for the good of another.
- Bertrand Russell described love as a condition of "absolute value," as opposed to relative value.
- Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that love is "to be delighted by the happiness of another."
- Meher Baba stated that in love there is a "feeling of unity" and an "active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love."
- Biologist Jeremy Griffith defines love as "unconditional selflessness".
BIOLOGY
Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive much like hunger. Behaviorists divides the experience of love into three partly overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment.
- Lust is the feeling of sexual desire. 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.
- Romantic attraction determines what partners mates find attractive and pursue. 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.
- Attachment (or falling in love) and relationships involve sharing a home, parental duties, mutual defense, and in humans involves feelings of safety and security. Attachment is the bonding that promotes relationships lasting 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 to a greater degree than short-term relationships have.
NEUROSCIENCE
Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including the neurotransmitter hormones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, that all stimulate the brain's pleasure center and lead to side effects such as 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.
Triangle Theory
The triangular theory of love argues that love has three different components: intimacy, commitment, and passion.
- Intimacy is a form in which two people share confidences and various details of their personal lives and is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs.
- Commitment is the expectation that the relationship is permanent.
- Sexual attraction and passion. Passionate love is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love.
All forms of love are viewed as varying combinations of these three components. Non-love does not include any of these components.
- Liking only includes intimacy.
- Infatuated love only includes passion.
- Empty love only includes commitment.
- Romantic love includes both intimacy and passion.
- Companionate love includes intimacy and commitment.
- Fatuous love includes passion and commitment.
- Lastly, consummate love includes all three components.
Psychologist Erich Fromm states that love is not merely a feeling but is also actions, and the "feeling" of love is superficial in comparison to one's commitment to love with a series of loving actions over time. Fromm held that love is ultimately not a feeling at all but rather is a commitment to and adherence to the loving actions towards another, oneself, or many others, over a sustained duration. Fromm also described love as a conscious choice that in its early stages might originate as an involuntary feeling, but which then later no longer depends on those feelings, but rather depends only on conscious commitment.
Charles Darwin identified unique features of human love compared to other mammals and credit love as a major factor for creating social support systems that enabled the development and expansion of the human species.
Biological models of love tend to see it as a mammalian drive, similar to hunger or thirst. Psychology sees love as more of a social and cultural phenomenon. The conventional view in biology is that there are two major drives in love: sexual attraction and attachment.
The traditional psychological view sees love as being a combination of companionate love an and passionate love.
- Passionate love is intense longing, and is often accompanied by physiological arousal (shortness of breath, rapid heart rate)
- Companionate love is affection and a feeling of intimacy not accompanied by physiological arousal
Greek Definition
Ancient Greek philosophers identified five forms of love: familial love (Storge), friendly love or platonic love (Philia), romantic love (Eros), guest love (Xenia) and divine love (Agape). Modern theory has distinguished further varieties of love including unrequited love, empty love, companionate love, consummate love, infatuated love, self-love, and courtly love.
Agape (ἀγάπη agápē) means love in modern-day Greek. The term s'agapo means I love you in Greek. The word agapo is the verb I love. It generally refers to a "pure," ideal type of love, rather than the physical attraction suggested by eros. However, there are some examples of agape used to mean the same as eros. It has also been translated as "love of the soul."
Eros (ἔρως érōs) (from the Greek deity Eros) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Greek word erota means “in love.” Plato refined by saying that eros is initially felt for a person but with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person or beauty itself. Eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros. Some translations list it as "love of the body".
Philia (φιλία philía), a dispassionate virtuous love, was a concept addressed and developed by Aristotle. It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality, and familiarity. Philia is motivated by practical reasons; one or both of the parties benefit from the relationship. It can also mean "love of the mind."
Storge (στοργή storgē) is natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring. Xenia (ξενία xenía), hospitality, was an extremely important practice in ancient Greece. It was an almost ritualized friendship formed between a host and his guest. The importance of this can be seen throughout Greek mythology—in particular, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
RELIGION
Christianity
The Christian understanding is that love comes from God. The love of man and woman and the unselfish love of others are often contrasted as "descending" and "ascending" love, respectively, but are ultimately the same thing.
We see the Greek words for "love" again here and they are regularly referred to in Christian circles.
- Agape: In the New Testament, agapē is charitable, selfless, altruistic, and unconditional. It is parental love, it is the way God is seen to love humanity, and it is seen as the kind of love that Christians aspire to have for one another.
- Phileo: Also used in the New Testament, phileo is a human response to something that is found to be delightful. Also known as "brotherly love."
- Two other words for love in the Greek language, eros (sexual love) and storge (child-to-parent love), were never used in the New Testament.
Christians believe that to love God with all your heart, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself are the two most important things in life. The Apostle Paul glorified love as the most important virtue of all. Describing love in the famous poetic interpretation in 1 Corinthians, he wrote, "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, and always perseveres."
He also wrote, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." (John 3:16–17, NIV) Finally John also wrote, "Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:7–8, NIV).
In Christianity the practical definition of love is summarised by St. Thomas Aquinas, who defined love as "to will the good of another," or to desire for another to succeed. This is an explanation of the Christian need to love others, including their enemies. As Thomas Aquinas explains, Christian love is motivated by the need to see others succeed in life, to be good people.
Buddhism
Buddhism, Kāma is sensuous, sexual love. It is an obstacle on the path to enlightenment, since it is selfish. Karuṇā is compassion and mercy, which reduces the suffering of others. It is complementary to wisdom and is necessary for enlightenment. Adveṣa and mettā are benevolent love. This love is unconditional and requires considerable self-acceptance. This is quite different from ordinary love, which is usually about attachment and sex and which rarely occurs without self-interest. Instead, in Buddhism it refers to detachment and unselfish interest in others' welfare.
Hinduism
In Hinduism, kāma is pleasurable, sexual love, personified by the god Kamadeva. For many Hindu, it is the third end (Kama) in life. Maara is another name for kāma. In contrast to kāma, prema – or prem – refers to elevated love. Karuna is compassion and mercy, which impels one to help reduce the suffering of others. Bhakti is a Sanskrit term, meaning "loving devotion to the supreme God."
Political
The term "free love" has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It claimed that such issues were the concern of the people involved, and no one else.
Many people in the early 19th century believed that marriage was an important aspect of life to "fulfill earthly human happiness." Middle-class Americans wanted the home to be a place of stability in an uncertain world. This mentality created a vision of strongly defined gender roles, which provoked the advancement of the free love movement as a contrast.
The term "sex radical" has been used interchangeably with the term "free lover".[citation needed] By whatever name, advocates had two strong beliefs: opposition to the idea of forceful sexual activity in a relationship and advocacy for a woman to use her body in any way that she pleases.These are also beliefs of Feminism.
As you can see, love is a universal language that is defined differently by cultures, religions, philosophies and science.
Take a look at the expressions of love to see the different ways people refer to love.
See Also:
There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment. - Sarah Desson
STARLIGHT POETRY BY KAI
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© 2019-2020 Copyright Starlight Poetry
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View Me on Twitter @kairosoflife
See Creativity Chaos - a Creativity Blog by Kai
About | Reprints & Copyrights | Home
© 2019-2020 Copyright Starlight Poetry
VIEW FULL SITE DIRECTORY