Love (Humans)

by dhw, Saturday, June 15, 2013, 12:32 (4178 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DHW: [...] actions in my experience are generally short-term, and DEPEND on feelings! So I'm afraid I take the opposite view to yours: just as grief is the emotion that makes you cry (action), fear the emotion that makes you scream (action), love is a feeling which expresses itself when you say (action) or do (action) things that will help, comfort, bring happiness to those you love.-In your reply, you have given us the delightful example of a homeless man who took you on a tour of Amsterdam.-TONY: Why? As he said himself, he loved the town, and loved the people in it. If he said he loved them, but failed to act, then he did not love. If he felt the emotion, but did not act, then he did not love. This is ultimately my point. While your emotions may in fact be the catalyst for your actions, and they do not have to be, if you do not ACT upon them, then the emotions themselves are meaningless. The man in your example may have indeed flown away regardless, but if he loved his wife, he would have been faithful to her. The emotion might be the catalyst for the ACT, but the ACT would DEMONSTRATE the emotion in a concrete way.-I see absolutely no difference between us, other than your insistence that love is an action and not a feeling. You wrote that "feelings are flighty things which often waver in their strength, while action can be resolute". I would argue that if the feeling is flighty (love her on Monday, hate her on Tuesday), the action will express the flightiness (flowers on Monday, door-slamming on Tuesday), and that is exactly the same as saying "the ACT would DEMONSTRATE the emotion in a concrete way." Emotion first, then action. Therefore love is the emotion, and action is the demonstration of the emotion, or "love is a feeling which expresses itself when you say (action) or do (action) things that will help, comfort, bring happiness to those you love."