It's ironic how the artistic portrayal of love is always vague and superficial; while a deeper look into our baser natures always reveals something filthy and abhorrent. I find it hard to believe that there are rarely examples of improbable progressions to this - like how about an artistic portrayal of all the filth (because that's how filthy the filth actually is - it's only accentuated by twisted rationalities); or a genuine, unbiased, amoral analysis and understanding of our baser natures? What a sadly repressed species. It’s sad, solely because there is definitely a lot of value in wandering and thinking, instead we spend our lives inventing ways to create order, and to limit thought. Love is like that, because it forces us to think within a bubble of opinions and perspectives, ignoring the universe outside the bubble.
Ever met the random couple who hate each other so much, yet are so dependent on each other, so they eventually learn to get used to each other? And in certain moments, even able to recite disjointed cheesiness to each other, which they somehow classify as a conversation? Something this pathetic is painful to watch, let alone understand. But is this love? I’m afraid it is, at least to the people in question.
It’s tragic that much of the mass delusion modern society encompasses, includes this mixture of psychotic nonsense and sickeningly-sweet customs. What we end up doing, is attaching a lot of meaningless meaning to commitment, and picking out certain days on a calendar, to engage ourselves in the activities of shopping, courting, mating and phony philosophy - perhaps all of it combined.
An affinity with another human being is perhaps one of the reasons for people to trip over one another. Although, the concept of soul mates, is a whole different ballgame altogether. It’s unrealistic, for one. Think about it. People who go down to some place to study or work or anything, meets someone there completely at random and claim they’re soul mates. Hypothetically, if the person moves to another place, and meets different people due to different circumstances, there’s always the chance that they’ll meet someone better or worse. So where does the perfect match scenario enter the realm of realistic logic? There simply is no such thing. Convincing ourselves that there’s just one perfect person for us, and we should stay committed, only subtly disguises the fact that we’re really jealous, and insecure beings.
Love has had a lot of run-ins with organized religion. To start with, the name of the holiday. In entirety, it’s actually called St. Valentine’s Day. A Holiday sanctioned by the Catholic Church, to enforce courtly love. To enforce the belief in human beings, that creating an offspring-dynasty, within every generation, could and should happen, or else, the erratically-uninterested individuals in this tedious activity are sinners - a moral philosophy resulting in over-population. Some irony, since organized religion now has a problem with the same thing they enforced. Probably is a case of best-laid plans gone horribly wrong, after teenagers discovered the internet. Here’s another fun fact - in religious books, sins are categorized into different groups - like personal sins, property sins, unforgivable sins, and so on. Intimacy with someone else’s wife was, get this, a property theft. In essence, what they mean is the wife is a man’s property. Religion has survived into modern society, and since feminism caught on too, now it’s both men and women who believe they are each other’s property. It’s self-explanatory for distinguishing the reasons for divorce, possessiveness, stalking, and a whole range of self-centered, self-righteous emotions.
Now, let’s look at perversion in a strictly logical sense, unlike the societal view.
Before we had ideas talking about what sex is, sex was a biological process. We loved performing parts of it, parts of it were enjoyable to watch. It’s when we attached guilt and flawed moralities to the actual sex - that undermined the process in a way. How? By calling birth the only miracle of life part, while the rest of the process wasn’t magical, it was shameful. Somewhere down the line, we forgot that the entire process is magical - sex, beauty and the resultant birth. We started to imagine that one part of this process (the sex and beauty) were sick and repulsive, while the other part (the birth) was to be revered - this is bordering on lunacy. That’s why there’s porn - we find something beautiful in it, yet because of our deep-seeded cultural and social beliefs, we think they’re dirty images, and think we’re dirty ourselves because we find something beautiful in it. Take away repulsive cultural aspects such as these, and we move away from repulsive cultural ideologies, and start to think it’s a normal process once again. If taking away pornography cleans society up, fine, but it’s the repressed mind that has to be freed first to get a squeaky clean society. We can’t realistically expect to repress a lot of things, hype up a few things, and expect to create a balanced public opinion or mind-set. It’s absurd, it’s impossible. Perhaps it's about time we rethink our morals, at present they’re largely superficial. They lack depth in knowledge and understanding.
Pythagoras had this concept of beauty, based on symmetry, ratios, triangles and pentagons. There’s this documentary called The Human Face, which touched on this concept a bit. But, this is based on physical attractiveness though. We can’t measure mental beauty, and if we could, I would hope most of us wouldn’t be soulless and forlorn and stuck-up and intensely fake. I suppose this is wishful thinking, plain and simple. Here are the facts - The elements people equate to love are largely superficial. Beauty and Passion fade away over time, it’s Compassion and Compatibility which sustains long-term relationships, along with understanding. Not mutual understanding - that suggests we have to sacrifice some logic in certain decisions - no, actual understanding. Maybe, think of throwing in a bit of humane rationalism too.
Then, there are the dreamers. The ones who watch romance flicks and assume the same will happen at some point in their lives. Oddly enough, this is how people develop Narcissism, strange mating mechanisms, unrealistic demands within partners, unbridled sexism, obsessive stalking and possessiveness. These are the same ones who, at a usually non-suggestive gesture, start to fantasize about how life would move on with the person he/she is affectionate to, build up an imaginary future, including offspring, the cake at the dream wedding, dying holding hands, and other such hogwash. There is a danger with such unjustified optimism. And we see them end up in pubs, overdosing with needles that dangle from punctured veins, hanging from ceiling fans, jumping from an elevation onto concrete slabs, and so on.
Love is one of those things which gives people a certain amount of comfort, no question. But it has to be truthful and real. Otherwise, we end up banning stuff and killing each other, or living a perpetually despondent existence. In that sense, it’s totally not worth it. If we begin to imagine a perfect future based on limited, or untruthful assumptions, it assumes the form of a self-induced mental plague. However, when people don’t subject themselves to idiocies, they can turn up with something magical. And unique.
If you’re all capable of it at all after reading this piece, Have a Happy Valentine’s Day…//
I postulate that the true nature of relationships i.e. male-female, has been lost and totally distorted. As stated in other posted comments, the primary function of men and women is to create new men and women, period. As in the animal kingdom that, surprise,surprise, we are very much a part of, the driving mechanisms leading to such consummation to procreation are the senses the primary of these being smell followed by sight. Pheromones are the precursor to the mating ritual (just watch a pact of dogs smelling each others butts and vagina). Sight plays an important in undomesticated animals as the prospective partners will size up one-another from a sustainability view i.e.: strength, power of presence, dominant features that will render a healthy brood of off-spring.
ReplyDeleteI am sure if one were to check out a den of wolves they won't find any empty valentine boxes littering their habitat.