"Why do we love? A philosophical inquiry"

"Why do you love me?

It's driving me crazy!"

"Why Do You Love Me?" - Garbage

As a school task, we had to watch this TED-Ed video and answer this worksheet related to it. Here are my answers:

1.- Attraction is natural, and so is the need to bond with other human beings in a variety of relationships, that can range from acquiantancement to deep connection. It comes as a rational consequence that a combination between attraction and bonding must be inherent as well.

When it comes to deeper reasons, or the reasons causing that attraction and that need to bond, the question gets more complicated. According to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, we humans are just containers for our genetic material and our life goal is to pass it to a future generation, making attraction and love ways to force us into our biological destiny. If that is so, as a transsexual person who has many friends among the LGBT community, I must say nature does quite a terrible job. I see love as more of an arbitrary thing that, if anything, used to have a biological function. With evolution, humans have separated pleasure from reproduction in a radical paradigmatical division, and we can simply have one without the other... and in the case of pleasure without reproduction, we usually do. And that is beautiful.

So, if I am to say, we love because we love. Human evolution is strange, and we simply do things just because we're like that, as a species or as individuals. Some need love, some don't, some bond with many, some don't bond, it's more of an arbitrary thing.

2.- Beautiful, intoxicating, heart-breaking and soul crushing.

3.- Plato, Schopenhauer, Russell, Buddha and Simone du Beauvoir.

4.-

Plato - "Love makes us whole, again."
Schopenhauer - "Love tricks us into having babies."
Russell - "Love is escape from out loneliness."
Buddha - "Love is a misleading affliction."
S. du Beauvoir - "Love lets us reach beyond ourselves."

5.-

"Dependance on another means boredom and power games." – S. du Beauvoir

"We succeed in perpetuating human species and perpetuating human tragedy." – Schopenhauer

"Quench our physical and psychological desires." – Russell

"It enriches our whole being together." – Russell

"Attachments are a great source of suffering." – Buddha

"Love is the longing to find a soulmate who makes us feel whole again." – Plato

"Love infuses our life with meaning." – S. du Beauvoir

Tollerance, voltaire and K. Popper [part III]

"But you,

You can do better than that."

"Better Than That" - Marina And The Diamonds

That author was Karl Popper. Mostly known for his theories on science and its development, as well as for his rivality with the Vienna Circle, he proposed a rational correction to Voltaire's postullate of absolute tollerance based on empyrical observation: he added to it the logical premise implying that tollerance towards intollerant views would put that same tollerance in danger. Or, in other words, if, in twenty years, we let that man called Adolf Hitler speak and freely win the ellections in his country, we may be messing up big time.

That way, Popper got to the conclusion that, in order to protect tollerance, some views threatening it must be deprived of it: tollerance should not be applied to attacks against it. That brought an authoritarian but also clarifying turn to the debate: from then on, the absolute tollerance paradigm proposed by Voltaire did not seem so inherent, and a further analysis of what should be allowed and what shouldn't replaced it.

Some say complete tollerance does not work because people are not mature enough to actually take their own decisions. Then another debate should be on whether or not defining maturity over those standards can really be considered tollerance...

That debate, however, does not belong here.

Tollerance, Voltaire and K. Popper [part II]

"You hit me once,

I hit you back,

You gave a kick,

I gave a slap."

"Kiss With A Fist" - Florence + The Machine 

Not even a century after Voltaire's time, Humanity had tollerated the takeover of the ongoing technological progress for the sake of enslaving the majority in a paradigm of exploiters and exploited ones: the magnificent Industrial Revolution had happened, and most people in Europe were starving thanks to it.

At the same time, politics in the Old Continent were filling with tension between nations, with constant attacks between liberal states like France or the United Kingdom and monarchies and imperial states like the newly unified Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Ottoman Empire, where regional nationalisms were fiercely persecuted; while this was happening, both sides were accumulating weaponry for an explicitly upcoming war.

It would not be until the early 20^th century, in Vienna, when a philosopher would add a bit more sanity to Voltaire's thesis and its effect.

Tollerance, Voltaire and K. Popper [part I]

"Got an opinion,

Yeah, you're well up for slating."

"Everyone's At It" - Lily Allen

The Illustration significated the culmination of three centuries of continuation of ancient philosophy, as well as of continuous and scheme-breaking scientific development, innovation in formal disciplines like maths or logics, retaking of mythological and anthropocentric art and literature... Overall, it was the peak of an impressive intellectual rise in all areas.

Voltaire

One of the topics that Illustrated philosophers spoke about was human freedom and tollerance. From the opposite political thesis of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke to the complete anthropological model presented by Jean-Jaques Rousseau, the limits and preferable ways of human action were spoken about all over the European continent and the United Kingdom, though in separated currents on the two.

The author that interests us is the one who unified both philosophical worlds, who brought the philosophy of Locke and Hume and the science of Newton to the Old Continent: Voltaire. Voltaire's works all revolve around a central thesis, which is based in the total acceptance of all positions in debate; Voltaire, ideologically, became the biggest defender of total tollerance in all areas, ideology, religion, culture...

It would not take all of the centuries passed before that to prove how disasterous the literal applying of his thesis could be.

The "Nip/Tuck Dialog" Task

 "If you weren't born with it

You can buy a couple ornaments

Just be sure to read the warning, kids,

'Cause pretty soon you'll be bored of it."

"Mr. Potato Head" - Melanie Martínez

For a school task, we had to write a dialog about surgery in pairs and record it. In lack of the recording (and I must say that is my fault), here's the written version of it:

~Our dialog (Heather, Campio)~

A Hey, hi!

B Hi!

A Oh, my God! The surgery went wrong, didn’t it? Your face looks horrible!

B What!? It’s awesome!

A What? Is that what you asked for?

B Yes! I wanted something inspired in Dali’s art!

A Oh, goodness... As long as you’re happy, I guess...

B Why don’t you try it out?

A Nah, I’m not that much into surrealism...

B But, I mean, haven’t you ever wanted to look different?

A Now that you say it... I’ve always wanted to look like a fruit!

B A fruit?

A Yeah! Nothing looks more healthy and delicious than a fruit!

B So, which fruit would you look like?

A A pineapple, a strawberry... Every kind is fine! But the fruit I’ve always loved the most is the pear!

B The pear!?

A Yes!

B So, are you gonna go for it?

A Hmm... Yes, definitely!

B See?

A Pear me, here I come!

"How do you know love is for real?"

 "Because it's not love,

But it's still a feeling.

No, it's not love,

But my body's reeling

To move closer next to you."

"Because It's Not Love (But It's Still A Feeling)" - The Pipettes

According to the composer, vocalist and arreglist Florence Welch in the YouTube presentation for her second album as part of the band Florence + The Machine, "Ceremonials" (2011), love feels like a long lasting note, a long scream that echoes in one's mind and fills it along with the heart. According to myself a year ago, love was more like a long lasting erection.

When one asks people what love is, the responses are impressibly homogeneous and incoherent: on one hand, everyone seems to agree that love is, naturally and inherently, what the romantic love stereotypes say it is, an emotional dependence (pure, independent from sex, of course! I mean, duh) that links two people together, making them magically have the same needs and interests by the action of some kind fairy, while also, on the other, everyone agrees that people are heterogeneous and have a variety of needs, some have the need to share their feelings with a partner while also need to have sex in function of their sexual needs, which vary in quantity and object with time, some can handle traditional romantic love for longer, some are induced to vomit by the sole thought of it...

Love is Eurovision. #UndeniableTruth

The truth this comes to show is that everyone has a different response to the seemingly natural feeling of attraction and inclination towards sharing a relationship, meaning that love is probably not something generalized that everyone reaches as the same state of feeling but rather something that varies in definition from individual to individual. With this premise, it seems hard to ask oneself whether or not love has been reached or whether or not love is what is being felt.

Then, how does one know the love they feel is for real, or if it can be called love? For the previously exposed reasons, I prefer considering it is not possible to be aware of it: one must do what is felt and how it's felt, without social schemes, with consent but without imposition, freely, collectively and individually at the same time, with the people we, as we say, love but in the way we want to love and how we feel like loving.

In 2013, the best that Europe had to give itself was a song about suicide

"Birds falling down the rooftops,

Out of the sky like raindrops.

Birds falling down the rooftops."

"Birds" - Anouk

The Eurovision Song Contest has had a long and variable evolution over its six decades of existence, and one of its traits that has changed the most over time is its meaning: Eurovision has been a sign of unity in Europe, a folklore showcase, a display of social movements, a space for new musical tendencies and a historical remembrance spot; all in an hours-long yearly music contest.

However, every year –or every now and then– the contest harbours a performance that breaks all those semantic schemes to mean something completely new, strange to the dynamics of the event, and make a short space for something out of the norm. It's usual that those performances fall into oblivion in minutes and remain unnoticed until a couple of years later; this, though, even as an exception itself, has some strange cases.

Anouk used an alternative setting for her performance.

One of them, and my favourite, is the case for The Netherlands' song in 2013, "Birds," by Anouk. In an edition, like most, full of love songs, empowering anthems, generic songs and folkloric elements, a song about the consequences of a breakup and subsequent suicidal thoughts, with a beautiful and artistic performance that broke all schemes, even when it came to positioning and use of the staging, rose. It did not win, but it did not remain unnoticed or forgotten either: at that moment, it was impressively striking.

The artist, Anouk, not precisely known for making generic pop songs that could fit an event like Eurovision, chose not to stand on the stage but on the end of the elevated way coming from it that went right into the crowd: that way, with a series of camera cuts, Anouk seemed suspended from the ground and at the same time closely surrounded by the public. The lights, staging and choir, all coming from the stage and filling the performance with an ethereal yet meaningful completion, gave the already magical succession a colorful and heartfelt turn.

For all those reasons, despite the official winner being Denmark, with a generic pop song and a performance filled with folklore, more of a follow-up of what the winner of the previous year had done with "Euphoria," "Birds" is undeniably my favourite song and performance in the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest.

"My soulmate," a task-induced reflection

"You, soft and only,

You, lost and lonely,

You, just like heaven."

"Just Like Heaven" - Katie Melua

For today's task (which somehow counts as a "Your say" writing), linked to our current project about love and relationships, it's required to describe one's ideal soulmate at the moment. To be honest, at first I had no trail of a clue as to how my soulmate should be, but further thought on what I want to do and who I'd want to share my life with has brought some concrete conclusions.

My soulmate should be somebody to collaborate and fight along with, an ally, a comrade. A person of ideas, wiling to change the world for the better and to give their voice and forces to the struggle of the oppressed. I think it would be absolutely impossible for me to share my life with someone who has opposite or unfitting convictions compared to me or no convictions at all.

Another factor to bear in mind is the kind of relationship one can have with a soulmate. If I take the traditional model, with a romantic-sexual relationship in it, the description gets a bit more concrete. I like men: genitals of both sexes are ugly, but I find male anatomy to be, in general, more erotic; that, in return, means I wouldn't care whether we're speaking of a cisgender man or a trans man, and I actually think sharing something like being trans would not only make it that we fight together but also that we have something deep in common.

Furtherly focusing on my sexual likes and romantic needs, though, I think hugging a person who is hard to the touch is just as comforting as hugging the street light next street; my soulmate, in that sense, should be chubby, at least slightly (yes, I ~might~ find chubby men erotic or arousing). I find ripped or only muscular people quite gross, and I think the ideal body type of my soulmate would be big, strong, but also plump and stout; preferably hairy. This, though, is a minor addition compared to the second paragraph.

Most importantly, though, my soulmate must share things with me. What would I do with a rich privileged cis man? How am I going to get him to help me when I fight against his privilege? How can I say to Mr. Bourgeoisie's face that I want to overthrow his class? I can't love someone like that, someone I see as a tyrant and as part of the reason why this world can be such a dark place.