Is love actually a disease? (PLEASE read the description)
So I read this book awhile back based in the future. In the book the government decided that love was actually a disease, and things like stress, depression, anxiety, and high blood pressure were simply symptoms of love. So they made a cure for it.
Because love can kill you, look at romeo and juliet (I know it's fiction, but similar things have happened in reality), so they believe it needed a cure. To focus people and make their lives wholly better.
The question is, do you think it's a true concept, is love actually a disease?
It's simply an interesting concept to me, a little teenage fantasy perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.
Yes
Side Score: 30
|
 |
No
Side Score: 39
|
|
|
|
|
4
points
"Any harmful condition, as of the mind or of society." -one of the definitions of disease, so in that regard, you could probably argue for. Do the negatives outweigh the benefits of love though? From an evolutionary standpoint, I wouldn't think so. Love in all its forms helps parents, families, communities stick together which was vital to learn human emotions like empathy, and to provide the support needed to raise babies that required extended nurture. In individual cases however, where love causes severe emotional distress and physical ailment, I can see how you could call it a disease. Side: Yes
3
points
Just as we have bacteria in our bowels that help us digest our food in mutual symbiosis, so do we live in mutual symbiosis that is the disease of love. Not everything that can make you sick actually makes you sick. Some of the time, if these sickening things don't make you sick, they actually benefit you greatly. Side: Yes
Ok, you really made me think about this one for quite some time before I responded. 1. I think love is an emotion. 2. Emotions can express how we feel, some emotions make us feel good, bad, happy, sad, stressed, excited, etc. 3. So, love can make us feel all those ways. 4. I think grief is an emotion 5. Grief helps us cope with tragic things that happen to us 6. I think Love helps us cope with the happy things that happen to us. 7. Therefore if Love is a disease, Grief would have to be a disease. 8. If you want to eradicate dieseases, you must first erradicate the reason the disease exists in the first place. 9. If you remove any source of happiness, then the need to cope with the hapiness no longer exisits. Thefore Love would be eradicated. But even though you may be able to eradicate love, you can never make it extinct as it will always exisit somewhere for some reason even if no longer in the general population. Check out this link and I think you see the parallel I have drawn. http://www.cdc. Andy Side: Yes
I find this an incredible oversimplification of the subject. Although, I guess it's hard to be direct and concise about something like this all in one sentence. I have a lot of things I can blame for the failure rate of romances these days. Mainly that the times are changing, people are less tolerable of each other, and what we see in movies and tv and videogames gives us a 'perfect romance' idea. Now, I'm not blaming the media for being the media, but a lot of the time people don't really seem to realize the difference between what they see on the looky-ma-box and what their real life is. The point I'm trying to make is, people have the expectation to be able to go into a relationship without having to bear some serious hardships later. Especially here in America where most of our population is almost trained from birth to have an awful attention span. In my personal opinion, and personal indeed, I believe the core element to a relationship is being able to love somebody even through their flaws, and endure the bad times. It's that simple, and people aren't willing to do that anymore. Too hard or something like that. Instead, lovers these days intentionally try to pick at one another and break them down and reconstruct them into their model of perfection. Which doesn't exactly uh, work. And when it does, it usually ends in flames anyways. Romance doesn't doesn't break people's hearts. Dumb people break their own hearts, and they're too stupid to realize it. Because well, love makes you stupid. Everyone knows that. Side: No
1
point
That is an iterresting take on love. I guess that if we want cure love, we would have to cure their addiction to breathing. People are so addicted to breathing that if you try to cure them of their addiction, they would resist. Especially if you try to get them to quit cold turkey :) Side: Yes
1
point
1
point
|
4
points
3
points
It can actually. Take Romeo and Juliet, for example. If they had just decided to stay away from each other, neither would have died. It does happen in real life as well. Honor killings are common in a lot of countries. If the couple had realized in advance that their obsession would get them killed and hence it's a bad idea to continue it, they would be alive. Now I'm not supporting the killers, I am just condemning the logic. The need to be with another person against individual or even their collective interests has done more harm than good Side: Yes
3
points
Love in itself is not a disease, but its effects can lead to disease. As far as I'm aware, a disease is a deviation from the usual functioning of a body part. Love in itself does not match this criteria, but any form of narcissism developed through pining for someone can cause disease. Side: No
Obsessing over someone is a mental disorder (illness, disease) which is often enough mistaken for love. Love is caring about someone's well being. Care about someone's well being enough, and you can disregard whether or not your interactions with (or lack of) them makes them or you immediately happy/comfortable. Care too much about what makes them or you happy/comfortable and you can all too easily disregard what is healthy for the both of you. Side: No
2
points
2
points
Love isn't a disease -- it's a side-effect of one of our most vital advantages over our animal cousins. We have empathy. We have the ability to live through other people's mistakes, and hurt when they hurt. You'd think that'd be a disadvantage if you take it at face value, but the whole point is to allow us to learn how to not fuck up by feeling another's pain when they fuck up. It gets really complicated and I'm not a psychologist, so I'm going to leave it at that. There's a couple of really cool TED talks on it, though. If you like TED. Yeah, I blame stumble-upon. But no, love isn't bad if that's what anyone here is trying to imply. It's simply a dedication to someone, and it takes many forms; not all of them are so intimately inclined. Side: No
My understanding of love is via faculty psychology. I think of the human mind as a combination of various faculties. Rationality, Ethicality, Conceptuality, etc... are ways in which the mind exists with relation to the world around us. There are evolutionary reasons for the emergence of the faculties and I believe that Emotivity is the evolved faculty that characterizes our expereince of life. Since love can exist in so many ways (romantic, platonic, chemical, etc...) no one thing characterizes the term love except for the unusual nature of one's affinity. Love, can be as complex and profound but it can also be reduced to the simple desire to mate. Because love is so basic a thing to the character of our experience and the nature of our species, calling it a disease is far fetched. Love can make us crazy, it can make us soar, it drives procreation, and can give our lives profound meaning. Love is too complex to be reduced to that of a pathological notion. Side: No
2
points
Love is not a disease. All cells divide, all cells originate from cells, and ultimately the point of the cell is to carry on life. "Love" is attraction fueled by the hormones estrogen and testosterone that are directly involved in causing humans to be willing to mate. Humans mating is carrying on a race. Humans are alive, to continue life. Humans may feel different things, but only due to the fact their bodies are faulty and imperfect. The feeling of attraction (love), is not a disease, it is a purpose of being human. Side: No
1
point
0
points
|
