Love – Harmonia Philosophica

The secret of happiness. Known already for thousands of years…

“A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness,” wrote Einstein in German on a piece of hotel stationery which was sold for millions of dollars in an auction last year. (1)

But this is not news. A calm and modest life was always promoted by wise people all over the world for millennia. It is just that people will not listen to a wise man but only to a wise known man. We want to trust someone. We are just not sure whom.

A calm and modest life always makes us lust for a life of constant restlessness. Even though we already know everything, we will seek knowledge with all our powers to the outer reaches of the universe – only to discover that we had access to the big secrets of God’s wisdom at the warm corner of our house. Where our grandmother tagged us into bed, while we played our favorite video game, with Christmas songs playing in the background until our eyes closed…

This is how man always was.

Nothing more than a child.

Once in Paradise.

Happy and yet… not knowing that he is happy.

Until he stops being…

You can win eternal life again.

Just close your eyes.

And open this video game again…

Can you hear the Christmas songs?

Unpredictable love. Unpredictable cosmos.

Here’s some heartbreaking news for people pinning their hopes on online matchmaking sites: It’s virtually impossible to forecast a love connection.

Maybe that’s not so shocking to survivors of the dating wars. But now science is weighing in. Extensive background data on two individuals — comparable to that collected by digital dating services — can’t predict whether that pair will romantically click during a four-minute, face-to-face speed date, say psychologist Samantha Joel of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and colleagues. (1)

Love is unpredictable.

Hate is unpredictable.

Life is unpredictable.

Even predictable things are unpredictable.

No, no. The planets do not move in constant trajectories.

Ina galaxy far far away…

There was a princess once.

And a boy she loved.

That boy grew dark.

And at the end, whole planets were destroyed.

And because life is unpredictable.

Because hate is unpredictable.

Because love is unpredictable.

Everything is unpredictable…

Dogs love. Prejudice. Carbonara.

Dr. Gregory Berns, 53, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, spends his days scanning the brains of dogs, trying to figure out what they’re thinking. The research is detailed in a new book, “What It’s Like to Be a Dog”.

Among the findings: Your dog may really love you for you — not for your food.

But is this a valid conclusion? When the scientist was asked “Do dogs love us more than food? How did you test for that?” this is what he replied…

“We did an experiment where we gave them hot dogs some of the time and praise some of the time. When we compared their responses and looked at the rewards center of their brains, the vast number of dogs responded to praise and food equally. Now, about 20 percent had stronger responses to praise than to food. From that, we conclude that the vast majority of dogs love us at least as much as food. Another thing that we’ve learned by showing pictures of objects and people to the dogs is that they have dedicated parts of their brain for processing faces. So dogs are in many ways wired to process faces.” (1)

We see what we want to see.

And we want many things.

We want people (and dogs) to love us.

But it is only for us that we know.

It is only for us that we are responsible.

Only I exist for Me.

I love you.

Do you? I don’t know.

And I don’t care.

Because I love you.

I am you.

Even if we are apart.

We will always be together…

No I don’t want a carbonara!

Arranged marriages or marriages out of love? A not so easy to answer question…

– Have your married out of love?
– Of course! What a silly question!

Is it silly?

While in our society and in any other “progressive” society the marriage out of love is the norm, there are still some societies (like India, S. Arabia etc.) where many marriages are arranged. The question is whether these arranged marriages are unacceptable and whether they are more successful or less successful than marriages based on love. Emotional cries of the type “We are not in the Middle Ages” do not fit into this debate. Anyone who has even the least contact with countries where arranged marriages exist, is able to certify that such marriages can be successful. Let alone the fact that few of us can say with certainty that his grandparents or his great-grandparents were not married via an arranged marriage.

A related conversation at Quora can be seen here. There exists a reference to a survey that states that while many love marriages gradually fail, love in arranged marriages is being built and growing over time. I have no opinion on whether the research is valid, I just mention this as a food for thought. And certainly when one takes into account the growing divorce trends in love marriages, the question seems even more timely and difficult than we would like to admit.

The religious question now comes to Christianity: What will a religious person choose? If one wishes to be objective, he must recognize that Christianity would theoretically prefer marriage from true love. (although we must note that arranged marriages have been the norm for thousands of years also in the Christian societies!) Christianity favors love, unconditional love and is against any attempt to rationalize the affection between two people. On the other hand, the most correct rational view is the one that wants the choice of couples after the logical analysis of all the parameters in order to find the optimal “match” – that is, the arranged marriage.

Difficult problems with difficult solutions – if there are any.

Because as in all human problems, there is no easy answer here…

Search deep inside yourself…

Who is rational about this? (arranged marriages)

Who is irrational? (marriages out of love)

Going away. Coming back… (Society vs. Love)

A little child cries and tries to stop her dad from leaving for work. Dad leaves because he “must”. How many times the “Must” of the many (society) overshadow the “Must” of the few. But what if that few are the most important ones? What if the needs of the many are illusionary ones? What if one day no one went to work because they wanted to stay with their loved ones? What if one day the few realized that they were the… many?

I am back now my little girl.

Love you.