What is love? baby don't hurt me...
Feb. 10th, 2009 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueOK, so on Radio 4 on monday, was 'beyond belief'.
The subject was love. Part of the discussion that caught my attention was how culturally in the UK we've kind of all got caught up in the 'one true love' myth - that there's someone out there, who will make all our troubles go away and 'everything' will be lovely.
But there's just a few problems with the concept, that we'll all see shoved down our necks by the media. (And doubly so with Valentine's day so near). The first, and simplest is that it's actually an extremely narrow scope - it implicitly rules out there being 'anyone else of any importance' because 'true love' is all you need.
Here's the hard part though - we've got a whole culture ... more or less geared up to the belief that 'true love' will save them - they're looking for something that ... well, frankly no one can really provide - whether you're of a religious bent or no, frontloading that burden of expectation on a potential lover is quite a quick road to things not working out. Sometimes it's as much transferring to the mythical 'true love' that which you'd expect from a religion.
It's worth I think, stopping to consider the use of the word, and what it's meaning actually is.
The subject was love. Part of the discussion that caught my attention was how culturally in the UK we've kind of all got caught up in the 'one true love' myth - that there's someone out there, who will make all our troubles go away and 'everything' will be lovely.
But there's just a few problems with the concept, that we'll all see shoved down our necks by the media. (And doubly so with Valentine's day so near). The first, and simplest is that it's actually an extremely narrow scope - it implicitly rules out there being 'anyone else of any importance' because 'true love' is all you need.
Here's the hard part though - we've got a whole culture ... more or less geared up to the belief that 'true love' will save them - they're looking for something that ... well, frankly no one can really provide - whether you're of a religious bent or no, frontloading that burden of expectation on a potential lover is quite a quick road to things not working out. Sometimes it's as much transferring to the mythical 'true love' that which you'd expect from a religion.
It's worth I think, stopping to consider the use of the word, and what it's meaning actually is.
