[Spareribs]

I just read that there is a shortage of women in China since many females were aborted due to the preference of baby boys. As a result, there are millions of men who will never get married and never experience a girlfriend. 
 
Personally, I believe that it is possible to find happiness without love. The media influences society with romance in the movies and love songs but in reality, I do believe that humans can adapt to living a single life and finding happiness.
 
Especially, if you're a single guy and most of the other guys in your town is single too. It's like being in an isolated group were being single is the norm and you're already conditioned to it.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spareribs /img/forum/go_quote.gif

I just read that there is a shortage of women in China since many females were aborted due to the preference of baby boys. As a result, there are millions of men who will never get married and never experience a girlfriend. 

 

Actually it was less "aborted" (ultrasound was less accurate when the One Child Policy started) and more of the midwife going, "oh crap it's a girl" and the father going "alright I'll just toss this into the river without a floating basket because obviously this is not the Price of Egypt" after the midwife left.

 

Also, they somewhat remedy that...if they have money. Women escape from North Korea to marry men who paid what essentially are East Asia's version of the US-Mexico border's "coyotes." This is actually a long-standing tradition in China except in the past tributary states like the Korean kingdoms, the Thais, Vietnamese, etc, all paid tribute to the Emperors. And by "paid tribute" I mean "my daughter for your harem my lord!" What we have now is a lot better considering the women are willingly running to the Chinese men rather than getting rounded up to get sent to the Emperor, not to mention escaping from North Korea. Also, North Korea isn't the only one - states south of China have people who get into these arrangements too, they just don't have to be smuggled in by coyotes (tanukis? dingos? not sure what to call them).

 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spareribs /img/forum/go_quote.gif

 

Personally, I believe that it is possible to find happiness without love. The media influences society with romance in the movies and love songs but in reality, I do believe that humans can adapt to living a single life and finding happiness.

 

Especially, if you're a single guy and most of the other guys in your town is single too. It's like being in an isolated group were being single is the norm and you're already conditioned to it.

 

You can NOT find happiness without love. The problem is how one defines love, which is something that is not of one definition.

 

The only one you cite there is eros, a kind of love that involves a strong passion and emotion directed at the beloved, and in turn it has many interpretations. In The Symposium (ie a drinking party) speeches were delivered on what constitutes eros. Phaedrus cites love to be inspiring, something that men now would say of their beloved women as "inspiring me to be the best that we can be." One strives to be seen as glorious by his beloved, and there is no shame like being seen by one's beloved being inglorious. In his example though it was love between warriors - a handful of such men (emphasis mine) can defy the whole world - an idea that inspired Thebes (on top of Leonidas' guard) to assemble the Sacred Band, 150 pairs (300 individuals) of lovers who will be mutually inspired to fight well to impress their lovers as well as to protect or avenge them.(1)

 

Pausanias takes this further to mean that there is a difference between common/low love and divine love. The first seeks only sexual gratification, the latter refers to how one honor's the lover's wisdom, intellect, and valor. This is like how Minamoto No Yoshinaka has as his lover Tomoe Gozen: the first admires her for her beauty and less for her being a warrior, as he has a wife as well as other concubines and victims; she on the other hand is not only faithful to him (and actually was just short of being a milk nurse to his son, but you can guess why they get milk nurses and concubines), but her actions on the battlefield are dedicated to his honor, ambition, and well-being.

 

Eryximachus meanwhile sees love as a force that binds all, creating harmony and balance. Only through balance can perfection be attained (or as close to it as possible if I have to be pedantic), and once achieved needs to be nurtured and protected, and as per his profession as a physician, to maintain this balance as to direct an individual to be all that he can be. After that, Aristophanes the playwright comes up with a creation myth - that we feel "whole" when in love because in the primordial state all beings were at some point torn apart, thus life is spent searching for one's other half for fulfillment. Agathon then presents one that is more akin to the prior proclamations - true love inspires to seek true beauty. In this sense, "seek" is more of "make" as it aspires to the cardinal virtues of Greeks - moderation, wisdom, courage, and justice - rather than for example to find somebody beautiful to love.

 

Next to speak is Socrates, beginning with a Socratic inquiry into the prior proclamation. He then delves into his own: eros is the child of contrivance and poverty, beggarly yet resourceful, but ultimately then to seek love is to seek to be in perpetual possession of what is beautiful. The thing here is that Socrates does not limit the fruit of love and procreation to the physical act and biological result, but that since wisdom is a thing of beauty, then an intellectual pursuit between two people who love each other - which does not presume that there is anything physical - is even more important than biological replication no matter how much fun the physical act that leads to it is (which for other people nowadays involves furiously dropping off their swimmers into a bottle and then injected by doctors anyway). Alcibiades thus moves from this into his own experience of love unrequited by Socrates. He sought wisdom, and thus fell in love with Socrates, believing that if he were to give himself to him, he may learn love from him, but Socrates feels that he has nothing to offer in return. Yet he does not deliver this out of anger, but out of admiration: wisdom being the most beautiful of all attributes, Socrates needs nothing from any other individual(2).

 

Thus what we now know as Platonic Love. It involves no physical nor even emotional fulfillment, rather, only intellectual fulfillment. Therefore a man who seeks wisdom throughout his life can ultimately be more fulfilled than a man who lives the ordinary life of being married and having 2.5 children, a dog, and a 3 bedroom house which all gets taken away during the divorce proceedings anyway.  Russell Crowe therefore is more fulfilled writing calculations on a window than when he gets to lie next to Jennifer Connelly. if you define love as being married, having passionate nights with and eventually children with a woman, then you of course phrase it as "possible to find happiness without love." To one who understands love as much more than that, then there is always love of another form, if not a higher form, involved in making a man happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(1) Excavations of the mass grave at the site of the Battle of Chaeronea reveal only 289 bodies in the pit for the Sacred Band. Of course, at the time their sacrifice, wiped out by Alexander's attack, inspired the Athenians to erect a lion statue to commemorate their valor.

(2) Note that this is not to be taken absolutely literally, as Socrates is known to have relationships with hetairae; that said, to the Athenians, a woman is mostly for sexual gratification, and there is still debate on whether the hetairae were actually valued more than other prostitutes for "intelligent conversation/pillow talk" 

 

[Spareribs]

I didn't know that

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I didn't know that

 
 
Start here - http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html  

 

[Raketen]

oops

 

[Music Alchemist]

I love myself (along with things I am passionate about) and I'm pretty darn happy when I feel like it.

 

[serman005]

Happiness is within.