Love as we understand it doesn’t exist. People treat others well or become attached to people only when they are able to provide something for them, whether this is material benefits or emotional support. Those who argue against this are simply not self conscious enough to deeply evaluate what they truly feel.
Your friends love you because you give them time: you entertain them by having fun with them and you listen when they need to rant or cry. You make them feel good. You are the human equivalent of a nice chocolate sundae. They love you, but only because they are able to use you to maximize their own emotional and physical satisfaction.
Your parents love you in a deeper way, but this is probably more out of habit than anything. They don’t truly love YOU. They could have given birth to any other baby and loved them just as much. Even if they love you, they are loving the idea of you: The idea of a child who loves them and will treat them well. I guarantee you, if you went full psychopath mode and told them you wanted to kill them, even your parents will stop loving you.
Therefore, true love does not exist and everything we do is a barter. Even something seemingly altruistic is done in order to make a person “feel good”. So in this case, we engage in altruism in exchange for a pleasant personal sensation. So it’s still selfish in the end.
“Love” is a manufactured concept that was generated to tie communities together in order to further survival. Humans evolved as tribal creatures. Natural selection has bred certain predilections into our brain, including emotions, in order to better facilitate this. We care about how others feel towards us, because if we didn’t, we would never cooperate with them. The naked ape who doesn’t cooperate and who does not have fangs and claws to protect itself in the wilderness will be hunted down before they can reproduce.
TLDR; Love isn’t real. It’s a delusion that was likely meant to maximize our survival as a tribal species.
Your friends love you because you give them time: you entertain them by having fun with them and you listen when they need to rant or cry. You make them feel good. You are the human equivalent of a nice chocolate sundae. They love you, but only because they are able to use you to maximize their own emotional and physical satisfaction.
Your parents love you in a deeper way, but this is probably more out of habit than anything. They don’t truly love YOU. They could have given birth to any other baby and loved them just as much. Even if they love you, they are loving the idea of you: The idea of a child who loves them and will treat them well. I guarantee you, if you went full psychopath mode and told them you wanted to kill them, even your parents will stop loving you.
Therefore, true love does not exist and everything we do is a barter. Even something seemingly altruistic is done in order to make a person “feel good”. So in this case, we engage in altruism in exchange for a pleasant personal sensation. So it’s still selfish in the end.
“Love” is a manufactured concept that was generated to tie communities together in order to further survival. Humans evolved as tribal creatures. Natural selection has bred certain predilections into our brain, including emotions, in order to better facilitate this. We care about how others feel towards us, because if we didn’t, we would never cooperate with them. The naked ape who doesn’t cooperate and who does not have fangs and claws to protect itself in the wilderness will be hunted down before they can reproduce.
TLDR; Love isn’t real. It’s a delusion that was likely meant to maximize our survival as a tribal species.
