/lit/ - Literature

>>11086714
>Love is an exchange, and demands valuing the other as more than an object of affection and lust.
Fuck anon. That's not how I see love at all. What you're desiring is either a contract whereby two parties agree to be together in order to receive pleasurable things for each other and that's fucking it. It isn't because there's something magical or crayz about love. It's just an exchange for each person to get the best out of the other. In a certain sense, that's even more of a selfish form of relation, because they're only in there because it benefits each other, like a capitalist exchange between a man exchanging money for a product, which benefits them both but they do it for their own good, not other's. It makes much more sense to call something irrational and crazy love than something calculative and mathematical such as an "exchange".
If you think that love would then be "caring for the other person's well-being", then that's not love either, that just sounds like empathy for me and that's it. Just wishing for the well-being of others is not nearly enough to be what I would call love. If it were, then Buddhist monks would be the greatest lovers of all time, because they wish the best for everyone, regardless of whether these people are deserving or not (Buddhist call for the betterment and compassion to end suffering of all living beings, even those who are wicked, although their wickedness must be stopped for the sake of others'. However, even the pain of the wicked must cease to the Bodhisattvas). So that's not love either, that's just compassion and kindness, which even the buddhist can easily conjure through repeated training.