I hate to interrupt such a beautifully ruptured thread, but I fell I should stop giggling for a few minutes to do so.

damyanti: I am curious as to your strong reaction to my post seeing I was agreeing with you up to the point where you opposed the reality of your own description of love. I agree much of what makes up love is indeed, as you stated, "instinct and social calculation." Most emotions are. My point was, simply, that the source does not make an emotion or state of being any less "real." As thinking people, we have developed a language to discuss these complex forms of our own thought patterns and actions and, yes, these descriptions have been over-romanticized and simplified and turned into a plethora of gum drop nonsense. Oh well. *shrugs* Not my problem, I don't play my games on that particular field. I guess it's just a more appropriate option for me to say I am in love with J than to say, "this is my boyfriend J. We're in an advanced state of evolutionary bonding brought on by my need to communicate and have my desires understood and met in an intellectual, material, and hormone fueled female reproductive way." But, I digress just to humor myself - simply, I am not sure how my post makes my position out to be an "argument" or a "hormone pumped" counter to yours?

If you feel my post was indeed gibberish of the "Love as Love" variety (not even sure what that means, what else do you want love to be other than itself?), please point out to me where and I will happily clarify where you misunderstood. Perhaps just the use of the word "love" alters your perspective into a fairytale definition of the term, but I assure you, the Objectivist Amber gave up that connotation a very very long time ago, if I ever held it to begin with. I'm not sure where you read into my post that I think love is selfless and never falters and blah blah, but if it says that then someone altered it after I wrote it...lol! You and I, damyanti, exist in a very similar reality; we are just using different words and a different attitude of delivery to describe it and that seems to be causing some, frankly, laughable frustration. You seem to be reacting to being "patronized over not being a believer" and I haven't actually seen anyone, including myself, do that to you. The defensiveness is truly not needed in this conversation, as it visibly permeates the thread with the tiresome reek of teenage cynicism (i.e. the way to be cool is to think nothing is cool). Why be caustic when there really are positive ways to both discuss and express love?

Negativity is so overrated unless you're my cat and even that only gets her tossed outside.

And thus ends my interruption of your regularly scheduled thread.