Can God love?

[emjay]

Emjays a bit of a pushover, lol.  The only thing he profoundly misunderstood is what -you- are referring to with eros.  He actually got it right from his source material.

Er... awkward But maybe I just wanted to have a discussion rather an argument, because I'm actually interested in the subject and it's new to me... and there's no point if we're talking about different things.

Anyway, what did I get right? I don't hear that very often

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@Drich. Yeah, I think I've grossly misunderstood the meaning of eros. I thought it could be generalised to mean seeking any sort of value... ie the only way human life progresses is by constantly seeking from moment to moment; if we did not want anything... be it food, comfort etc... we would do nothing... and eventually die... in other words, humans are goal-driven even when that goal is only to maintain our current state. So I was characterising value in that sense as the seeking/attainment of any goal. And where I thought, under that scheme, a goal did not need to be egocentric in nature... because it's perfectly evident from looking at psychology that not all goals are. But that's not what eros is saying at all; it's saying that we can only love what has pleasure or ulility for us and us alone... ie it is entirely egocentric.

Say for example that the world consists of you, me, and a winning lottery ticket... of which I'm the current holder. Under eros it would make sense for me to keep the ticket because it would be expected to provide me with utility and pleasure. But say I choose to give it to you. I could give it to you publicly and then, though losing the ticket and the utility/pleasure it would provide, could instead gain a different type of egocentric pleasure/utility... your gratitude... or at least the expectation of it... and other social feelings related to pride. That would therefore appear to be another example of eros since it is egocentric. But say now that I choose to give it to you completely anonymously. In that case I could still get some indirect egocentric benefit out of the act if doing it in some way improved my self-esteem or whatever... made me feel like a good person for doing it. But finally, say I give you the ticket completely anonymously - ie with no hope or expectation that you or anyone else will ever know I gave it to you - and for the sole reason that I want you to be happy... and the reason for wanting that may be love, sympathy, or empathy for you etc and that alone. In this case there is no egocentric benefit aside from whatever happy feeling I get from you being happy; there is no material benefit, there is no social benefit, and there is no self-esteem benefit.

It's the latter of those four that appears to have no place in eros... though I thought it did in my earlier characterisations/generalisations of eros because even the happy feeling that comes from someone else being happy is something that I feel in my consciousness... but it looks like that's taking the word egocentric too far. So anyway, since the latter type of love is a reality but eros makes no provision for it, I accept that eros is the wrong word for what I've been trying to describe... and won't use it again in this context.

 this maybe the first time any of you has ever taken a correction of mine and accepted it publically.... Never before, has it mattered if I was right or not.. I don't know what to do now.. I guess I should say thank you or your welcome or something, but again find my self at a loss for words..

Maybe I'll go and argue with someone else about the sky being blue and come back to this...

Er... another awkward one

As I've just said to K, I'm interested in this as a discussion rather than an argument, and the subject is new to me, and we're just gonna talk past each other if we're using different definitions of words.