HACKER Q&A
📣 lkrubner

Can you understand the power of love?


True love? The kind of love that changes your life forever? The kind of love that makes you rethink what kind of person you are? The kind of love makes you understand what the other people were talking about, when they talked about love, when you were younger, and you didn't understand?


  👤 SeniorSenior Accepted Answer ✓
Each skull contains a brain subdivided. One part of it counts. One part of it beats the heart. One part of it speaks. One part of it writes. One part of it listens. Communication between the parts is ... limited.

Each sub-brain loves its its own way.

How can you understand what you cannot articulate?

And how can you articulate ... feelings ... for a part of the brain that has no words?

When you talk about colors we can point and compare, decide to agree on what a word means, then use that word-meaning-a-certain-color to share other concepts. This is impossible ... well, this is very difficult when speaking about love.

We cannot point at an emotion and debate if what I feel is what you feel.

Love has different meanings in different contexts, different times, different ages, different parts of the brain. Even when we do communicate, seven-eighths of our message impinges on sub-brains to which words are meaningless.

OK, I'm answering the wrong question. "Can you UNDERSTAND the power of love?"

No.

I can appreciate its power. Understand? No.


👤 kleer001
Which kind of love?

Eros? Philia? Storge? Pragma? Ludus? Mania? Meraki? Philautia? Agape? Platonic? Xenia?


👤 brudgers
When I had a child, yes.

👤 h2odragon
Understand? yes. by direct experience.

Communicate to someone else what it is? There's many attempts, some truly great, but none definitive enough to shut people up about it.


👤 yann2
Look at that! A poet on HN :) Well done.

Scuse me, but you see, back in old napoli, that's amoooooooooooooooreeeeeee.

Tale as old time etc


👤 partisan
To understand love like that is to understand an equally profound loss.

👤 joshxyz
yea, the one that never gives you up, never lets you down.