Know It All

What is love? Seriously, what is it? A verb? A noun? A universal truth? An ideal? A common thread of all religions? A cult? A neurological phenomenon? There is no shortage of answers, some are all-encompassing. It conquers all. Its all you need. It's all there is. These are all comparisons though, ways of defining it by contrast, by saying it's more important than all other things, but is it? Sure love matters more than your favourite dessert but does it matter more than shelter? Or sanity? No matter what your answer is, you are just ranking it, not defining it. Another challenge to defining love is that we often try to do so while falling into it or out of it. Love is potentially the most intensely thought about thing in all of human history and despite centuries upon centuries of obsession, it still overwhelms us. Some say its a feeling, a magical emotion, a feeling for someone like you have never felt before. But feelings are fluid, not very concrete foundation for a definit...

Romantic love, beautiful and intoxicating,  heartbreaking and soul-crushing, often all at the same time. Why do we choose to put ourselves through its emotional wringer?  Does love make our life meaningful? or is it an escape from our loneliness and suffering? Is love a disguise for our sexual desire, or a trick of biology to make us procreate? Is it all we need? Do we need it at all?  If romantic love has a purpose, neither science nor psychology has discovered it yet. But over the course of history, some of our most respected philosophers have put forward some intriguing theories.  1. Love makes us whole, again: The ancient Greek philosopher Plato explored the idea that we love in order to become complete. In his "Symposium" he wrote about a dinner party, at which Aristophanes, a comic playwright, regales the guests with the following story: Humans were once creatures with four arms, four legs, and two faces. One day, they angered the gods, and Zeus sliced them al...