"Love" and constructivism

[WhiskeyLord69Participant 8]

The most valuable theory I’ve learned in my career majoring in political science is constructivism. The idea that the things that we often take for granted day to day are just social constructions that we’re so used to that we’ve become unaware of them. Whether it’s legitimizing the boundaries that we are born within and identifying with a specific race, nationality, or ethnicity, or mistaking the chemicals our brain releases for something tangible like “love.” I like to think that David Foster Wallace’s keynote speech “This is Water” illustrates this idea:

“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘”What the hell is water?'”

I feel that we do the same thing with love. For all intents and purposes, “love” has been a bane for the human race. It’s been something that we’ve sanctified for far too long. Romanticizing females as “the fairer gender” has really set gender relations back since the middle ages, and although times are changing and the breadwinner system is slowly but surely becoming archaic, the mindset still prevails…at least in contemporary society. What if the concept of love didn’t exist? What if copulation only served the purpose of continuing the human race and we minded our own business post-coitus? Yeah, we’re all animals, but we’ve moved past that. It’s the 21st century. People argue that chivalry is dead like that’s a bad thing.

[John DoeParticipant 743]

WhiskeyLord69 wrote:

What if the concept of love didn’t exist?

Are you talking about romantic love?  Or brotherly love?  Or the love of a hobby/job/item?  Love of self?  What exactly?

[Author]

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