As human beings, we seem to be born to love, and for love, and to spend much of our lives wondering why we don't have it, or have it unrequited, or why we're the object of it, or why it works with family but not lovers, and so on.
The love on which our lives initially depend is Mom's: maternal love, which I'll expand as filial love. The love promised a spiritual believer and among friends, if I recall correctly, is agapetic. Sexual love is erotic.
I wonder if we need all three kinds of love because we're humans, and as the aspie sort, we have a fourth we need, awkwardly named Special Interest. It doesn't seem to convey the passion that we typically find when we're tuned to our own engines--a word that shares its root with "genius."
Genius doesn't just mean an IQ score. It's that thing you do. You know the one. You're weirdly good at it, and everybody knows it. It may be a "little" thing, but what you do with it is just faster, smoother, or better than what others do.
As aspies, we seem to be well-wired for this fourth type of love, from which a lot of innovation and drive come. We can love things--both physical and virtual, tangible and ideal. This seems to confuse some of our NT family, friends, or partners. As a result, we aspies seem to have problems getting our minimum daily requirements met from the other kinds. We spend a lot of time trying to get the four loves right, in a sustainable way.
What are you doing now to get the right loves you need to work in your life?
I like how you start off trying to define the separate types of love. That's a good perspective and I'd like to share my thoughts starting the same way. We must look to history to see if, first, there has been either a
destruction of love or a
construction of love. Have we added to, changed or taken away from the meaning of "love?" One of the oldest languages (and by far the most brilliant and beautiful) is ancient Hebrew. Hebrew uses the words:
Ahava - to have affection, sexually or otherwise, love, like, to befriend, to be intimate
This word is connected directly with action and obedience. Unlike our English equivilant it holds more value in commitment and dedication to morality.
Ahab - spontaneous, impulsive love
Hesed - deliberate choice of affection and kindness
Raham - to have compassion, brotherly love
Much like the more simpler times Hebrew was most common, this can be broken into three styles of love: impulsive, deliberate and broad/compassionate. Instead of focusing on the item upon which the love is directed, it instead defines love differently based on how intentional or deep the meaning is. There was never any such word to refer to affection towards an inanimate object or event outside of idolatry which was more a taboo for its inhumanity than for its blasphemy. Love is a special affection that you give to another human, so giving it to a thing will inhumanly disconnect you from contributing to society and your heart will not attach to the hearts of others like it should. Something to contemplate.
Note that all definitions of Love in Hebrew were widely considered as verbs and the hebrew letters that make them up often contain the meaning "to give." Love was not a feeling, it was an act and for it to be natural, there had to be a human on the other end.
Also note that in studying Hebrew, their words were alphabetically arranged by meaning! If you look in the English dictionary, two words in alphabetical order could have dramatically different uses or meanings. That isn't so in Hebrew! This is why I say it is a brilliant language. If you were to go through the definitions arranged by alphabetical order of the words you will see that alphabetically arranged words had similar proximity in meaning as well. That being said: look at how close in sound the first two are (suxual, intimate love and spontanious love) and how far they are from deliberate love and brotherly love. This is because Raham is more of a deep rooted, long lasting love that happens naturally as opposed to your crush that you spotted across the classroom.
Greek is where we often get our most common breakdown of the word as it is often a religious staple. The Greek were the people who far exceeded any other culture or era in intellectual awakening and gave us most of our greatest minds such as Pythagoras and Plato. The Greek language uses:
Eros - sensual, sexual, impulsive
(Plato defined this love as aspiring for and delighting in the value of its object; loving that which is lovable.)
and despite what may be commonly known, it is not used in the Bible.
Philia (phileos)- love for friend, spouse, children
Commonly known as "family love" or "brotherly affection" or "friendship"
Agape - God's love
This is reserved for the love that God has for His son and His people and to my knowledge, isn't something we as humans can give. This is more or less a religious exclusive term and was rarely ever seen in secular texts.
Storge - natural affection
Uncommonly know as "family love" and used for a wider range of family, friends and even pets. It can be common to Hebrew Raham which is also more of the naturally occuring love for friends and less spontaneous.
There was no concept of love for interests in the way your posts suggests. The only time we really get much from that is dealing with philosophy dedicated to the love of inanimate objects and worldly values such as money. Really until the major Catholic formations in the 4th century, these references to love for inanimate concepts were always regarded as bad. In spirit of the argument, it was bad because it's effectively putting something like money or idols in place where people should be. It shouldn't be confused with the argument that is exclusive to replacing God. No, even for the non-believers it is important to note the dangers of loving that which cannot receive it because it replaces people, not God. In fact, almost all forms of love coming from a human is actually directed towards another human; the term of affection from human to God is worship, completely different.
In the English language we use love more for inanimate concepts than we do for people! This is bad. In its origins, love was used as "to give love" and never had any use for describing "enjoying a cup of coffee" because you couldn't give love to coffee. We have substituted an action for a feeling which interprets as we have substituted giving for receiving. Whereas love used to be defined as something you gave; we now refer to it as something we feel after being given something by someone else. You love a person who spends time with you and is affectionate to you. You feel like you are "in love" when you are with someone. It is rooted in a receiving verb, as a reactionary state of heart, not an actionary state of doing. This is also bad.
continued...
