Let’s take a trip back to the low-rise jean, platform flip-flop era of the early 2000’s MTV programming. This quite frankly-is my favorite nauseating love-like era, where the quest of finding love meant you try your luck on an off-beat, a rather loud dating game. Bashful, wide-eyed contestants strutted their stuff, performed outrageously and, at times, pointless, micro-talented feats to prove their worthiness as a suitable lifelong companion for their declined celeb partner. A particular favorite of mine was Rock of Love with Brett Michaels. One particular challenge that I distinctly (and uselessly) remember, all the way back from my 8-year-old memories, was that the final three contestants had to design a t-shirt representing themselves, showing their various indiscretions, secrets, and passions in designs which very strongly resemble a Hot Topic version of Ed Hardy Apparel. for the now extinct clothing company SMET (yikes!). Quite arguably, MTV had in its disposable a lustful picking of aging, “B list” celebrities (a generous title for folks like Tila Tequila-and who could forget pseudo-rock heartthrob Brett Michaels- Flava Flav being the exception here: a true legend).
This anecdote is not really leading me to anything in particular, except for maybe my first impression of the Greek philosophical concept of Eros, and just how powerful it truly runs in our primitive desires and subconscious Freudian tendencies. Sex sells, Eros is the key selling point to marketers in our love of love- true love itself, is not. The stable, cable television, heart-warming HGTV love is known as Praga love, which is simply not as sexy. It’s like a good friend, but a good friend is worse than Tila Tequila in the short-run of lovely infatuation, trust me on this one.
Okay so my view on love and why we are so attracted to it MAY have been tainted by 2000’s era MTV television shows (possibly Marylin Mansons sex, blood, and black-clothed music videos constantly on re-run), and I’ll consider that a personal loss. However, our responses to lustful love is a direct result of our evolutionary hardwiring. This is the concept of Eros- what was coined in ancient Greek philosophy as the most intense, bodily, and in a literal sense, the primitive attraction we feel towards another person- was the premise of all initial attraction. It’s that magnetic feeling, the butterflies, the heart skipping a beat <tralalalala> we love it. It’s that electric feeling which wakes you to life; the one that keeps us up at night and awakens a certain soul analgesic; the one that also utterly turns us into dust if it ends prematurely in our version of its manifestation. It’s the kind of love that makes you want to design SMET T-shirts for old, average-looking rock stars. It makes us let loose against our will, and that sort of control is fundamentally fun to lose, or at least it is for our reptilian ancestors it was, as it served them well. It was all that was needed for sex/love fulfillment. In the 21st century, however, and even in the Greek daddy era, Eros love became the simplest, yet the hardest-to-describe love we experience. Yet, It simply was no longer enough for "fiu-fiu" intellectuals anymore. It paved the way to other fundamental wrings in the ladder of love which was drastically more second-nature and mutually beneficial, unlike Eros which seems to be the root of all "Romeo & Juliet"-Esque love desperation. While not as sexy, these higher forms of love are what ultimately shapes and shapes our more intelligent and modern version of love. Agape, Philia, Storge, are some of the few which touch our lives in ways much more fundamental, higher-faculty, more Nicomachean, and “enlightened” ways. These loves are more healthy; the kinds of love we need for longevity in both our spiritual (ew) and physiological well-being, yet the implications and overall grandeur of this sort of spiritual (ew!) love seems as interesting and thrilling as a wet carrot.
I know what you’re thinking, “Julia! I crave stability and loyalty! You’re full of shit, and I find wet carrot love much better!”. I hear you, dear reader. I’m right there with you! The nature of Eros as a love form is just the first stem in the wrings of the all-fulfilling love ladder, the firstmost experience we get when meeting someone new of particular interest. Such love satisfies our basic interests with strange and often astonishing effects on the brain, too. Cocaine and Eros have the exact same effect on the brain, with withdrawal symptoms that resemble each other down to the neurochemical. Eros develops into other wrings of the love ladder, however, if compatibility plays out well. So have your wet carrot love! It means you’ve combated the wretched step of Eros, and continue the steps in nurturing it properly. The point is here is the resurgence of this sort of infatuation with Eros is recently experiencing a strange resurgence in popularity. Society has dove millions of miles deep in Eros obsession. Dates on demand, the sudden resurgence of love reality T.V. shows, and the accessibility of different folks on social media platforms. Such paradox of choice and nature of quick accessibility opens up an array of possibilities for Eros to manifest itself in countless ways, ways in which we fall in love with ourselves as well: Philautia. Instead of finishing this godforsaken blog vomit, I’ll leave with some food for thought:
Is eros enough to make you happy?
Do you find that it is harder to find love in this generation? Why, Why not? What are the factors you considered in answering this question?
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