I wanted to post a sentiment about love, or “eros,” but someone else did it for me.
I would like to share with you an excerpt I recently read from one of my favorite books, “The Social Animal,” by David Brooks.
He said, “Today, when we hear the word, eros, we think of something quite distinct and compartmentalized: sex. In the bookstore, erotica is separated from the other books. This is the narrow, chopped-up meaning of eros, which we have inherited from a sex-centered culture. In the Greek understanding, eros is not just the desire for orgasm, sex, or even genetic transmission. The Greeks saw eros as a generalized longing for union with the beautiful and the excellent.
People driven by lust desire to have orgasms with each other. However, people driven by eros yearn to have a much broader fusion. They want to share the same emotions, visit the same places, savor the same pleasures, and replicate the same patterns in each other’s minds. As Allan Bloom wrote in “Love & Friendship: ‘Animals have sex and human beings have eros, and no accurate science is possible without making this distinction.’”
Let eros drive you.
“Voulavous."
Loren M. Lambert © May 13, 2013
I would like to share with you an excerpt I recently read from one of my favorite books, “The Social Animal,” by David Brooks.
He said, “Today, when we hear the word, eros, we think of something quite distinct and compartmentalized: sex. In the bookstore, erotica is separated from the other books. This is the narrow, chopped-up meaning of eros, which we have inherited from a sex-centered culture. In the Greek understanding, eros is not just the desire for orgasm, sex, or even genetic transmission. The Greeks saw eros as a generalized longing for union with the beautiful and the excellent.
People driven by lust desire to have orgasms with each other. However, people driven by eros yearn to have a much broader fusion. They want to share the same emotions, visit the same places, savor the same pleasures, and replicate the same patterns in each other’s minds. As Allan Bloom wrote in “Love & Friendship: ‘Animals have sex and human beings have eros, and no accurate science is possible without making this distinction.’”
Let eros drive you.
“Voulavous."
Loren M. Lambert © May 13, 2013
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