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When it comes to friend’s sisters, cousins, etc, I would ask the friend first.

Just a brief note. I can’t comment on the interesting thoughts of Confucian love. I do, however, think that you’re unfair to western notions of love.
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The Christian notion is reflected by Paul in Ephesians 5:22-33. Look it up yourself, but I don’t see how it could be understood as selfish, since the mandate to love like Christ is, for the Christian, a mandate to radically sacrifice oneself.
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Even in the secular mold, a Kantian (18th century philosopher) perspective on love is reminiscent of Paul’s ideal of two selves mutually giving themselves.
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Even Plato in *Phaedrus* and *Symposium* gives a good defense of a type of romantic love. The first half of *Ph*, now that I think of it, would be interesting to read in the light of the hook up culture.
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You may mean, however, “love,” as understood in the culture generally. If so, fine. I recently watched *Notting Hill*, and I was struck at how baseless the love between the two characters was. Love as some mysterious force that just happens–let’s not think too hard about why. Return to the Greeks, I suppose, cupids’ little arrow. Of course, the Greeks didn’t mess around; they at least didn’t associate such feeling with love. They called tehm, appropriately deisre.

[Reply]


Susan Walsh Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 9:03 pm

There were two things I liked about Notting Hill:
1. wasn’t there an Elvis Costello song featured?
2. the ending reminded me of Roman Holiday, one of my favorite movies.
There were many things I didn’t like about Notting Hill, most notably exactly what you said. He fell for her because she was a movie star! There was absolutely nothing else going on! I guess we were supposed to suspend disbelief when we see her pregnant in the little private park at the end. Ugh.
Bridget Jones was 10 x’s the movie that was.

Great post! I like that Belknap had mentioned that Rachel told him to be bold. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a player thing but speaking from experience and having spoken with other girls/women – there is something to be said for the guy being the aggressor.