11/11/2023 0 Comments Frontline treasured friends![]() ![]() Indeed, in carrying out interviews for my next book, I found that those based in the UK or the US were often very happy to quickly declare their love for their cat or dog, but ask them whether they loved their friends and many had to pause and think. It is fair to say that, when considering love, we can neglect our friendships. After that, we have the immediate family - siblings, parents, grandparents - and maybe even the extended family.Īfter all these, the next category comes a rather distant fourth - our friends. Fail at this and you supposedly live only half a life. Running a close second is romantic love, with an overwhelming focus on finding your “soul mate”. The top position is occupied by parental love with dad regularly relegated to assistant parent, whether he likes it or not parental love is usually embodied in the love between mother and child. This blinkered view is a result of our tendency to conceive of a hierarchy of love. As a consequence we’re in danger not only of limiting the fullness of our life experience but endangering our health. But in the West we’re missing out on experiencing everything that love has to offer because our field of view is too narrow. In many cultures, this full spectrum of love is fully embraced as an anthropologist, you get used to being welcomed as one of the family you’re observing, kin name and all. ![]() When you understand how important love is to our very existence, you realise how immensely lucky we are. We are capable of loving so many beings both human and non-human and in physical and nonphysical form. I began my research life rather predictably with a consideration of romantic love but, as I started to explore the love lives of my subjects more broadly, it became clear that, yes, there might be lovers, parents, children but there might also be a god or gods, pets, celebrities and even holograms. This is at once hugely frustrating and immensely pleasing because this complexity, this unknowable aspect of love, motivates us to create great art and to repeatedly embark on the exhilarating journey that is love, despite the end point being the possibility of great pain and rejection.Īnd what makes human love even more awe-inspiring is that we get to experience it in so many ways. And herein lies the fundamental problem for someone who would like to find a nice straightforward answer: love is complicated. After all, my many research subjects all have their own answers to share. At first glance, the answer is straightforward. As an evolutionary anthropologist, I have wrestled with the question “What is love?” for more than a decade.
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