All "love" is at least partially superficial, else it's not really love then at all. How can you say love isn't mostly external?

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I get the idea of those more spiritual and such, but logically you can't discount the fact that we are all visual beings and rife with biases.

I think it's pretty silly and lacking of self-awareness if one states that a passion like romantic love, attraction, fondness of others, etc. is "deeper" than the visual when -- without visual -- it wouldn't be there. You would not love your husband if his nose and eyes changed shape -- or he shrunk excessively/lost his masculinity. You would probably not like your wife if she became manly looking, sickly, lost her mind -- you'd feel sad and probably that would mark the end of the true "connection." You see how easily & for the silliest of reasons people get divorced -- yet marriage is seen as some holy union but people can discard each other for any slight change that "ends the fire."

Would you be with your husband, girlfriend, wife, etc. if you didn't see them? No -- we are visually-driven creatures -- the appearances largely account for our desires to even see under the surface. No, I'm not saying some insane reach like, "Only GigaChad male-models can attract women." I know this is false, but the sentiment behind it isn't.

I don't understand why people still deny the power of looks in life -- they literally explain everything, both at a surface-level and deep manner (because the surface is what stands between deeper consideration). You'll rarely ever "learn the inside" if you don't "like the outside." You can't tell me you disagree with this, can you? Will you buy a product if it had absolutely unappealing packaging, walking randomly down a store aisle? Will you buy pregnenolone if their was a turd on the label? Will you have ever "loved" anything if nothing of its material being was acceptable enough to have around/close to/"in-sync" with you? You have to be okay with their exterior to love them.

Kids love their pillows -- probably due to their shape, design, feel on the outside, etc. They say that this "love" is internal -- yet why can't that "love" transfer to another pillow? The love is ALWAYS bound to the conditions of which make up the material form of whatever said thing a person bounds to then love or "connect" with.

From personal experience as a man I can tell you first-hand that no woman ever loved me without knowing what I looked like. If love was not "superficial" then I'll gladly await someone telling me they loved someone without ever seeing, touching, feeling or making out what their material structure or presence is (as in the case of the blind).

All people who have engaged with me -- I believe -- did so solely because of what my outer appearance or "vibe" presents to them based on my material self. If this was all spiritual then us humans would not have eyes. We judge what we see, and what we see can judge us -- so it's pretty foolish, I'd say, to believe love starts inside first when it's all filtered through the outside first ALWAYS. It is so wrong to say love is deep and hate on "superficial" attraction when all attraction is superficial somewhat.

All "lust" easily becomes "love." The idea of "love at first sight" destroys the myth that love is a slow, deeply-established connection. The first girlfriend I had said she basically "fell in love" with me once I first exchanged pictures with her (we met online). Another girl PURSUED ME and I did not do anything -- and she proclaimed her love to me eventually. So right off the bat I've had MULTIPLE EXPERIENCES where "love" really just meant "appreciation for my form as a man in her eyes deeply."

I have never seen or believed anyone who has said they can love or has loved without a physical, hard aspect to it that determines it very strongly. You can say after the fact that you "fell more in love" but we humans are eye-driven animals -- I have yet to see any love that didn't have a hard, surface-level "threshold" of sorts that needed to be surpassed at the least. If you could love any "right person" & the outside didn't matter, show me some very loveable, wholly attractive but deformed people that have seen this. Not some rarity/fame-pressed "ugliest person on Earth gets married" headline, but a case where someone observably deformed can observably have this effect on others.

So I find it a bit hypocritical or just from a bad place to call love superficial if it's based on looks when ALL ATTRACTION TO ANOTHER PERSON must at least partially come down to looks, therefore you can't say love has some magical property lest you're willing to fall in love with someone WITHOUT SEEING THEM and then meet up with said person time later and not feel anything different. Maybe all love isn't super heavy & instant attraction, but to say the looks aspect of it is the least is contradictory.

I know I'm not a stud, but I'd be a fool if I told myself that any women who have loved me didn't at least partially feel that way due to my looks/characteristics observed from my exterior like my way of motion/presence, voice/speaking and perception of sound, clothing/contrasting of fashion to my appearance & so forth.
 
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L_C

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What you are describing here, in my personal opinion, is basically human degeneration. We became 'on-looker consumers' and no longer connected to each other (including nature) on a more intimate/wisdom level.
 

JamesGatz

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Very true.

" In their studies they scanned the brains of speed daters. Potential dates that lit up the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex the most were more likely to be picked for a date."

nsx002f3.jpg

the left ventral tegmental area is responsible for pleasurable reactions to beauty...the right VTA provides the dopamine that fuels romantic love...similar but neurologically distinct, which means that what people feel when they see a random pretty face isn’t necessarily a desire for romance or even sex. ... happens when you look at a good painting,” says Fisher. “It can pump out the dopamine”

I find this relevant because I find that seeing a girl that is very attractive in the face usually makes men genuinely like being around her and not necessarily chasing her for sex - it would seem given the effect of seeing and being around an attractive person on dopamine and norepinephrine can be a metabolic boost in itself


High levels of dopamine and a related hormone, norepinephrine, are released during attraction.

Some other things worth noting:



Unattractive people are the primary targets of bullying - we all know how this affects stress and metabolism

brain1.PNG


Not to mention that every animal species in the world is driven by what is perceived as being "superficial":

Female goats like a male goat with large horns and these traits give goats higher status:

download.jpg


birds like birds with brighter feathers and these birds are also higher status:

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And so on and so forth... even primates have strong sexual dimorphic traits that matter when it comes to their social status and females


It is politically incorrect to think that looks are so important to humans but I think we are no different:

Taller males are worth more to females and get paid a lot more:


Attractuve people are far more likely to succeed in job interviews


and we could continue piling on the studies to prove the point but I think we have all observed this in the real-world

Ultimately - it is safe to say that looks influence a major factor of how your life progresses and how you are treated by other people - especially by the opposite sex and I do think that humans are as visual and superficial as every other animal in the animal kingdom
 

TheSir

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The inability to love the person in spite of their outer appearance is simply inability to love. Any lesser kind of love is mere lust: you're loving the person for how they can enrich your life, rather than loving them for sake of loving them.

I can't say I've ever heard someone argue that your looks don't matter, which is what the lookism-sphere likes to postulate. What is true, though, is that looks have acquired a disproportional influence in our modern societies. This is because being led by sensory stimulation requires a lower degree of consciousness than does utilizing the higher level faculties that enable us to connect with the spirits of each other. Needless to say, mankind is sick and of low consciousness today.

Overall the sentiment you've shared in your post could be summed as: "if I haven't experienced it, it doesn't exist." I suggest you spend less time focusing on how people look and more time attempting to perceive their overall presence (of which looks are but one minor aspect) -- or better yet, the eternal soul within them. Question: how do blind persons fall in love?
 

TradClare

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Blind people have experienced love and relationships and you're completely discounting that. And people have fallen in "love" over nothing but letters. One of my friend's parents met this way through a pen pal program and purposefully didn't exchange pics (they are 80+now). She came to meet him and they were married the next day. True love takes time and practice though. It's the giving and the doing for the other just for the sake of love, for wanting the best for them. It doesn't really begin until you're committed. At that point, the visual is nice, but it doesn't matter as far as real love (that doesn't mean we don't try to look our best for each other, but that the aging, birth stretch, etc is part of the package)
 

ddjd

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Any act of unconditional kindness, as in you want nothing in return, is in essence an act of love, imo
 

Elast1c

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People don't believe there is objective proof Love exists. If we take the Christian account as thorough then we can see that the Lord Jesus Christ is necessarily existent but not required to have been physically beautiful.

“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

— Isaiah 53:3 (KJV)

“As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:”
— Isaiah 52:14 (KJV)

fighting the penchant to be influenced by the human body is exceedingly difficult and by scriptural definition impossible by human standard. The only exception used in the Bible to be rid of that influence is the belief in Christ's work on the cross wherein a guiltless servant offered Himself up as a willing sacrifice to save people who had neither a will or means to be free from the influence of the body.

Galatians 5 (KJV)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
¹⁶ This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
¹⁷ For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
¹⁸ But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

If not then there exists no material example of Love which is not impartial or inconclusive or is everlasting and therefor not absolute and this would not permit itself to be conclusive as an evidence. The resurrection of Christ has been the once and for all declaration of the Love God has for every being that He has made.
 

OccamzRazer

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When you feel the Spirit of God's love descend on you, everyone looks preciously beautiful.

Outside of this higher spiritual state, tho, I do get what you are saying.
 

Mossy

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I think it could be said "All affection is at least partially superficial". But love, as I presume you meant it, perfect and true love, by definition could not be superficial. As a great author, C.S. Lewis, relays, there are four kinds of human love: affection, friendship, erotic, and unconditional. So, I think part of your quandary is attempting to reconcile the three lesser types of love with the more perfect type—unconditional—when they can only be what they each are.

Here is a great book on the subject, should you be interested:
Amazon product ASIN 0156329301View: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Loves-C-S-Lewis/dp/0156329301
 

sunny

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Being a woman, I have observed and met many physically, superficially, easy on the eye men that I have no attraction to whatsoever. Many times those same humans I perceived to be a-holes ?. Conversely, I have experienced meeting a person whom I had no physical attraction to, not to say they were unattractive, but not the stereotype "attractive ", that after getting to know them, I was highly attracted to them.
 

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