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kaigouA series of thoughts I've been turning over in my head while I scrape popcorn from the ceiling, tear down the ugly ceiling beams, cover the paneling with drywall, plaster and prime and paint, and so on: it keeps the hands busy and frees the brain to ponder at length. Okay, pondering has reached maximum capacity and now I am at point of please to be getting additional inputting.
Here's the premise: you've met someone, and are solidly falling-in-love -- whether that be a love-at-first-sight or gradual drift from friends into something deeper. You might safely say that this person is "the one" for you; the first flush of lust/infatuation has become the brink of something longer-term.
Alrighty, now let's say someone you trust -- or at minimum has authority satisfactory enough to you -- explains that you are not, in fact, in love, and your experience/emotions are due to A) a magical spell, B) a drug/medicine, or C) due to tagging an ineffable instinctual landmine. (The last being inescapable/unstoppable akin to non-autonomous functions like heart-beat and breathing; I leave it open to your interpretation whether the landmine could have been avoided in the first place.) Those are the three options for externalities, with me so far?
What do you think would be the one aspect of your relationship that:
1a. Would prove to you that your relationship would continue -- as true love (forgive the romanticism but what else to call it?) -- even if A/B/C were removed from the equation?
1b. Could not be duplicated/mimicked by A/B/C and therefore by its existence indicates your love is real?
(I break those out because A/B/C may only inculcate but without damaging upon withdrawal: much like potting soil may boost a seed's preliminary growth but that at some stage the plant could survive on sun, water, soil without additional fertilizers.)
2a. Would the means make any difference in your reaction -- that is, whether the in-love is thanks to magical whammy, misfired neurons, or survival instinct gone haywire?
2b. Which of the three would be most offensive as a means of manipulation (or is it all-the-same)?
2c. Which would you consider most easily forgiven? (eg, "I can accept drugs but if you magic on me, that's way worse".)
3a. Would it make any difference if your in-love state were caused by a specific person's actions (as opposed to honest mistake/accident like tripping a long-dormant spell or drinking the wrong medicine)?
3b. Which would be worse: to learn it was purposeful, or that it was purely accidental?
4a. If you knew it was purposeful but didn't know the perpetrator's identity would not-knowing be better (or worse)*?
4b. Would you try to find out the perpetrator's identity, anyway?
4c. What if the perpetrator were the person you'd fallen in love with?
As an addendum to that last one, I find myself applying #1 and #2 specifically to the situation upon learning the falling-in-love was due to artificial causes. Would even determining that it's 'true love' be irrelevant, due to considering such acts/intentions completely unforgivable?
* the 'better or worse' idea could be applied to your sense of integrity, or to your faith/trust in the relationship... it could be that not-knowing assuages your sense of autonomy yet also causes you to doubt whether this person is really the one for you.
Here's the premise: you've met someone, and are solidly falling-in-love -- whether that be a love-at-first-sight or gradual drift from friends into something deeper. You might safely say that this person is "the one" for you; the first flush of lust/infatuation has become the brink of something longer-term.
Alrighty, now let's say someone you trust -- or at minimum has authority satisfactory enough to you -- explains that you are not, in fact, in love, and your experience/emotions are due to A) a magical spell, B) a drug/medicine, or C) due to tagging an ineffable instinctual landmine. (The last being inescapable/unstoppable akin to non-autonomous functions like heart-beat and breathing; I leave it open to your interpretation whether the landmine could have been avoided in the first place.) Those are the three options for externalities, with me so far?
What do you think would be the one aspect of your relationship that:
1a. Would prove to you that your relationship would continue -- as true love (forgive the romanticism but what else to call it?) -- even if A/B/C were removed from the equation?
1b. Could not be duplicated/mimicked by A/B/C and therefore by its existence indicates your love is real?
(I break those out because A/B/C may only inculcate but without damaging upon withdrawal: much like potting soil may boost a seed's preliminary growth but that at some stage the plant could survive on sun, water, soil without additional fertilizers.)
2a. Would the means make any difference in your reaction -- that is, whether the in-love is thanks to magical whammy, misfired neurons, or survival instinct gone haywire?
2b. Which of the three would be most offensive as a means of manipulation (or is it all-the-same)?
2c. Which would you consider most easily forgiven? (eg, "I can accept drugs but if you magic on me, that's way worse".)
3a. Would it make any difference if your in-love state were caused by a specific person's actions (as opposed to honest mistake/accident like tripping a long-dormant spell or drinking the wrong medicine)?
3b. Which would be worse: to learn it was purposeful, or that it was purely accidental?
4a. If you knew it was purposeful but didn't know the perpetrator's identity would not-knowing be better (or worse)*?
4b. Would you try to find out the perpetrator's identity, anyway?
4c. What if the perpetrator were the person you'd fallen in love with?
As an addendum to that last one, I find myself applying #1 and #2 specifically to the situation upon learning the falling-in-love was due to artificial causes. Would even determining that it's 'true love' be irrelevant, due to considering such acts/intentions completely unforgivable?
* the 'better or worse' idea could be applied to your sense of integrity, or to your faith/trust in the relationship... it could be that not-knowing assuages your sense of autonomy yet also causes you to doubt whether this person is really the one for you.
Question 2!
Date: 28 Oct 2008 10:10 pm (UTC)2a. Would the means make any difference in your reaction?
If the person telling me this was an expert in my mind (if I'd seen them do magical things and I believed in magic, or if they were a doctor and they'd done blood tests on me and found this drug), then magical whammy and drugs wouldn't make much difference to me. Still some outside influence affecting me.
The survival instinct I'd have a harder time listening to someone else about. I don't know that I'd ever believe psychology to be a fine enough science for me to believe that my love was because of this one specific thing, rather than just...love. I'd treat that explanation with a lot more skepticism, because my response would be, "...but how do you KNOW? SHOW ME UR EVIDENCE."
2b. Which of the three would be most offensive as a means of manipulation?
I'd have to say that drugs would be most offensive to me. Surprisingly...it has to do with the amount of effort they have to put into it. I'm assuming something about the magical system and instinctual triggers involved, I guess: ie, that the person has to put in some kind of energy to make the spell/potion go, and that the instinctual triggers take some amount of guile or preparation to make go off correctly. Thus, those two at least make the person WORK for me, require that they value me falling in love enough to put something of themselves into it.
Drugs, on the other hand (unless, say, they are tailor made and the person had to design them for me him/herself...or perhaps if they were really expensive and the person was not naturally rich and had to save up for them or something), don't require any work on the person's part.
One makes me "expensive" to that person, while the other makes me kind of "cheap", to get the same effect. ...if that makes ANY sense. ._.
2c. Which would you consider most easily forgiven?
If this is being done without my consent, none of them are better than any others. The actual METHOD doesn't change the fact that this person is trying to manipulate me.
3a. Would it make any difference if your in-love state were caused by a specific person's actions?
Is deliberate whammy different from accidental whammy? Certainly. One of them means that I've got someone dangerous (I count someone who will try to manipulate me as dangerous) that I need to deal with. If it's NOT the person I'm in love with, then that other person and I need to have a serious talk, because I would be horrifically pissed at them.
3b. Which would be worse: to learn it was purposeful, or that it was purely accidental?
Learning that it was purposeful, because I'd then have to deal with the person who'd done it, and that would likely be messy and/or dangerous. Accidental, well...it's not like anyone falls in love ON PURPOSE.
4a. If you knew it was purposeful but didn't know the perpetrator's identity would not-knowing be better (or worse)*?
Not-knowing would be worse, for the reasons above. I'd feel I had an enemy around but didn't know who they were.
4b. Would you try to find out the perpetrator's identity, anyway?
Yep. It'd worry me otherwise.
4c. What if the perpetrator were the person you'd fallen in love with?
That would be incredibly messy and likely depend on the state of our relationship. I might forgive them. Maybe. If they talked a good talk ("I was terribly in love with you but didn't know how to make you see me...") If the Love Ray could be broken (ie, it only provided a push, not constantly KEEPING me in love no matter my own free will), that break of trust quite possibly could make me fall out of love with the person. Trust is important to me, and that this person is a manipulating liar is a huge black mark against them. But, if I'm kept artificially in love by what they're doing, then the love might make me forgive them. Love makes people do dumb things.