From: jakec@ralvmm.vnet.ibm.com (Jake Coughlin)
Subject: Re: Family values defined
Originator: jakec@ralvmm.vnet.ibm.com
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 18:10:59 GMT
Organization: IBM T. J. Watson Research

rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts):
> It depends on one's concept of what love is?  Is it an emotion
> ONLY and so it comes and goes?  Or is it a decision and one can by
> an act of the will decided to love?  
> 
> Regardless of whether your emotions go away or not, you can still
> love.  Regardless of whether one does what you want or not, one
> can still love.

this is utterly ridiculous -- i haven't seen such tripe since dan
quayle said murphy brown attacked fathers but said his statements
weren't a denigration of single mothers.  like, *how* exactly do you
talk about mothers and fathers as separate issues with respect to
reproduction?  ohhh, but that's precisely the point argue the
republicans -- you can't separate mothers and fathers, as if there
were any difference between fucking and making love.  when you father
a child, you automatically become the breadwinner, the baseball
player, and the role model; when you put a quarter in the gum ball
machine, you're obligated, by God, to chew the gum that comes out.

you fail to realize the separation between the act itself and the
emotions behind it.  a fuck is necessitated by the relationship behind
it, but strangely enough, not vice versa -- don't fuck before marriage
or you'll burn in hell, or *gasp*, you might even find you don't want
to marry after all.  similarly, love is conveyed by the relationship,
but strangely enough, the relationship doesn't have to convey love.
love in the absense of love.  if we had anything to package, we could
make millions of mass-produced love.  think of the commercials, "love
on!  <clap, clap> love off!  <clap, clap>" -- but then, the clap does
tend to stifle love.

this whole problem is a game of semantics, but your ilk has never been
good at separating syntax and semantics.  the syntax is the mommie
bear, the poppie bear, goldilocks and the resulting relationship, and
you simpletons believe that since the formula is right, the
relationship is healthy, nurturing, and supportive.  the right
quantities are the appropriate indicator of the right qualities.
never mind that mommie bear serves honey with MSG.  never mind that
poppie bear never goes to goldilocks' choral recitals, and as a
result, goldilocks has this annoying habit of breaking and entering.
ignore the man behind the curtain!

perhaps the biggest failing, related to your spiro-giro art of
misrepresenting semantics, is your tendency to reify.  a relationship
is a thing.  love is a thing.  these are verbs!  people *relate* to
each other.  people *love* each other.  there are threads of
communication involved.  there are people involved, and the people are
acting not standing still like a scarecrow on a stick, a rusted tin
man, and a cowardly lion -- if you were friends of dorothy, striving
to get back home, you'd probably understand that the noun form is only
syntactic sugar for your language coffee.

further, as verbs, these acts of relating and loving are subject to
context.  relating, loving, even a family are more than one
dimensional concepts; they're involved in the context of time, the
people in these frameworks, and how time operates on those people.  we
change.  we grow.  it's part of being human and following your yellow
brick road from birth to death, from munchkinville to the emerald
city.  as you change, so does the manner in which you relate and you
love and you conduct your family.  talk to any person older than you,
for pete's sake.

> If a couple 'realizes they don't love each other any more', then maybe 
> it wasn't a commitment FOR LIFE, like most people pledge.  Maybe it was 
> a contract until one of them wanted to leave, huh?  Maybe if they
> both decided on the front end that the marriage was a lifetime commitment
> and not a 'while it is emotional fevor' agreement, then people would
> want it to work.

we change, and there's nothing you can do about it.  sometimes we fall
out of love.  sometimes we nolonger relate to certain people, and
sometimes, when we fail to understand how it is that we're relating
and loving, our families fall apart.

so, who wants to put themselves in the emotional straight-jacket that
you hold out like a fur coat?  not me, deary, and there shouldn't be
anything you can do to me, or my little dog, too, as a result of my
distrust of your misanthropic absolutes.
-- 
Queer Without A Cause!
Jason Coughlin ( jakec@ralvmm.vnet.ibm.com )
"I find myself suddenly in the world, and I recognize that I have one
right alone: that of demanding human behavior of the other." -- Fanon