{"id":38205,"date":"2014-01-06T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=38205"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:20:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:20:08","slug":"have-you-tried-the-six-varieties-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/01\/have-you-tried-the-six-varieties-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Have You Tried the Six Varieties of Love?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s coffee culture has an incredibly sophisticated vocabulary. Do you want a cappuccino, an espresso, a skinny latte or maybe an iced caramel macchiato?<\/p>\n

The ancient Greeks were just as sophisticated in the way they talked about love, recognizing six different varieties. They would have been shocked by our crudeness in using a single word both to whisper \u201cl love you\u201d over a candlelit meal and to casually sign an email \u201clots of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what were the six loves known to the Greeks? And how can they inspire us to move beyond our current addiction to romantic love, which has 94 percent of young people<\/a> hoping \u2014 but often failing \u2014 to find a unique soul mate who can satisfy all their loving needs?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Eros:<\/b> The first kind of love was eros, named after the Greek god of fertility, and represented the idea of sexual passion and desire. But the Greeks didn\u2019t always think of it as something positive, as we tend to today. In fact, eros was viewed as a dangerous, fiery and irrational form of love that could take hold of you and possess you \u2014 an attitude shared by many later spiritual thinkers, such as the Christian writer C.S. Lewis<\/a>. Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks. Which is odd, because losing control is precisely what many people now seek in a relationship. Don\u2019t we all hope to fall \u201cmadly\u201d in love?<\/li>\n
  2. Philia<\/b>: The second variety of love was philia or friendship, which the Greeks valued far more than the base sexuality of eros. Philia concerned the deep comradely friendship that developed between brothers in arms who had fought side by side on the battlefield. It was about showing loyalty to your friends, sacrificing for them, as well as sharing your emotions with them. (Another kind of philia, sometimes called storge, embodied the love between parents and their children.) We can all ask ourselves how much of this comradely philia love we have in our lives. It\u2019s an important question in an age when we attempt to amass \u201cfriends\u201d on Facebook or \u2018followers\u2019 on Twitter \u2014 achievements that would have hardly impressed the Greeks.<\/li>\n
  3. Ludus: <\/b>This was the Greek\u2019s idea of playful love, which referred to the playful affection between children or young lovers. We\u2019ve all had a taste of it in the flirting and teasing in the early stages of a relationship. But we also live out our ludus when we sit around in a bar bantering and laughing with friends, or when we go out dancing. Dancing with strangers may be the ultimate ludic activity, almost a playful substitute for sex itself. Social norms frown on this kind of adult playful frivolity, but a little more ludus might be just what we need to spice up our love lives.<\/li>\n
  4. Agape: <\/b>The fourth love, and perhaps the most radical, was agape or selfless love. This was a love that you extended to all people, whether family members or distant strangers. Agape was later translated into Latin as caritas, which is the origin of our word charity. Lewis referred to it as \u201cgift love,\u201d the highest form of Christian love. But it also appears in other religious traditions, such as the idea of mett\u0101 or \u201cuniversal loving kindness\u201d in Therav\u0101da Buddhism. There is growing evidence that agape is in a dangerous decline in many countries. Empathy<\/a> levels in the U.S. have dropped nearly 50 percent <\/a>over the past 40 years, with the steepest fall occurring in the past decade. We urgently need to revive our capacity to care about strangers.<\/li>\n
  5. Pragma: <\/b>Another Greek love was pragma or mature love. This was the deep understanding that developed between long-married couples. It was about making compromises to help the relationship work over time, and showing patience and tolerance. The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that we expend too much energy on \u201cfalling in love\u201d and need to learn more how to \u201cstand in love.\u201d Pragma is precisely about standing in love \u2014 making an effort to give love rather than just receive it. With divorce rates currently running at 50 percent, the Greeks would surely think we should bring a serious dose of pragma into our relationships.<\/li>\n
  6. Philautia: <\/b>The final variety of love was philautia or self-love. The clever Greeks realized there were two types. One was an unhealthy variety associated with narcissism, where you became self-obsessed, and focused on gaining personal fame and fortune. A healthier version of philautia enhanced your wider capacity to love. The idea was that if you like yourself and feel secure in yourself, you will have plenty of love to give others (today this is reflected in the Buddhist-inspired concept of \u201cself-compassion\u201d). Or as Aristotle put it, \u201cAll friendly feelings for others are an extension of man\u2019s feelings for himself.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So what are the Greeks really trying to tell us? Most strikingly, they found diverse kinds of love in relationships with a wide range of people \u2014 friends, family, spouses, strangers, and even with themselves. This contrasts with our typical focus on a single romantic relationship, where we hope to find all the different loves wrapped into a single person or soul mate. The message from the Greeks is to nurture the varieties of love and tap into its many sources. Don\u2019t just seek eros, but cultivate philia by spending more time with old friends, or develop your ludus by dancing the night away.<\/p>\n

    Moreover, we should abandon our obsession with perfection. Don\u2019t expect your partner to offer you all the varieties of love, all of the time (with the danger that you may toss aside a partner who fails to live up to your desires). Recognize that a relationship may begin with plenty of eros and playful ludus, then evolve toward embodying more pragma or selfless agape.<\/p>\n

    There is also the consoling thought that if you feel an absence of a lover in your life, by mapping out the extent to which all six loves are present, you might discover you\u2019ve got a lot more love than you had ever imagined.<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s time we introduced the six varieties of Greek love into our everyday vocabulary. That way we\u2019ll become just as sophisticated in the art of loving as we are when ordering a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n

    ________________________<\/p>\n

    Roman Krznaric<\/i> is an Australian cultural thinker and co-founder of <\/i>The School of Life in London. This article is based on his new book<\/i>, How Should We Live? Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life<\/a> \u00a0(BlueBridge). www.romankrznaric.com<\/a><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

    Go to Original \u2013 sojo.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Greeks found diverse kinds of love in relationships with a wide range of people \u2014 friends, family, spouses, strangers, and even with themselves. This contrasts with our typical focus on a single romantic relationship, where we hope to find all the different loves wrapped into a single person or soul mate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}