Thursday, February 26, 2009

Desire and Celestina

This lecture was very interesting and shed new light and a different perspective on desire, love, and what it means to be human. The idea of desire for an image being traced back to the myth of Narcissus was strange and a little difficult to fully understand at first but then made perfect sense especially when talking about love. When we are involved with someone we really do create an image of them in our heads that is idealized and a perfect fantasy. In the beginning of a relationship we tend to have a blindfold on and start to see only the image in our heads and not the real person. We ignore the other person’s flaws and generally think they are more attractive than anyone in the beginning.

It is interesting and not surprising that by doing this we in a sense doom ourselves because it is impossible for a person to live up to such an image and over time we start to see their flaws and imperfections. Sometimes in the beginning we are not completely ignorant to the real person and completely obsessed with the image and in those cases the love may last. In general it is important and necessary to always remember that we as people are flawed and imperfect creatures. Because while lust may cause us to fall for an image and lead to tragedy when the real thing cannot measure up, so too can pride make us blind to our own flaws and lead to the same fate.

The other interesting idea was that of a fundamental lacking that gives us a sense of who we are. Human nature is desire and the lack thereof. We always have this incomplete feeling where there is always something else to strive for that we do not have. Something will always be the answer, make us complete, and motivate us. However this happiness is fleeting and we are left with a residual disappointment.

One question this brought lecture brought to my mind is which is more shallow our love today or their love back then, which tended to be more of lust. Part of me doesn’t think there is as much of a difference as we like to think. Lust is still deeply connected with love today. I don’t think you can truly love someone else in that way without being physically attracted to them in some way, essentially lust. We tend to look at their relationships being based on status and think we are above that. We still use status as a means of determining long term relationships. We will let lust control us to first be with someone but ultimately their status and how it compliments ours is what determines if it was a fling or “true love”.

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