= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Lumifer comments on Open thread, Dec. 22 - Dec. 28, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (218)
Keep in mind that the notion of romantic love is fairly recent (goes back to Middle Age troubadours, I think) and the idea that romantic love is the proper basis for marriage in common people is very recent (XIX century would be my off-the-top-of-my-head guess). People married without "feelings" for many centuries and guess what, it mostly worked.
Humans are adaptable.
I though people had noticed romantic love well before the troubadours, it's just that people used to think romantic love was madness.
Is that really accurate? A number of the stories in Ovid's Amores and Metamorphoses which sound pretty close to what we'd call "romantic love" and that's from around 20 BCE and there's no indication that anything there is shocking or surprising to roman notions of love.
I would guess that in the past "romantic love" was a luxury that only wealthy people could afford (e.g. citizens of the Ancient Rome) and often happened outside of marriage; most people married for economical reasons.
In other words "you can love someone" is old, but "you should marry the person you love" is new.