Opposition - Final

First, we have to apologize : we, in the opposing team, are not very good at love. "Good?" you'll say ! Well yes, according to the proposing team it seems that love is something you can be good at, and even improve, be better.

"Hey Thomas, what are you doing on Saturday ? Wanna go out ?

-No way, I'm too busy ! I've got some physics to do, and then practice my love. I'm getting quite good ; and if I have time I'll do a few push-ups."

Love seems to be something mechanic, which has nothing to do with feelings. According to the proposing team, the first stage of love is sex : you meet a girl, and you have sex. And then you want to have sex with her every time you see her. Wow ! So that's what experience is : every time you meet a girl, you just have sex with her. God, I wish I was more experienced ! So basically it's like in a porno : you just walk passed a girl in the street, hook up with her, and then maybe engage in such a big deal as a conversation to see if you actually like her and might be interested in getting in a relationship that might eventually lead to romantic love.

Now that we've seen how silly this brand new revolutionary concept was, let us summarize our arguments. As we said before, love is both made of the physical attraction for your partner, which is natural, and of this little big thing called romantic love that is the heart of our debate. Usually (at least in the world we live in, which seems to be somehow a parallel universe with that of the proposers) you are in love with your partner before having sex with him. Usually, you want your sweet little candy to be next to you all the time. Usually, you don’t know her really well so you want to spend time with her to learn things about her. And this is basically always true and sincere, and it is not a matter of age as the proposing team suggests, it is not a matter of maturity, it’s simply and totally natural. And most of all, yes, it is sincere, and certainly not selfish.

What was that again, the very selfish vision of love our fellow proposers introduced, the 'selfish love' ? The idea of going out with a girl on the basis that she loves you ? Oh, but that is not love, that is sheer and simple illusion, the simulation of a couple, a fake relationship. You don't date a girl because you want to feel loved. You date a girl because you love her, and the only thing that matters to you is that she feels right, you always want to cocoon her so that she feels protected. And since love is mutual, she will do the same for you, so you will feel loved, protected and so on. But please, don’t be ridiculous saying out loud the only thing you are looking for when dating a girl is your own reflection in a mirror !

Also, there is something very knew in the rebuttal of the proposing team : the notion of conjugal love. For them, this is the best part of love : the deep complicity you have with your husband. But if we watch closely, they are contradicting themselves. It is well known that true feelings need time to develop, so how do we wait for the loved one ? With the help of romantic love, of course ! So if we say romantic love is an illusion, then it means marriages are based on illusion, which would be quite sad, wouldn't it ? Moreover, it means that love is in fact a 3-part act, we could teach in Love for Dummies, a big book that would be sold in libraries, between Maths for Statisticians and Quantic Physics 101. Indeed, mechanically as we said previously, you would first have sex with someone, then you'd over-play some love, and finally, you'd learn how to love this person in order to get married.

Now, come on, please come down to the real word. If you have enough of people thinking just because we are engineers we're going to believe that romantic love is an illusion, and that Love can simply be explained by TheBig Black Book of Determinist Love, by Thomas Darwin and David Einstein, then vote for us !

The everlasting lovers

ProposingTeam - Final

Well, Xavier and Guillaume, we are really happy to have helped you to define clearly what "romantic love" is, but you have to admit it is not very fair to admit this definition and then wrote in the middle of your speech that you introduced romantic love as "the gap between sex and love". Once and for all: romantic love isn't that!

Romantic love is the second level of the process of love, a level in which we must not stay for eternity. As we said (and we may have been misunderstood on that point), romantic love is characterized by idealization of the beloved and eagerness to see admiration in his/her eyes. And as Alan Soble, member of the Society for Philosophy of Sex and Love wrote in Sex, love and frienship (chapter Romantic Love: A Patchwork) :

Without prima facie concern for the other's welfare that grows out of admiration and idealization of the other, there is no romantic love.

We are not, as our poor friends of the opposition seems to think it, starving animals seeking for sex. We are just realistic about what a true relationship should be : a trust-based and strong bond, as in the conjugal love described by Dr. Murstein.

Xavier and Guillaume, you suggest that we list all the qualities and shortcomings of your partner. First, let me tell you this is a bad idea : Ross did it in Friends, and I do not recall that Rachel thought it was funny when she found that list - but I think it's quite good that someone reminds you that, since you don't seem to be very mature about what a true relationship is. Second of all, you're not lost! The very fact that you suggest to write down a list shows that you don't idealize the beloved one, and thus, that you are not in the stage of romantic love. Congratulations! If your Facebook status shows "in a relationship", you're just in for sex or because you're deeply in love, conjugal love but not romantic love.

You just fail to see that there is something between "sex" and "love" - the gap you wrote about. There is no direct path to love, no effortless way. True love is about commitment (from both sides!), and even if you are very cute when you are talking about altruism (which is, in fact, disinterested love for someone), it shows you are not very familiar about what conjugal love should be. There is no love when you are not loved in return (and that's why there is a word for love and a word for altruism: it's not quite the same!) : this is called a sacrifice, and even if it is beautiful and very noble, this is not the loving relationship you want to talk about.

We do believe in love. We do believe in committed relationships. We do believe that a strong love, a forever love needs work and does not happen like that. We do believe also, that people that last in the stage of romantic love are not mature because their motives are selfish, and that no good can come for this.

That's why romantic love is an illusion, because an illusion is in philosophy a perception self-maintained by humans so that they continue to think in a choice that a rational exam would reject. That's being said, you can choose to live in the illusion the love you built or you will be building someday is a romantic love. That's not the choice we made, and we hope you won't either. Vote for us!

David and Thomas

Opposing Team - Rebuttal

We really appreciate that our friends of the proposition have helped us with their introductory speech. Actually, instead of proving that romantic love is an illusion, they defined very well what romantic love was, but they misunderstood the very beauty of it.

So apparently, when in love we tend both to idealize the loved one and to feel in love for the wrong reason, not because we truly have feelings for the person but rather because it feels good to be loved ourselves (the logic of which we failed to grasp, by the way)…

But let’s think about one point at a time. -- Girls, and gays, don’t feel offended, but so as not to talk about a “person”, which is cold, and for obvious proportions reasons, we are from now on adopting the point of view of a straight dude – So do we idealize the loved one? Oh yeah, we do! Don’t we repeatedly say she’s the most perfect woman on earth? This certainly is exaggerating since:

a) we have usually passed by a maximum of 10 000 girls for the luckiest of us, so making a comparison between all the girls on Earth seems fairly justified !

b) we are all able to list at least 3 things we dislike in dearly loved, so talking about “perfect” seems excessive. So no, she’s not perfect, and yes, we do idealize her. And that’s actually what enables relationships to last longer than a week!

Let us engineers say we list and note all her qualities/shortcomings, with (+1) for each quality and (-1) for each shortcoming, and then add it all up. If we stuck to the bare image of her, and didn’t emphasize what we like or love in her, we’d end up with a perfectly balanced list, and a sharp zero as a total, for she is human after all, and has just as many defects as qualities. So then we would be just as disposed to break up with her after a fight as we were to get together just after the first kiss, as there would be no cement to consolidate the bond this first kiss had established. And since we all know life is just not like that, there has to be some sort of cement, the name of which you could easily guess. The idealization of what we love in her that comes with romantic love, is to relationships what chemical bonds are to atoms, keeping it all together whenever small disturbances occur.

Yes people, along with language, cooking, smoking weed and whatever-just-as-silly-you-might-have-heard-in-your-life, what distinguishes humans from animals is our capacity to resist to impulses, just as we said we managed to fought the call of the sirens down the Red District in Amsterdam, remember ? And among other impulses, we resist the temptation of bitchslapping this stupid cunt out of our apartment when she pisses us off, because something stronger than this immediate fury tells us she’s worth the pain of controlling ourselves, something powerful and most certainly real, called love, and you’ve guessed it’s not the sex part we’re talking about, so it has to be the romantic part we introduced as the gap between sex and love.

Once again the proposing team has shown a very sad vision of love: you love someone to be loved in return. What a strange vision of love. We won’t discuss this point too long because one should be totally twisted to think this way. The concept of love is including the idea of altruism, this very idea that you love someone but you don’t expect something in return. Let’s take the example of a lover who is going to declare his love offering to the person he loves flowers, and why not the most romantic (and cliché) flowers on Earth: red roses. He is not expecting anything, he is even not expecting her to say that she loves him too; he only wants to tell her that he is in love and that this is the most beautiful feeling ever. However, if they date eventually, their mutual love would really be much stronger than in a couple that didn’t include this notion of altruism in their relationship (yes, because hanging out in students parties Mathieu B. is referring at in his comment doesn't include the concept of altruism). And to answer to Mr. Pitt that said that romantic love should be replaced by stronger foundations, those foundations are included in the notion of altruism that exists in romantic love. How can you expect spending the rest of your life with a person if you don’t love this person for what she is and not only for the fact that she loves you?

Let us sum up our point: yes romantic love idealizes the beloved one, but we are not looking after the “reflection of ourselves” as Laurent S. said in his comment. Love is made both of romantic love and of sexual attraction between the two lovers, and that’s not because sex is more easy to see than romantic love (even if some romantic lovers are very demonstrative) than romantic love is an illusion. That’s why we want you to vote for us !

The idealizing gardeners

Proposing Team - Rebuttal

You reader must be fully aware now that our point is not, just as the opposing team’s, to make an apology of beasty sex, even less orgies, which are lead by the desire of consuming the lover’s body by all means and until one’s animal needs are fully satisfied ; but in the contrary to show that true, reciprocical grown-up love is made of something else. But here is the big illusion, which our poor friends from the opposing side seem to have been fooled by, that is to believe that romantic love is the deepest part of love. In their defense, you dear reader have to bear in mind that Xavier and Guillaume are two naive young men still not very experimented in love. Their mistake doesn’t come from dishonesty, but from lack of experience in what is related to love relationships.
Indeed, as we brought it up in our definition and analysis of love in our opening speech, the physical relation is part of love, but as the very first stage of the relationship between two lovers. Our friends the Gardeners, as they wish to be refered to, seem to have recently got to the second stage, that is the famous romantic love we are talking about. We can only regret that they had to go to Amsterdam to learn from prostitutes and at their expense that money couldn’t buy love. Anyway, what they have still got to discover now is the third and most mature part of love : conjugal love.
But why is romantic love only a stage, for it moves people so much and make hearts beat that fast ? Well, past the purely physical stage, you eventually feel the need to be with your lover all the time, not necessarily to have sex every time you see him/her, but to feel that he/she needs you. Moreover, if you would only make the most of the sex during the first period, you now think in building the relationship, which is a very mature preoccupation, no doubt about that. And on the other hand, it is in the human nature to try to make our wishes come true. And we do so by tainting our love with a sublime color. Nothing is more natural : young men and ladies are still children in the bottom of their souls, and they need dream, mistery, and exaltation. These are the three characteristics of romantic love, according to Dr. Nathaniel Branden, from the California Graduate Institute. This is the reason why romantic love is an illusion created by both lovers to fool both themselves and each other. Again, this is no manipulation nor dishonesty, it is only an automatic behaviour in order to preserve the relationship. Therefore, romantic couples usually feel obligated to recreate every romantic cliché such as the boy offering roses to the girl, going out to have diner in restaurants with candles all around, etc… Un fortunately, this is an illusion.
So what ? Is life nothing but a serie of objective situations, that have no feelings in it, no mistery, no dream ? Well yes it has, and a lot. But it takes time to distinguish the real feelings, from the feelings that are made out of nothing to make our lives look more like a giftcard. And it needs maturity and experience to realise that love doesn’t need to be over-played. Finally, one need to know his/her lover/wife/husband very well and develop a deep complicity with him/her, to enjoy the best part of love that is conjugal love.
So I guess you reader must be convinced that passed the sweet illusion of romantic love is the true love, without any mask nor decorations. Together, let’s help Xavier and Guillaume get to that stage, so that they can finally live happy with their lovers. Vote for us !

Opposition - Opening Speech.

So, is romantic love an illusion, as our fellow proposers pretend to believe ? Certainly not ! Actually, it may be for them, and it certainly is for the ever growing number of students from top universities who don't relate to love but as in terms of sex. Yet for a large part of the population, love goes beyond the urgent physical desire some of us might have once witnessed while staring through their window when suddenly disturbed by an incredibly horny bird couple, that we usually like to refer to as sex.

That's why Pr. Lisa Diamond, who teaches psychology at the University of Utah, distinguishes romantic love from sexual desire. The idea is that everyone basically needs to eat, but while some will walk down to the closest McDonald's to order fries, others will favor home-cooked provitamined fish. Our poor little birds were enjoying a peaceful nap out in the sun on the border of our window, but they couldn't help doing it when Basic Instinct urged them to. And something we can surely be thankful for is that Mother Nature has provided us with a transcending, higher sense that enables us to help it, when we're walking down a narrow street in Amsterdam's Redlight District at 7:00AM, craved at by some third-handed, overworked night workers of the feminine (hopefully!) gender who offer to give us a hand.

This bestial desire for sex has indeed been turned into a job, the oldest job in the world I should say. And the very fact that this part of love, the sexual part, can be commodified, shows that something is missing for it to be actual love. And since sex, which is the first thing associated with love (don't we say "make love"?), is not the whole story, then there has to be something in between. And this gap that separates sex from love is the romantic part, that we call romantic love.

This notion can easily be illustrated by thinking in terms of money : the sex part can be bought, while the romantic part can't. I'm sorry indeed to tell my dearest friends of the proposition that one can pay for sex, but no one cannot pay for love. Have you ever wondered why prostitutes have this tradition not to kiss ? Well simply because kissing someone is supposed to mean something, to be a way of expressing feelings, and you don't pay for feelings - nor does anyone sell any. And why is that ? Because doing so would be the biggest illusion ever.

Nowadays the way of committing to someone, not only for sex, is called romantic love, and it is so far from being an illusion that it is competing with friendship as the stongest emotional feeling of all. Spiritual attraction, a new notion developped to express this crazy little thing called love celebrated by Queen, is going beyond physical attraction to build strong relationships. Some people will call it idealistic, but the truth is true love cannot exist without romantic love.
Just because romantic love is a feeling, and is thus invisible, untouchable, non-measurable, un-anything-that-has-to-do-with-rational-thoughts-able, doesn't mean it is an illusion !

Think about it : haven't you laughed, haven't you danced, haven't you eaten, haven't you walked hand in hand with someone who was very special, someone who made your heart blind, dazzled by a sudden flash, stricken by the most beautiful and simple feeling in life, love ? You know you do... and if you haven't, you certainly wish you had ! So don't let resent talk you into believing that this romantic love everyone craves for is an illusion. The reason why some people claim it is, is because this upper-state of love, that of romantic love, is a state everyone tries to reach, but only those who invest enough time and energy building a true love relationship can grasp, so that it is has become to our fertile imaginations, unattainable, illusional.

So, ladies and gentlemen, do you still think that romantic love is an illusion? Illusion really means something that doesn't exist or even worse, something that exists in your mind but that doesn't exist in reality, a totally abstract concept only good for some lame romantic guy who offers roses to the girl he loves, even though he doesn't know if it is reciprocical. But love is concrete, and if something concrete is now called an illusion, we should all get out of the Matrix to get to this "real world" that seems to be the proposers' one. Love is concrete, and romantic love is necessary for all of us to be humans, to be more than those horny birds on our window, and to achieve the biggest part of our humanity that is love. Those are the points we are to develop in the following parts of the debate, although we know that you are already convinced that there is more to love than sex, the difference being romantic love... and that you will avoid being fooled by any proposing team offering you illusions, by voting for us.

The constant gardeners.

Proposers - Opening speech

People usually define romantic love as the sharing of pure feelings between two lovers. It seems to be linked to the idea of contemplation, of harmony and sweetness. Who has never been moved by the unconditional lover singing despite the rain below his lover's window? However, this describes a romantic behaviour, which is not exactly romantic love.

"Romantic love" is often associated with "being in love", and a lot of symptoms are typical of this state : pain in the chest when the love is not returned, constant thinking about the desired one. Often, romantic love includes a component of suffering, even when it is returned. Let's take a look at the great examples of literature : in Twilight, Stephanie Meyer describes the fusional love between a vampire and a teenage girl... okay, who are we kidding ? we talked about "great examples of literature", so we'd rather analyse Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Iseult. These famous love stories clearly show that even if the love is mutual, and if a strong bond exists between lovers, impossible to understand from the outside, romantic love still hurts.

And why does it hurt? Because actually, romantic love is meant to be just a stage in the long process of love. A famous psychologist, Murstein, showed that love contains three steps : first, the passionate love, also called physical attraction, which involves intense arousal and has a strong sexual base. Then, the romantic love is more focused on the idealization of the beloved ; before the conjugal love, which testifies of liking and deep trust.

Another psychologist, Dr. Elaine Walster, also showed in a way very similar to what Murstein did, that romantic love is in fact the rationalization of the physiological arousal, in order to view it as a consequence of romantic causes. This model has been tested in dozens of studies by many different researchers, and the findings have consistently supported it. This is a great deal, because it explains why we fall in love so quickly, and why you sometimes don't need to be good with a person to seduce him/her.

But what is really important is the fact that the romantic love is just a stage. We are not supposed to stay in this area for a long time, because, as we said it, romantic love is an idealization of the beloved. How do you want to build a stable and trust-based relationship when what we are really looking for is being loved instead of loving the other for what he/she is worth. This is in fact a very immature way of loving someone, since we're doing it for ourselves and not for the beloved. This is childish, since we're doing it to protect ourselves. This is selfish, since what we really appreciate in romantic love is the admiration in the other's eyes.

These are the reason why you, dear reader, won't be fooled by the dangerous illusion that is romantic love, for you are smart, mature and devoted to others, not mentioning beautiful and handsome. So think about what you want for your future : vote for us!

David and Thomas

First online debate - This House believes that romantic love is an illusion.

Hello,

This week we'll have the pleasure to see Xavier and Guillaume (team A) and David and Thomas (team B) debate the following motion:

This House believes that romantic love is an illusion.

And in the comments, you can already start voting for the team of your choice.

Laurent

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