Do you believe it is truly possible to love an object?

I am curious as to why you refer to human nature as “inane”. Did you perhaps mean innate?

People who truly love objects have a mental disorder. It is called “objectophilia.”

I don’t love animals more than people, but I suspect I love them almost as much as I do people.

Also, someone in the world love you. Perhaps no one is loves you romantically, but you have family and friends, and they love you.

I’m not sure you asked the question that you really wanted to ask, did you?

I don’t believe in a single definition of the word “love”, so yes, I think it is possible to love something other than a human (I don’t consider animals objects, though). If you have a pet, you need to feed him, take care of him, etc., and all of those things are signs of love. You care for it and it relies on you. I think children love their toys. I still love my teddy bear. Naturally, it isn’t the same love that you have for your child, mother, husband or friend, but it is some affection or attachment.

I love an object. He’s my stuffed bear that I’ve had since I was five-years-old and his name is Fatso.

I would bawl and mourn for who knows how long if something happened to him. I used to feed him when I was younger, he’s been through all operations, moves and road trips with me. I love him.

First: apologies for my poor typing above.

Aso, somehow my link did not take. Here is the objectiplia article about the “wife” of the Berline Wall and the lover of the Twin Towers.

It’s not a great idea to get attached to objects because these things go away.

Understanding the true nature of material things leads to a healthier outlook on these items. The true nature of material things being that they are all temporary and have no lasting value.

Enjoy what you have but don’t obsess and let go
when it’s time to let go and you’ll be in good shape.

Yes I do believe I love my iPod very very much. I am emotionally attatched to it. But on the other hand, I do love certain people. So there is more than one definition of love.

@DrasticDreamer

I have to agree in that I love my favorite stuffed cat as well. There are many forms of love and I believe this matches one of them.

I love lamp

In English we use the word love for so many things, I think that might be part of the problem. Certainly people can love an animal. I find great joy from some of the “things” I own, it’s not love, like how I love my husband, but I use the word love when I talk about them.

When I find myself getting too attached to an object, I get rid of it. Impermanence is a beautiful thing.

I do think that some people are overly attached to objects. I think it is a sign of not having control over something else in their life. They obsess over an object, something they can hold on to forever, something unchanging. Kind of like people that have hoarding problems.

Suff is just stuff. Over a lifetime you can accumulate a lot of it. Then, you die.

I love my dog, if I got her stuffed I guess I would love an object. I would never get her stuffed

I love my iPhone!

This Q touches on an aspect of something I’ve been trying to sort out lately (without much success), so let me see if I can put it in words.

There’s so much confusion about what we mean by love and all of its various flavors, but it seems to me that things get a lot clearer and simpler if we set aside the concept of love for a moment and think in terms of desire and aversion. Or to be more accurate, maybe I should say desire/aversion, since they seem to come as a matched set.

So in this scheme, all of the variants of love—and “like”—are simply manifestations of desire. The object and degree of desire may change, but the root impulse, desire, is essentially the same. To understand this, though, need to see beyond the apparent object of desire—the person or the thing or the animal—and find out specifically what the finer-grained object of desire is: what specifically is my desire that’s associated with this person or thing or animal. I suspect that most of the variations on the theme of love come down to what the true underlying object of our desire is.

Some of these underlying objects of desire are self-serving in that they’re meant to stave off our own suffering: sexual gratification, companionship, emotional support, social status, enhanced self-image, security, a sense of belonging and being valued, etc. Some desires may be other-serving, in that they’re aimed at the success and happiness of others. Everyone will have their own complex personal mix of these specific desires and in varying proportions. They will then seek people or things that they hope will satisfy one or more of those desires and form some degree of attachment to them.

Occasionally we find someone who does a pretty good job of filling several of our self-serving needs, but that’s rather the exception. More often we look for satisfaction from many quarters. And I think that things have there place in this scheme, too. I’ll bet @DrasticDreamer looks to her bear for some of her security, companionship, sense of belonging, etc. And the bear is probably also one of the objects of her desire to care for and nurture.

All of us have both self-serving and other-serving desires, though the balance certainly varies. But I suspect that both needy grasping and saintly desire for the welfare of all beings are fundamentally desire projected in different ways. I won’t go into the whole aversion side of this scheme because I’ve rambled on enough already.

@marina a fascinating article.

I have never cried when I lost a prized possession, not even the (admittedly low-carat-and-quality) diamond ring I had gotten myself as a present for graduating high school. It took me a year to save up to buy that ring, too. It was my first adult purchase. And one day during freshman year at uni, it slipped off my finger and fell down a sewer.

But I have cried copiously when I lost a relationship, either due to a breakup or death. Even with those people, no matter how much I loved them, hadn’t treated me well and it was best for me to let them go. Losing those relationships and people meant more and hurt more than losing any object.

I think that would put me firmly in the “no” camp with regard to this question, at least for myself. This from a woman whose iPhone has not left her side since she bought it 5 months ago.

I think the question can be difficult to answer for the simple fact that the definition of love can mean many things in addition to people having different interpretations of what love means.

I love my partner, I love my dog, I love my parents… but I also love sunny days, a fresh espresso coffee and my favourite things.

Love for me is an intense attachment or extreme care for something else. I can also love a feeling or an era.

I agree that part of the problem, here, is that we have too many definitions of the word ‘love’.

I love my mom. I love living alone. I love my two-year old MacBook Pro.

Perhaps it might be better to say, “I’m attached (firmly) to my MacBook Pro.”, or, “I enjoy living alone.” (It’s true that I love my mom, though, in one sense of the word.)

Maybe we need to stop throwing the word ‘love’ around so much. (Like the way Eddie Izzard says in this video clip about the word ‘awesome’.)

@evegrimm – Lurve for Eddie. And because I agree, though I am guilty of the “awesome” crimes.

@aprilsimnel, Eddie is awesome. In the original meaning of the word. And I, too, overuse ‘awesome’. :)

I love several objects and some of those include my laptop computer, my iPod, my car, my PS3 and Wii, and all of my 5 cats. I don’t equate it with the same type of love I have for humans though. That would be weird if I did. Probably.

When I was 7 my dad died, I was in 1st grade at a small catholic school, there were 24 people in my whole class, I had a bit of a hard time acclimating because I spoke bad english, was kind of chubby, kind of weird, etc. But when he died my class all pitched in and bought me a whole bunch of things, and one of them was this as masculine as this sounds a teddy bear, them doing that really helped me, it’s really the only thing in the world that I would absolutely freak out if anything happened to it. It’s not like I snuggle with it at night or anything, it just has so much sentimental value to me.

im a genius

My daughter has a stuffed kitty named “Snickers.” She carries it all over the house, and simply will not go to sleep without it. She has dozens of other plushies, but this one is particularly special to her.

I love my 1990 Klein Quantum. Every personal best I’ve had in cycling I’ve set on that bike. Almost 20 years old, the paint job is still gorgeous, and the bike fits me like a part of my body. Most of my possessions are just things, but if something happened to that bike, I’d be pretty broken up about it.

Wow, this was a good discussion, don’t get much props for my good questions. I am a Lurve whore, oh well, I guess breaking 500 in two weeks without any “insider Lurving” is pretty good. I earned all it, getting another user name and hooking myself up, or, forming a Circle Jerk Lurve tribe. I think I’m good at causing myself trouble.

@Marina Well, human nature IS inane.

Here are comments on this same question from a few months ago.

I don’t know what you mean by “insider lurving, ” @bumwithablackberry, but to me it sounds a bit accusing. Maybe you are not aware that any one person can give only about 100 points to each other user; person to person, you max out very quickly. There are some regulars on here whose scores I haven’t been able to increase since my first couple of days many months ago.

I love my new house.
I love my replica of the Maltese Falcon.
I love my wife (technically, she is an object of my affection)

I definitely look to Fatso for security and companionship. He’s pretty much the first thing I go for when I’m depressed. Yeah, that’s right… I still cuddle with him, especially in bad times. I’ve had him forever… He’s as real to me now as he was when I was five.

I always thought I should be wary of becoming attached to objects, but reading all of you guys stories makes me wish I had a teddybear ;)

I do think it is possible to love an object. After all, who or what we love is a result of what makes us feel good about ourselves and makes us want to spend all of our time with it.

@Jeruba thanks, “insider lurving” in essence is when you give someone a GA not because it’s a GA but because there your friend. Why I have to say this, don’t know, I’m a filthy commy or something.

Indeed loving an object is a disease… you get attached to an object, because it feels more comfortable when you use it. But you don’t love it. And by the way, can you really define love ?:)

@bumwithablackberry, did you miss the point that it’s simply not possible past a max of about 20 GAs? No matter why you give the GA, after 100 points they don’t count any more. People I consider friends here were still mostly strangers when I ran out of points to give them.

we all love things, but its not really LOVE. maybe we should use different words to describe how we feel :) because real LOVE is different. I think :)

Cue this thread.

Yeah you did pretty well for yourself there, I dont know why your trippin, my conscience is clear as virgin piss on my head in the shower of last tuesday.

I get a lot more comfort and support from my books and gadgets than I get from the people around me. So the answer to the question is a “yes” for me.

No. Unless the objects looks like a human being. A doll, robot or android.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic Humans go away too…

I actually thought my dad was an android once, I was poking at him, asking him obscure questions, trying to stump him. Funny now, but not then.