I don't remember history classes being so interesting back in school. This is what education should always be about. Informative, with perspective, thought provoking. Thank you School of Life.
Jane Austin belonged to a society which wasn't good at Love. She did best in her books to get it out. And only what she at that time thought was something liberating. But when you take everything into consideration, Love is not what she defined. Love is much more!
Very interesting, although the claim that "love is a cultural invention" doesn't seem to follow from the history shown later. It seems that what should be argued is that "marriage" is a cultural invention. Love, as an emotion, is probably a human universal, not really experienced too differently from person to person. How you are expected to act on it and what your expectations should be is socially modulated, but the emotion doesn't need (nor seem) to be.
Samuel Álvarez my own theory is that love was the original invention of psychological evolution. Those are pretty complicated concepts and I don’t have time to explain it so just watch the behavioral biology lectures posted by Stanford university.
Personally, I believe love would have had its origins purely as a means of continuing the genes through your offspring. An emotion that a mother would have chemically felt for her children... As an eventual evolution from that, those children eventually bonded through chemically driven love, to grow up and eventually bond with a ‘mate,’ at some point eventually chemically as well, then as co-parenting groups whether monogamous or polyamorous in tribes, Alpha/beta, and eventually community-based citadels... ultimately though it would have originated between mother/offspring relations.. anyone have any opinions?
Douglas Campbell I left a comment similar to this. I believe that many of our other emotions were created out of the abstraction of love or other evolutionary factors. For instance, guilt in doing something bad (with what constitutes “bad” as the idea of societal happiness), or anxiety (being fearful for ones life/ability to survive (and thus go on to reproduce), and ability to attract a partner/sexual selection. Sexual selection is an icky topic though because most forms of hegemony come from our ideas of sexual selection (and obviously sexual selection is just complicated as all hell).
Vishal Zambare that with a careful balance you can have it all but most people won’t have it all because most people aren’t suitable for marriage. You gotta work on your self and drop your pride and prejudice
+Izabella Wilas Chemistry doesn't suck. What sucks is that people often feel that chemistry is love. When in reality is just how reproduction works. Survival doesn't care if he/she is a good person or not. Chemistry is good if we just see it as what it is, and not confusing it with love.
This channel's stuff is consistently strong and informative, and this is definitely no exception in the general sense. Just a pointer on a fairly minor detail: the troubadours actually wrote on more subjects than just courtly love, although they are famous for having more or less invented the concept. They also wrote crusade songs, laments on the deaths of important figures, political works, poems celebrating the skill of the writer (kind of like rappers boasting their own skills), and various other genres of poetry. It's also worth pointing out that troubadour poetry was initially written to be performed with musical accompaniment at the various Occitan courts. Hope I'm not being a dingus! Keep on schooling!
ZSoul55 this is indeed true and a lot of what the Troubadours learnt came from the moors/Saracens (or the Muslims as we would today perhaps term them) via southern Spain (and as you correctly point out into and through Occitania) which in turn is very Sufic in origin. The troubadours where indeed not just exponents of fin amour but also other more esoteric practices as learned from the Sufis, There are also marked similarities between the music of the troubadours (in structure, scale and melody) and Arabic music, which traveled in the same way. It has always struck me as rather ironic that the generally accepted forms of 'romantic' love we are conditioned into in the west and promulgated eternally in the media via movies and also literature has, at its base, thought and teachings from the middle east and Persia.
Very often, in this channel, you tackle love and relationships. Especially the part where you need to accept imperfections and that unhappiness is part of life. Would you tackle something similar but opposite? In other words: a video about breaking up. When enough is enough and the analysis of unhappiness over real happiness. Thanks!
I would argue the future isn't about sacrifice, as much as gladly taking more responsibility for one's own happiness, rather than looking for it in the other. Great video. They're all really interesting- thank you!
Julie Rasmussen Yeah. And I also think if both paties is after and open on bettering themselves in having a relationship,then it is good. Imperfections that exist can be work out. Its just that many people are really well conditioned over this shallow romantic side of this romanticsm.
I really like how this channel gives a solid resolution in the end. A lot of videos nowadays just state the problems we face or just mock it, but it tells us how we can better the problems instead of just stating the obvious.
I very much enjoy the ending bit... “the question is not so much that relationships live up to our ideal hopes of mutual happiness but whether they are better, if only a little, than not having relationships at all. The future of love needs us to get interested in ambivalence, that is, in the capacity to keep on thinking that something is quite good even while we are painfully conscious of it’s many, and striking day-to-day imperfections” Thank you for all the work you do to make these videos, i recently found your channel and i really enjoy the content you share.
I've recently read Ovid's "ars amatoria" (The Art of Love) which was written about 1 b.C., and it amazed me beyond belief. Our morals and manners may have changed , but there is so incredibly much still the same, after 2000 years, and keeping in consideration that this was before Christianity and the founding of the Catholic Church who had a great deal to say in the way we think about love and partnership. In some ways it looks like we are only just getting back to the way that ancient societies dealt with love and their sexuality.
This channel has caught hold of me and it is getting consistently informative more and more. The School of Life videos are thought provoking. I have been wondering about all this and here it is. Love is indeed shaped by its history and I suppose we're unevolved species, always changing. So, looking back can help us. Not always but yes at least in love's case. Even though I question what Love really is, I do know about the theory of love that we all have been falling for, that we look up to (idea of love).
OMG this video is amazing! I genuinely couldn't had said it better myself! EXPECTATIONS ARE THE DESTRUCTIONS AND SLAVERY OF FREEDOM! There so much on this topic to explore.
Alain my man :) his philosophy makes me calm. and see things from so many different point of views which my brain - looping constantly in single thought for almost 2 years now - never thought of. cheers man. i am happy people like you still exist.
Wao, these videos are among the most educational I've seen on TH-cam. I have read philosophy books, but those are not for everyone. These videos are simple and comprehensible to most people. This channel could change the world, step by step. Who is the Skool of Life? Who funds these videos? Does it accepts some crowd funding?
This was so well compiled! Captured every single realisation I think Ive ever had from merely observing relationships around, and more!The time scale just gives it an evolutionary appearance, though I sometimes feel that our conceptions of love and romanticism are mere mental vaccilations depending on our current circumstances!
You are God of Wisdom and Intellect..I wonder how people like are achieving so much so young..Congratulations for such great work..I am highly inspired and motivated by you excellent work
Thanks for the video. The answer seems to be in short that you have to be emotionally attached but consider the practicalities as well. Engage your emotional and rational sides. The second part was about ‘sacrifice’ be prepared to accept that you won’t get all you want !
***** Understand when I say unconditional love doesn't exist, what I'm saying is that loving a person is almost entirely based on them being that person. If they were somebody you'd never met, then you wouldn't know them to love them. So yes, unconditional love doesn't exist.
Good work. So glad you mentioned troubadour Jaufre Rudel. The proper account of his transit is the Second Crusade had begun and the seas were dangerous. As Prince of Blaye, Jaufre commanded a cavalry to march for his overlord, Louis Sept. The Crusader's destination was Antioch (next to Hodierna's Tripoli). As an Aquitaine, he protected and entertained Eleanor of Aquitaine's train. There is as much speculation that his poems spanned his desire for Eleanor and Hodierna. Eleanor would later go on to sponsor the courts of mannered love.
+The School of Life I think fifteen minutes is definitely long enough for a TH-cam video, and you covered plenty. I'd love to see "an Eastern history of love" as well though, because the more we look away from our own culture, the more we can learn about our natural instincts.
+The School of Life well i would like to see more ethnic philosophy and society. its all very good content. i love this channel, but its hard not to say its euro centric. i like to see myself as a non traditional learner and a channel like this is a great start. but as i mentioned before i want a more worldly and well rounded learning experience. just an idea. thanks 😊
I feel that kindness is what allows my husband and I to not wallow in the "day-to-day imperfections" of marriage.🌹If we are kind, it all resolves itself. If we are not, even small problems become big.
Question: In my relationship I often lose my self and start feeling Closed in. What can I do? Osho : This is one of the fundamental problems of love. Every lover has to learn it, nobody knows it by birth. It only comes slowly slowly and through much pain, but the sooner it comes, the better -- that each person needs his or her own space, that we should not interfere in that space. To interfere is very natural for lovers, because they start taking the other for granted. They start thinking that they are no more separate. They don't think of 'I' and 'thou'; they start thinking of 'we'. You are that too, but only once in a while. 'We' is a rare phenomenon. Once, for a few moments, lovers come to that point where the word is meaningful, where you can say 'we', when 'I' and 'thou' disappear into each other, where boundaries overlap. But these are rare moments; they should not be taken for granted. You cannot remain 'we' twenty-four hours a day, but that's what every lover demands -- and that creates unnecessary misery. When you come close once in a while you become one, but those are rare moments, precious, to be cherished, and you cannot make them a twenty-four-hour thing. If you try, you will destroy them; then the whole beauty will be lost. When that moment is gone, it is gone; you are again 'I' and 'thou'. You have your space, she has her space. And one has to be respectful now, that the other's space should not be in any way interfered with; it should not be trespassed. If you trespass it, you hurt the other; you start destroying the other's individuality. And because the other loves you, she or he will go on tolerating it. But toleration is one thing; it is not something very beautiful. If the other is only tolerating it, then sooner or later the other will take revenge. The other cannot forgive you and it goes on accumulating -- one day, another day, another day.... You have interfered with a thousand and one things, then they all pile up, and then one day they explode. That's why lovers go on fighting. That fight is because of this constant interference. And when you interfere in her being, she tries to interfere in your being, and nobody feels good about it.
Thank you SoL for not condemning monogamy due to its problems. As said at the end of the video sacrifice is often the foundation to fulfillment and that can come as surprising to the best of us.
Hm... You missed out the fact that the inventor of the Troubador idea of love came, actually, from Rabbi Sa'adia Gaon in his work in the 10th Century Iraq. The arrival of the Babilonian Jewish works to areas such as the Aegean, Italy and, especially, Spain and Portugal during the 10th and 11th Centuries meant that it's possible that Sa'adia's works influenced the first troubadors from France.
+The School of Life I just wanted to say that this was yet another amazing video from you guys. Your channel is seriously the best channel that youtube has to offer. Thank you for providing such great content!
The end says it exactly. It's the social idea that you're "settling" for someone. People get caught up thinking that no matter what it is they're settling for it. Whether it's a spouse, a job, a lifestyle. People can't just be grateful for what they have. A spouse can go away on a trip and come back wanting a divorce because someone hit on them and their friends are telling them to do better or not settle.
So historically people only married for land, money, or power? Mmhmm... well, that certainly seems to have been true for the few percent that had those things. But presenting it that way erases the history of the overwhelming majority. Why and how did they marry? That was of course a rhetorical question - the source material is painfully weak on the subject of ordinary people. But what evidence there is suggests that, at least in Europe, marriage was a very informal and undramatic event - up until the catholic church decided to make marriage a sacrament, which didn't happen until the late middle ages. But you somewhat accidentally make the interesting point that today, the notions of romance that started among the upper classes have filtered out into our society as a whole.
The lower classes used marriage as pragmatically in the pursuit of resources as the powerful - it was a good way of ensuring that they could produce a healthy next generation with the help of the efficient specialisation of mother and bread-winner
***** If we go back further to tribal hunter gatheres, many of them still marry even though they don't individually own land or have much of anything of value.
Marriage does exist in modern hunter gatherer tribes - even those that have been completely isolated until recent years. So one can definitely extrapolate from that and conclude that marriage most likely existed in the late Paleolithic. Moreover, 'family groups' is another way of naming tribes. But even within larger tribes, there are couples who are married, and there are even some polygynous marriages.
***** Which particular tribe are you referring to? For example, in the modern day Hadza, a father will not let his daughter be wed to a man she does not love. It would be worth going into more detail and enumerating the practices of each modern hunter gatherer group. Any anthropologists around? I might get to this if I get a few spare hours...
anonymouse27 Someone obviously beat me to it. :-) Good reading: anthropology.missouri.edu/sites/default/files/11marriageplos1.pdf Here's hoping that The School of Life can pay a bit more attention to cultures that predate Neolithic civilizations.
Interesting points in European History. I really appreciated how this video was delving into a complex subject and took into account how the european arts reflected changing ideas of love...if I could add my two cents for what love is...it would have to start with friendship!
To you I could trust the fast-closed depths of my own mind and as friends we have been joined in trust by long acquaintance by shared initiations of the gods all in one bond of faith one single heart united in one mind 4th cent. C.E. inscription, Praetextatus praising his wife Paulina
I'd love to see one of these videos take on gender. If love is an emotion *shaped by its history*, gender as a societal/cultural construct is even more so.
Nope. Gender is evolutionary. It is biological. For humans it is decided between 4th and 6th months of foetal development. It is controlled by many factors including genetics expressed in X or Y chromosomes and even the presence of testosterone or estrogen secreting cysts in the mother's body which affects the hormone levels of the foetus. We are born with our gender. Atleast a large part of it. Surely culture too does its part.
@@sreejithhh All it will take is a google search to show that this is incorrect. You're talking about sex. Magikarp Magikarp was specifically talking about gender.
I agree with this conclusion about the need to get interested in ambiguity, and how relationship, even with it's imperfections, is still more interesting than unceasing solitude. I'm a reforming idealist, and have been seeing the necessity of reforming my attitude since my last serious relationship foundered on the rocks. Since then, the only relationship I've had the interest to follow has alot of ambiguity , which I've learned both to accept and to find as stimulating fodder for self reflection. It's not easy, but it is interesting.
maybe the focus needs to be in what you yourself can give to a relationship rather than what you expect the other to give to you. that seems to be one of the reasons why many marriages in my country survives. hello from the philippines!
This could have been huge viral hit. What is needed is to cut out just the pride and prejudice part and name it something like : how pride and prejudice defined love for modern world. Now the video is bit long and full of things people are not familiar at all. Pride and prejudice part was very good.
and like many important and new ideas that have an impact on today's world, Love began in the middle east and was developed in Europe only. No one in any other part of the world had even considered falling in love and writing a poem or song about it until it was introduced to different cultures during the era of European expansion.
Wow, love is as old as time. School of Life have you ever looked at it not from your "OWN" point of view? There's so much more to tell and other people around the world that were here from the start. There is no mention of them but thank you for sharing your quest.
I agree that expectations play a very big role in the divorce rates however, the root cause in my opinion is that people do not know what love really is. Do not define it and a result have false expectations from it. In my view love is when you want your loved one to be happy. And a successful union results when both lovers feel that way towards one another, in other words Love needs to be mutual and reciprocal in this way. Sacrifice is implied here too, since sometimes in order to make your partner happy you need to make sacrifices. When this is reciprocal, it all works. However, when it is not, the relationship will eventually fail sooner or later and people will get hurt. So to avoid splits and failed relationships thus both partners should strive to find a reciprocal partner and resist other factors which make us form a relationship before getting in to a long term one such as marriage.
I don't intend to get into any religious arguments here. I just want to share my point of view. The subject of love has baffled humanity since the dawn of time. This video does a good job at showing this. For me, Love, like the Apostle Paul put it in the Bible, " beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." It's a higher state of being. Jesus Christ is the perfect example of love. His whole life was devoted to us. He was rejected and mocked by those he wished to serve, yet he loved us. He saw all of our imperfections, yet he loved us. If you want to discover love for what it truly is, read and study the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Love is an inherently powerful feature of one's own identity. Possibly an ever-present water mark of perpetual rising. Our seas of understanding translating into vision. The vehicle driven to explore the realms between A and B. The expression volunteering the ink fixated inside our grooved finger prints. The gratitude for tribulations that is circulated within our braided blood streams. The mystery resting inside the purest laughter. The selfless yellow sun surrendering for the captivity of the transparent jar. Love is the answer unearthed as so simple, that it complicates our relationship with reasoning. How perfect.
Some people have never had the experience of taking MDMA and experiencing the nearly identical neurological chemical reaction. There's nothing "magical" about "love" or "mania".
Who mentioned 'magic'? I don't know what taking MDMA feels like, and that's irrelevant to the distinction I was making between lust and love. Knowing the likely evolutionary antecedents to a behavior takes nothing away from the power of a felt experience. But since you brought up 'magic', here's one from Einstein: "There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle."
"and that's irrelevant to the distinction I was making between lust and love." The only difference between lust and love is time, and they both describe a transient chemical reaction in the brain.
Do your research. Lust and love are different kinds of states in the body / mind. Which is not to say that one cannot feel loving lust as a combination of these. Moreover, there are many kinds of love, as I'm sure you know. It is not only the brain, but the whole CNS, endocrine system, etc. The whole body. Moreover, while some people fall out of love, others stay in love over decades. Check out studies comparing brain scans of old couples with young couples who have just fallen in love. I believe Helen Fisher talked about some of this at TED.
Cool. Well done! Like all the ideas and the design and voice. As an artist, love all the art, too. Now, where are my Jane Austen books? Haven't read them for years.... Been married 50+ years... and all my personal experience and extensive reading have lead me to the same conclusion as the video: Don't expect too much! Ideal is impossible! Good enough is good enough!
Could you please do a video about freedom? The meaning changed a lot through the centuries and is still controversial nowadays! (Your channel is great btw)
personaly id argue that love is simply a set of behaviours that aided the survival and propagation of the seascapes and nothing more then this. that is to say that given the massive amount of resources required to have offspring that survive monogamous relationships where the most efficient way propagate humanity. as such love as described by the romantics and more widely by the hippy groups dose not truly exist but is a trick of the mind to help the seascapes survive
The grand moral of the story...... Love is to each persons to define together honestly communicating at every turn in their relationships, why and how they are together and for what? There is just no honesty - there is just edge of the sword anxiety. Love is just a word, feelings are just illusions, dreams are just dust. Most people in the world have no idea about anything, they just follow the crowds and change their minds at the drop of a hat, no integrity and no rootedness in anything but all superficial, especially the ones who claim the are deep and profound. Stay clear. To each their own, that’s what love is, don’t follow trends and crowds ha !
Love is about giving not receiving; marriage is about compromise and sacrifice for shared goals. Marriage is about personal growth through learning and shared experiences, the bad as well as the good, anticipating the needs of others , and putting theirs first. What do the Belgians think love is, and Americans ?
Polygamy is such a dark truth to our species. After learning all of this I feel like I was fed some Hallmark dream my whole life when typically more than not; love fails. A understanding of love as I learned here will allow me to better guide myself in this extensional loneliness of reality.
love is not an ideea though we make a lot of ideeas around it. Romantic love as you so like to categorise it, has been with us from the beginning. Our customs regarding mariage and it's link to love have changed with our societies. Some of us don't care so much about the "beneficial' as you. the skill you speak about reffers to relationships (the house where love sometimes lives ) and not love.
Upper Class marriage did have pressure re land and power (because they had some), but even there it was often remarked that a loveless marriage was undesirable (but not an object to marriage). It's one thing for love to not be primary, but it's another to pretend that it was simply always understood as entirely separate.
I don't remember history classes being so interesting back in school. This is what education should always be about. Informative, with perspective, thought provoking. Thank you School of Life.
Yes. I agree. Alain de Bouton makes any subject he tackles interesting. So well read and articulate, he conveys ideas brilliantly.
I feel like whoever is behind these videos, wrote really good essays in school. Loving the longer video by the way!
I think it's Alain de Botton. He's so super informative with a great sense of humor. I could listen to him speak all day!
@@Abundance26 When i am sad, or have trouble, i go to listen to his voice. he is one of the best human ever happened to me.
i also think it is Alain him self. I think whoever wrote it, who also made the voice over.
@@josephinewliu exactly Josephine. When I need some logical advice I always listen to him. It always makes me feel better. ❤
He would have became a teacher's favourite in india .
This channel is an excellent escape from the harsh reality of a job.
Ho, ho. Be glad you have one. And lookout for one you'll like!
What is love?
Baby don't hurt me
Don't hurt me
No more
What a poet
@@falkonsrt6000 I know right, he could be the next Shakespeare.
Lol
😂
A lie
Jane Austen knew what's up.
And so did The Marquis
from Star Trek, or de sade?
Jane Austin belonged to a society which wasn't good at Love. She did best in her books to get it out. And only what she at that time thought was something liberating. But when you take everything into consideration, Love is not what she defined. Love is much more!
Very interesting, although the claim that "love is a cultural invention" doesn't seem to follow from the history shown later. It seems that what should be argued is that "marriage" is a cultural invention. Love, as an emotion, is probably a human universal, not really experienced too differently from person to person. How you are expected to act on it and what your expectations should be is socially modulated, but the emotion doesn't need (nor seem) to be.
Samuel Álvarez +++
Very accurate.
Samuel Álvarez my own theory is that love was the original invention of psychological evolution. Those are pretty complicated concepts and I don’t have time to explain it so just watch the behavioral biology lectures posted by Stanford university.
Personally, I believe love would have had its origins purely as a means of continuing the genes through your offspring.
An emotion that a mother would have chemically felt for her children...
As an eventual evolution from that, those children eventually bonded through chemically driven love, to grow up and eventually bond with a ‘mate,’ at some point eventually chemically as well, then as co-parenting groups whether monogamous or polyamorous in tribes, Alpha/beta, and eventually community-based citadels...
ultimately though it would have originated between mother/offspring relations..
anyone have any opinions?
Douglas Campbell I left a comment similar to this. I believe that many of our other emotions were created out of the abstraction of love or other evolutionary factors. For instance, guilt in doing something bad (with what constitutes “bad” as the idea of societal happiness), or anxiety (being fearful for ones life/ability to survive (and thus go on to reproduce), and ability to attract a partner/sexual selection. Sexual selection is an icky topic though because most forms of hegemony come from our ideas of sexual selection (and obviously sexual selection is just complicated as all hell).
So far Jane Austin's perspective is my favorite
Same :))))
And what is it?
@@vishalzambare2159 8:00-10:45.
Vishal Zambare that with a careful balance you can have it all but most people won’t have it all because most people aren’t suitable for marriage. You gotta work on your self and drop your pride and prejudice
Mine too, glad to see there are virtues people left in the western civilization
What about how Hollywood creates unrealistic expectations of love ? Things like "there was no chemistry"
+elky360 that would be intresting to mention
Actually, no chemistry sucks a lot.
Izabella Wilas how so
+Izabella Wilas Chemistry doesn't suck. What sucks is that people often feel that chemistry is love. When in reality is just how reproduction works. Survival doesn't care if he/she is a good person or not. Chemistry is good if we just see it as what it is, and not confusing it with love.
de Botton addresses this in his talk "On Love".
I would really *love* to see bibliographies included with these.
Including the paintings!
This channel's stuff is consistently strong and informative, and this is definitely no exception in the general sense. Just a pointer on a fairly minor detail: the troubadours actually wrote on more subjects than just courtly love, although they are famous for having more or less invented the concept. They also wrote crusade songs, laments on the deaths of important figures, political works, poems celebrating the skill of the writer (kind of like rappers boasting their own skills), and various other genres of poetry. It's also worth pointing out that troubadour poetry was initially written to be performed with musical accompaniment at the various Occitan courts. Hope I'm not being a dingus! Keep on schooling!
***** No worries.
***** 1. Lamia and the soldier. 2. tristan and isolde. Those two are by John William Waterhouse. The last one is Spring by Pierre-Aguste Cot
ZSoul55 this is indeed true and a lot of what the Troubadours learnt came from the moors/Saracens (or the Muslims as we would today perhaps term them) via southern Spain (and as you correctly point out into and through Occitania) which in turn is very Sufic in origin. The troubadours where indeed not just exponents of fin amour but also other more esoteric practices as learned from the Sufis, There are also marked similarities between the music of the troubadours (in structure, scale and melody) and Arabic music, which traveled in the same way. It has always struck me as rather ironic that the generally accepted forms of 'romantic' love we are conditioned into in the west and promulgated eternally in the media via movies and also literature has, at its base, thought and teachings from the middle east and Persia.
Gort Roxx Ever read, The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage by Maria Rosa Menocal?
ZSoul55 are you serious? the topic is about "LOVE" of course he will not mention that. that's another topic. oh geez
Very often, in this channel, you tackle love and relationships. Especially the part where you need to accept imperfections and that unhappiness is part of life. Would you tackle something similar but opposite? In other words: a video about breaking up. When enough is enough and the analysis of unhappiness over real happiness. Thanks!
jalila love
Great explanations and advice. I take it for me as well. Thanks.
I would argue the future isn't about sacrifice, as much as gladly taking more responsibility for one's own happiness, rather than looking for it in the other. Great video. They're all really interesting- thank you!
Julie Rasmussen Yeah. And I also think if both paties is after and open on bettering themselves in having a relationship,then it is good. Imperfections that exist can be work out. Its just that many people are really well conditioned over this shallow romantic side of this romanticsm.
Amazing. Kindly consider watching and subscribing to this video: th-cam.com/video/qN9LKid-fnQ/w-d-xo.html
I really like how this channel gives a solid resolution in the end.
A lot of videos nowadays just state the problems we face or just mock it, but it tells us how we can better the problems instead of just stating the obvious.
School of Life, you are great! I love your deep analysis of our animalistic needs!
This channel is a gem you can sometimes find on the internet
I very much enjoy the ending bit... “the question is not so much that relationships live up to our ideal hopes of mutual happiness but whether they are better, if only a little, than not having relationships at all.
The future of love needs us to get interested in ambivalence, that is, in the capacity to keep on thinking that something is quite good even while we are painfully conscious of it’s many, and striking day-to-day imperfections”
Thank you for all the work you do to make these videos, i recently found your channel and i really enjoy the content you share.
I love that moment when he pauses, and for a second I'm like nooo don't be over and then he goes onto another place and time and its such a relief :D
I've recently read Ovid's "ars amatoria" (The Art of Love) which was written about 1 b.C., and it amazed me beyond belief.
Our morals and manners may have changed , but there is so incredibly much still the same, after 2000 years, and keeping in consideration that this was before Christianity and the founding of the Catholic Church who had a great deal to say in the way we think about love and partnership.
In some ways it looks like we are only just getting back to the way that ancient societies dealt with love and their sexuality.
This channel has caught hold of me and it is getting consistently informative more and more. The School of Life videos are thought provoking. I have been wondering about all this and here it is. Love is indeed shaped by its history and I suppose we're unevolved species, always changing. So, looking back can help us. Not always but yes at least in love's case. Even though I question what Love really is, I do know about the theory of love that we all have been falling for, that we look up to (idea of love).
OMG this video is amazing! I genuinely couldn't had said it better myself! EXPECTATIONS ARE THE DESTRUCTIONS AND SLAVERY OF FREEDOM! There so much on this topic to explore.
Alain my man :) his philosophy makes me calm. and see things from so many different point of views which my brain - looping constantly in single thought for almost 2 years now - never thought of. cheers man. i am happy people like you still exist.
Wao, these videos are among the most educational I've seen on TH-cam. I have read philosophy books, but those are not for everyone. These videos are simple and comprehensible to most people.
This channel could change the world, step by step.
Who is the Skool of Life? Who funds these videos? Does it accepts some crowd funding?
+Tri Le i agree every bit with ur statement
Amazing. Kindly consider watching and subscribing to this video: th-cam.com/video/qN9LKid-fnQ/w-d-xo.html
This was so well compiled! Captured every single realisation I think Ive ever had from merely observing relationships around, and more!The time scale just gives it an evolutionary appearance, though I sometimes feel that our conceptions of love and romanticism are mere mental vaccilations depending on our current circumstances!
Subtitles/CC function on all of Alain de Botton's videos work perfectly, unlike the majority of TH-cam.
Love is only real when truly felt and shared. Wordless sensation from which meaning is born, surely.
You are God of Wisdom and Intellect..I wonder how people like are achieving so much so young..Congratulations for such great work..I am highly inspired and motivated by you excellent work
Thanks for the video. The answer seems to be in short that you have to be emotionally attached but consider the practicalities as well. Engage your emotional and rational sides. The second part was about ‘sacrifice’ be prepared to accept that you won’t get all you want !
real love is unconditional appreciation, everything else is just a business transaction :)
+Theo M. Unconditional love doesn't exist.
Cyogenes It doesn't exist to anyone who never experience it :)
*****
Understand when I say unconditional love doesn't exist, what I'm saying is that loving a person is almost entirely based on them being that person. If they were somebody you'd never met, then you wouldn't know them to love them. So yes, unconditional love doesn't exist.
Cyogenes who said anything about unconditional love? ;)
Theo M. Then define the difference between 'unconditional appreciation' and 'unconditional love'?
Good work. So glad you mentioned troubadour Jaufre Rudel. The proper account of his transit is the Second Crusade had begun and the seas were dangerous. As Prince of Blaye, Jaufre commanded a cavalry to march for his overlord, Louis Sept. The Crusader's destination was Antioch (next to Hodierna's Tripoli). As an Aquitaine, he protected and entertained Eleanor of Aquitaine's train. There is as much speculation that his poems spanned his desire for Eleanor and Hodierna. Eleanor would later go on to sponsor the courts of mannered love.
I love how you put clinton at 5:31
The beginning of this video fooled me into thinking it would be about the worldwide history of love and not just the west/Europe.
It was still very interesting and your hard work is appreciated.
+The School of Life I've never seen a youtube content creator apologize like this. Thats what I like about you guys
+The School of Life I think fifteen minutes is definitely long enough for a TH-cam video, and you covered plenty. I'd love to see "an Eastern history of love" as well though, because the more we look away from our own culture, the more we can learn about our natural instincts.
+The School of Life well i would like to see more ethnic philosophy and society. its all very good content. i love this channel, but its hard not to say its euro centric. i like to see myself as a non traditional learner and a channel like this is a great start. but as i mentioned before i want a more worldly and well rounded learning experience. just an idea. thanks 😊
+mankytoes Well said that would be a very interesting perspective !!
“Love is a cultural invention”
Very good. Such an antidote to the rom-coms and songs these days which force on our consciousness the idea of finding our "soulmate".
So good I'm almost crying! Great job, historically, philosophically, psychologically.
Love the graphics that go with the narrative! I also agree with the conclusion, that the choice is either imperfect relationships or no relationships.
I feel that kindness is what allows my husband and I to not wallow in the "day-to-day imperfections" of marriage.🌹If we are kind, it all resolves itself. If we are not, even small problems become big.
Question: In my relationship I often lose my self and start feeling Closed in. What can I do?
Osho : This is one of the fundamental problems of love. Every lover has to learn it, nobody knows it by birth. It only comes slowly slowly and through much pain, but the sooner it comes, the better -- that each person needs his or her own space, that we should not interfere in that space. To interfere is very natural for lovers, because they start taking the other for granted. They start thinking that they are no more separate. They don't think of 'I' and 'thou'; they start thinking of 'we'. You are that too, but only once in a while.
'We' is a rare phenomenon. Once, for a few moments, lovers come to that point where the word is meaningful, where you can say 'we', when 'I' and 'thou' disappear into each other, where boundaries overlap. But these are rare moments; they should not be taken for granted. You cannot remain 'we' twenty-four hours a day, but that's what every lover demands -- and that creates unnecessary misery. When you come close once in a while you become one, but those are rare moments, precious, to be cherished, and you cannot make them a twenty-four-hour thing.
If you try, you will destroy them; then the whole beauty will be lost. When that moment is gone, it is gone; you are again 'I' and 'thou'. You have your space, she has her space. And one has to be respectful now, that the other's space should not be in any way interfered with; it should not be trespassed. If you trespass it, you hurt the other; you start destroying the other's individuality. And because the other loves you, she or he will go on tolerating it.
But toleration is one thing; it is not something very beautiful. If the other is only tolerating it, then sooner or later the other will take revenge. The other cannot forgive you and it goes on accumulating -- one day, another day, another day.... You have interfered with a thousand and one things, then they all pile up, and then one day they explode. That's why lovers go on fighting. That fight is because of this constant interference. And when you interfere in her being, she tries to interfere in your being, and nobody feels good about it.
Thank you SoL for not condemning monogamy due to its problems. As said at the end of the video sacrifice is often the foundation to fulfillment and that can come as surprising to the best of us.
JPS' view on love as conflict is another influential part of the development of our understanding of the emotion.
Hm... You missed out the fact that the inventor of the Troubador idea of love came, actually, from Rabbi Sa'adia Gaon in his work in the 10th Century Iraq. The arrival of the Babilonian Jewish works to areas such as the Aegean, Italy and, especially, Spain and Portugal during the 10th and 11th Centuries meant that it's possible that Sa'adia's works influenced the first troubadors from France.
+GreatRedMenace You're right. I can't believe such a decisive and incontrovertible fact was negligently or willfully omitted.
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and maybe a few arabs at around the same time.
actually it was the arabs who bring romantic love to europe
"Love is NOT perfect.
Love takes hard work.
And the standards we hold it to are beautiful but self-destructive." - a quote from Me ( :
It's surreal to be watching from Tripoli Lebanon as the story is told!
On the subject of love, I just wanna say I really love this channel!
This doesn't have enough views for how good the quality of this is. Great editing and the voiceover is so clear. Nice video!
+The School of Life
I just wanted to say that this was yet another amazing video from you guys. Your channel is seriously the best channel that youtube has to offer. Thank you for providing such great content!
Amazing. Kindly consider watching and subscribing to this video: th-cam.com/video/qN9LKid-fnQ/w-d-xo.html
The end says it exactly. It's the social idea that you're "settling" for someone. People get caught up thinking that no matter what it is they're settling for it. Whether it's a spouse, a job, a lifestyle. People can't just be grateful for what they have. A spouse can go away on a trip and come back wanting a divorce because someone hit on them and their friends are telling them to do better or not settle.
This may be the best damn channel on TH-cam. Absolutely incredible.
Love is the commitment to overcome the difficulties of being together with your partner. It is not a feeling, but a choice.
So historically people only married for land, money, or power?
Mmhmm... well, that certainly seems to have been true for the few percent that had those things. But presenting it that way erases the history of the overwhelming majority. Why and how did they marry?
That was of course a rhetorical question - the source material is painfully weak on the subject of ordinary people. But what evidence there is suggests that, at least in Europe, marriage was a very informal and undramatic event - up until the catholic church decided to make marriage a sacrament, which didn't happen until the late middle ages.
But you somewhat accidentally make the interesting point that today, the notions of romance that started among the upper classes have filtered out into our society as a whole.
The lower classes used marriage as pragmatically in the pursuit of resources as the powerful - it was a good way of ensuring that they could produce a healthy next generation with the help of the efficient specialisation of mother and bread-winner
***** If we go back further to tribal hunter gatheres, many of them still marry even though they don't individually own land or have much of anything of value.
Marriage does exist in modern hunter gatherer tribes - even those that have been completely isolated until recent years. So one can definitely extrapolate from that and conclude that marriage most likely existed in the late Paleolithic. Moreover, 'family groups' is another way of naming tribes. But even within larger tribes, there are couples who are married, and there are even some polygynous marriages.
***** Which particular tribe are you referring to? For example, in the modern day Hadza, a father will not let his daughter be wed to a man she does not love. It would be worth going into more detail and enumerating the practices of each modern hunter gatherer group. Any anthropologists around? I might get to this if I get a few spare hours...
anonymouse27 Someone obviously beat me to it. :-) Good reading:
anthropology.missouri.edu/sites/default/files/11marriageplos1.pdf
Here's hoping that The School of Life can pay a bit more attention to cultures that predate Neolithic civilizations.
Interesting points in European History. I really appreciated how this video was delving into a complex subject and took into account how the european arts reflected changing ideas of love...if I could add my two cents for what love is...it would have to start with friendship!
This video is very interesting! I'm halfway through pride and prejudice, pretty way ahead of jane's time to think of marriage is about love.
To you I could trust the fast-closed depths of my own mind
and as friends we have been joined in trust
by long acquaintance
by shared initiations of the gods
all in one bond of faith
one single heart
united in one mind
4th cent. C.E. inscription,
Praetextatus praising his wife Paulina
Mr. De Botton, you are brilliant.
I love you Alain de Botton 😍😍😍😍 your voice is everything
I'd love to see one of these videos take on gender. If love is an emotion *shaped by its history*, gender as a societal/cultural construct is even more so.
Nope. Gender is evolutionary. It is biological. For humans it is decided between 4th and 6th months of foetal development. It is controlled by many factors including genetics expressed in X or Y chromosomes and even the presence of testosterone or estrogen secreting cysts in the mother's body which affects the hormone levels of the foetus. We are born with our gender. Atleast a large part of it. Surely culture too does its part.
@@sreejithhh All it will take is a google search to show that this is incorrect. You're talking about sex. Magikarp Magikarp was specifically talking about gender.
Hats off. Super great work!
such a good video.... Alain you're very wise and original !
This is pure gold. Congrats
"...the dream of love survives but it disappoints constantly" (that's so accurate).
Love is definitely a skill and NEEDS to be practiced. After all, the heart is a muscle! ;)
+April Sunshine Brain does all the work when it comes to love.
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this video is everything I need in life
This is the western idea of "love".
Akoa Nee As they say west is best.
Actually, it was a conclusion based off of the history that was provided.
yeah well Fuck the rest.
yeah well Fuck the rest.
yeah well Fuck the rest.
I agree with this conclusion about the need to get interested in ambiguity, and how relationship, even with it's imperfections, is still more interesting than unceasing solitude. I'm a reforming idealist, and have been seeing the necessity of reforming my attitude since my last serious relationship foundered on the rocks. Since then, the only relationship I've had the interest to follow has alot of ambiguity , which I've learned both to accept and to find as stimulating fodder for self reflection. It's not easy, but it is interesting.
maybe the focus needs to be in what you yourself can give to a relationship rather than what you expect the other to give to you. that seems to be one of the reasons why many marriages in my country survives. hello from the philippines!
This could have been huge viral hit. What is needed is to cut out just the pride and prejudice part and name it something like : how pride and prejudice defined love for modern world. Now the video is bit long and full of things people are not familiar at all. Pride and prejudice part was very good.
and like many important and new ideas that have an impact on today's world, Love began in the middle east and was developed in Europe only. No one in any other part of the world had even considered falling in love and writing a poem or song about it until it was introduced to different cultures during the era of European expansion.
Wow, love is as old as time. School of Life have you ever looked at it not from your "OWN" point of view? There's so much more to tell and other people around the world that were here from the start. There is no mention of them but thank you for sharing your quest.
Shouldn't this video be called marriage instead of love?
Jonas Lundholm does not need to be called marriage, marriage seems to be on the way out.
wow. loved your take on love. How wonderfully explained. And keenly concluded. I stop blabbering now and dive in my thoughts..
If I were like a supreme leader of this world or something I would make this channel mandatory in every high school of every world.
Every video is an eye-opener to me. Thank you!
I wouldn't say that LOVE is different but more the way it is expressed...
I agree that expectations play a very big role in the divorce rates however, the root cause in my opinion is that people do not know what love really is. Do not define it and a result have false expectations from it.
In my view love is when you want your loved one to be happy. And a successful union results when both lovers feel that way towards one another, in other words Love needs to be mutual and reciprocal in this way. Sacrifice is implied here too, since sometimes in order to make your partner happy you need to make sacrifices. When this is reciprocal, it all works. However, when it is not, the relationship will eventually fail sooner or later and people will get hurt. So to avoid splits and failed relationships thus both partners should strive to find a reciprocal partner and resist other factors which make us form a relationship before getting in to a long term one such as marriage.
I don't intend to get into any religious arguments here. I just want to share my point of view.
The subject of love has baffled humanity since the dawn of time. This video does a good job at showing this.
For me, Love, like the Apostle Paul put it in the Bible, " beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." It's a higher state of being.
Jesus Christ is the perfect example of love. His whole life was devoted to us. He was rejected and mocked by those he wished to serve, yet he loved us. He saw all of our imperfections, yet he loved us. If you want to discover love for what it truly is, read and study the teachings of Jesus Christ.
You shouldn't put love on a pedestal.
Love is an inherently powerful feature of one's own identity.
Possibly an ever-present water mark of perpetual rising.
Our seas of understanding translating into vision.
The vehicle driven to explore the realms between A and B.
The expression volunteering the ink fixated inside our grooved finger prints.
The gratitude for tribulations that is circulated within our braided blood streams.
The mystery resting inside the purest laughter.
The selfless yellow sun surrendering for the captivity of the transparent jar.
Love is the answer unearthed as so simple,
that it complicates our relationship with reasoning.
How perfect.
The desire to reproduce is instinctual. Romantic love is a device of poetics and literature.
MGTOW MAP MAKER Lust does not equal love. But then, some people have never had the experience of falling in love.
Some people have never had the experience of taking MDMA and experiencing the nearly identical neurological chemical reaction. There's nothing "magical" about "love" or "mania".
Who mentioned 'magic'? I don't know what taking MDMA feels like, and that's irrelevant to the distinction I was making between lust and love. Knowing the likely evolutionary antecedents to a behavior takes nothing away from the power of a felt experience.
But since you brought up 'magic', here's one from Einstein:
"There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle."
"and that's irrelevant to the distinction I was making between lust and love."
The only difference between lust and love is time, and they both describe a transient chemical reaction in the brain.
Do your research. Lust and love are different kinds of states in the body / mind. Which is not to say that one cannot feel loving lust as a combination of these. Moreover, there are many kinds of love, as I'm sure you know.
It is not only the brain, but the whole CNS, endocrine system, etc. The whole body. Moreover, while some people fall out of love, others stay in love over decades. Check out studies comparing brain scans of old couples with young couples who have just fallen in love. I believe Helen Fisher talked about some of this at TED.
Cool. Well done! Like all the ideas and the design and voice. As an artist, love all the art, too.
Now, where are my Jane Austen books? Haven't read them for years....
Been married 50+ years...
and all my personal experience and extensive reading have lead me to the same conclusion as the video: Don't expect too much! Ideal is impossible! Good enough is good enough!
Another great video. Wonderfully illustrated.
it's a whole new point of view.thank you
These videos are like a sip of fresh water to a thirsty mouth
Thank you !
Beautiful work !💫🌏💫
Thanks for the different courses of love through time, School of Life.
Wow! That's a hell of a channel, the end of the video hit me good! Told me what I wanted and needed to hear all along, very well...
What about history of war?
The Napoleonist Crash Course has covered that.
Sérgio SC However The School of Life is making different kind
Sérgio SC I like his approach more not just facts but opinion of them and in bit sized pieces. To be honest do u remember anything from crash course.
+Gavin Reid (GBRGavin) Agreed, School of Life shows the philosophical aspect
This is so inspiring I wish I knew you people before my divorce
"Love is a cultural invention." I see the good old monster of postmodernism creeping in.
top notch video.
The part about how economic values and trade dictated marriage is exactly how Karl Marx described Bourgeois Marriage.
That's an amazing history lesson, i probably need to re-watch the video again
Could you please do a video about freedom? The meaning changed a lot through the centuries and is still controversial nowadays! (Your channel is great btw)
personaly id argue that love is simply a set of behaviours that aided the survival and propagation of the seascapes and nothing more then this. that is to say that given the massive amount of resources required to have offspring that survive monogamous relationships where the most efficient way propagate humanity. as such love as described by the romantics and more widely by the hippy groups dose not truly exist but is a trick of the mind to help the seascapes survive
The grand moral of the story...... Love is to each persons to define together honestly communicating at every turn in their relationships, why and how they are together and for what? There is just no honesty - there is just edge of the sword anxiety. Love is just a word, feelings are just illusions, dreams are just dust. Most people in the world have no idea about anything, they just follow the crowds and change their minds at the drop of a hat, no integrity and no rootedness in anything but all superficial, especially the ones who claim the are deep and profound. Stay clear. To each their own, that’s what love is, don’t follow trends and crowds ha !
Absolutely love this series!
This history is interesting because it shows the origin of love from centuries. Good work. Marriage should be the consequences of love.
Love is about giving not receiving; marriage is about compromise and sacrifice for shared goals. Marriage is about personal growth through learning and shared experiences, the bad as well as the good, anticipating the needs of others , and putting theirs first. What do the Belgians think love is, and Americans ?
Polygamy is such a dark truth to our species. After learning all of this I feel like I was fed some Hallmark dream my whole life when typically more than not; love fails. A understanding of love as I learned here will allow me to better guide myself in this extensional loneliness of reality.
SUCH A EURO CENTRIC VIEW OF THE WORLD
I love your channel , it helps me a lot. Thank you guys!
love is not an ideea though we make a lot of ideeas around it. Romantic love as you so like to categorise it, has been with us from the beginning. Our customs regarding mariage and it's link to love have changed with our societies. Some of us don't care so much about the "beneficial' as you. the skill you speak about reffers to relationships (the house where love sometimes lives ) and not love.
Upper Class marriage did have pressure re land and power (because they had some), but even there it was often remarked that a loveless marriage was undesirable (but not an object to marriage). It's one thing for love to not be primary, but it's another to pretend that it was simply always understood as entirely separate.