Thursday, April 19, 2007
Sunday, April 01, 2007
The Relational Nature
What is love and why do we practice it? Why do we so desire the intimacy of others? Why are we so relational as humans. There is not one person in this world who cannot acknowledge their ardent need for relationship with another. One could place themselves on a desert island removed from all human contact and still after many many years find themselves overwhelmed with the desire for it.
Take for example the movie "Cast Away." (with Tom Hanks). Hank's character finds himself trapped on a desert island with only a picture of his partner. Coming across a volleyball Hank's character assigns a personality to the ball and calls it 'Wilson' (after the ball maker's name). Amazingly we see the development of a closeness, even protection of a volleyball. He even brings the ball along for the escape from the island.
Some might argue that our desire for relationship has become hard-wired to our genetic code, creating predisposed associative developments in our brain: A sort of association of patterns within the brain's network developed opportunistically over generations of persons who have carried their genetic predisposition into perpetuity where other predispositions have not been so fortunate to continue. This argument rings true to some degree, being that such a genetic code would certainly find itself more easily predisposed to relationships and therefore potential procreative tendencies.
Others would probably argue that these attributes were purposed to be created in such a way. Perhaps God himself intelligently created humanity to possess the associative condition of relational tendencies for the purpose of having a creation that could by its very nature be inclined not only to long for each other, but more importantly to long for him.
Take for example the movie "Cast Away." (with Tom Hanks). Hank's character finds himself trapped on a desert island with only a picture of his partner. Coming across a volleyball Hank's character assigns a personality to the ball and calls it 'Wilson' (after the ball maker's name). Amazingly we see the development of a closeness, even protection of a volleyball. He even brings the ball along for the escape from the island.
Some might argue that our desire for relationship has become hard-wired to our genetic code, creating predisposed associative developments in our brain: A sort of association of patterns within the brain's network developed opportunistically over generations of persons who have carried their genetic predisposition into perpetuity where other predispositions have not been so fortunate to continue. This argument rings true to some degree, being that such a genetic code would certainly find itself more easily predisposed to relationships and therefore potential procreative tendencies.
Others would probably argue that these attributes were purposed to be created in such a way. Perhaps God himself intelligently created humanity to possess the associative condition of relational tendencies for the purpose of having a creation that could by its very nature be inclined not only to long for each other, but more importantly to long for him.
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