Lucretius Carus left a great comment on my article, How to Use Money to Get Girls, in which he details the understanding of the Ancient Greeks on “love”. In contrast, modern languages do not have the same level of differentiation, leading to a lot of misunderstanding if not downright confusion. I warmly recommend reading his comment, even if your interest in languages from a bygone era is somewhat limited. Among others, you will learn that Greek men apparently were able to much better capture that they were dealing with a gold-digging whore than today’s Western man ever could.
This is a great hands-on article! Particularly the truth of “In the end, all women trade looks = youth & beauty for re$ource$ (i.e. „a guy who has his life together“). It has been so fascinating to me that this simple truth, which would make life for many a man so much easier, is being continuously surpressed in favor of some “romantic” dribble with no connection to reality.
Having a background in Classic languages, this could certainly be cleared up if we used the correct words for the aspect of “love” that is applicable in a given situation. Ancient Greek is a great tool for this, because it has up to seven different words for our general term of “love” – and I plan to further explore this issue in an upcoming guest post on Sleazy’s blog.
E.g. most men dream of once meeting that ONE woman, who would “love them purely for themselves”. The Greek word for this kind of selfless love is ἀγάπη (agapé). But this love is only to be had in communion with that entity that some people call “God”. It is impossible for a woman to provide this kind of “love”, yet so many men tend to wish for exactly that – and thus set themselves up for failure. No woman ever marries for “love” = ἀγάπη. It’s absolutely impossible, and with this frame of mind should not surprise anyone either. If a man hopes for it despite all of this, he will most likely fall into the thirst trap that women can embody.
The kind of love women can provide though are either φιλαυτία (“philautia”), which is positive self-love (even though modern feminism teaches women to effectively hate themselves and trying to morph themselves into some kind of „defective men“), or στοργή (“storgi”), which describes the kind of love parents have for their children (even though if you consider that the vast majority of divorces are initiated by women and the traumatic pain this often inflicts on their very children you might doubt whether such women can really love as “storgi”).
Then we have φιλία (“philia”), which is deep, virtuous friendship, partnership and teamwork. If you have a woman in your life, that you love and there is very good chemistry between each other and you are able to really support each other, then you have realized “philia”.
Finally we have ἔρως (“eros”), which is attraction-based, passionate sexual love between a couple. Closely connected to it is ερωτοτροπία (“erototropia”), which is playful flirting, making everyday life more fun and sensual. Women will essentially crave you in this kind of “erotic” way, if you have good genes (looks, but character traits as well) which they want to get for breeding offspring. They will experience burning desire to get those genes of yours and will offer you timely occasions where you can actually do so. This means that for us men, women *are* sex objects and our principal objective in them *is* to fuck them. This means that in this regard women provide access to sexual intercourse – even though that sex does not have to be special or fulfilling in any transcendent sense, i.e towards ἀγάπη, even though this is an approach that practitioners of “tantra sex” like to market to gullible Westerners. With sex ἔρως will also lead to the procreation of offspring – and again, this doesn’t necessarily have to have the potential of a transcendental experience.
The other crucial aspect for women is the provider and $ecurity element of “love”, which could best be translated with the Greek term πράγμα (“pragma”), which describes a longstanding, committal kind of association. As this article deals with how to leverage money for love, it also expands on the fact that the genetic attraction of ἔρως cannot be substituted or the lack of it leveled up with πράγμα or financial $ecurity – simply because a woman cannot fuck your purse or bank account. It has no genetic value for her. This is crucial to understand (and often bitter, becasue it is so anti-romantic). Ideally the guy with the hot genes has also money to spend on her long-term. But she might as well get the ἔρως-factor from one guy, and the πράγμα-financial $ecurity from another one! Both are functions of “love”, but if we use more precise terms we might get a more realistic view on it.
Depressing
Spanish has two words for love, which is at least one more than English does, but far from the scope all those Greek words managed to capture.
Well, we have a number of terms for different kinds of love in English, they’re just not commonly used (maybe not even commonly known?). In psychology they’re classified as companionate love, familial love, romantic love, and so on.
Agape I think only exists from God to man. I don’t think human beings are capable of it in its true form.
Some women use the bizarre dichotomy of saying that they “love” but are not “in love” with someone. This means that they “love” their provider cuck for his resources, but they are not “in love” with him because he does not get her juices flowing. Supposedly, they are “in love” with Chad but do not “love” him, but I do not think I have come across this usage. If Chad had money, they surely would both love him and be in love with him, at least for the time being.
@Manuel
Surely only 2? I assume you mean “amor” and “querer”? But we have other words for the types of love LC describes
Eros would more accurately be “deseo”, I think.
This is in proper spanish, of course, not taking into account slang terms like “calentar” 😉
@Yarara: I don’t know, “desear” is kind of very particular in this usage. You can only use it if you’re horny and the other person reciprocates, in all other cases it sounds ridiculous/out of place/creepy.
@Karl: are you talking about mostly forgotten, archaic terms like those used for animals in groups (as in a “murder” of crows)? If so, please provide an example.
Manuel S:
I gave three examples. 🙂
@Karl: let me be more precise: give me some examples of single words, not multiword expressions, they weren’t the point.
Anyway, the kind of love that IMO is what we should look for in a female partner is philia, with of course a touch of eros for the first decade or so, one would hope. Afterwards, old successful couples are all philia, from what I’ve seen. Pragma has to allow all of this to happen though.
@ Karl: I think the problem with two word combinations like “committal love”, “romantic love” (or similar comparable compound nouns from other languages) is that – compound or not – they still include the word “love” or “-love”, which is such an elusive word and its interpretations cause so much trouble.
The liberating aspect about ancient Greek is, that all those words denote the various aspects of “love”, and therefore are all completely different words. They look and sohnd different, you cannot mix them up or dilute the differeners between their meaning. This makes it easier to just accept as a fact what they symbolize.
Manuel S:
I specifically said “terms,” not “words.”
Whether a language generally uses multi-word terms or single words to denote concepts are often a product more of the language itself more than anything else.
For example, in Germanic languages, creating new words from combining others is very common, which can be contrasted with English. Like in English, you say “evening manager,” but in Swedish you say “kvällschef.” It’s basically the exact same meaning, and doesn’t signify any difference in value or mindset. Just a function of the language itself.
German is generally similar to Swedish in this regard as well, though I don’t know about that particular word.
—
Lucretius Carus:
I can see your point. I can’t say for sure that it’s wrong, but I’m not convinced it’s entirely correct, either. I believe that for most people, there’s probably no confusion between, say, romantic love and platonic love.
I think issues are more likely to arise when it’s not clear from the context what you mean when you just use the word “love” – we know what kind of love you mean if you say you love your sister (unless you’re from Alabama), but we might not know what you mean if you say you love your female friend or co-worker.
Which is why English speakers usually add “like a friend” if need be, heh. I have to admit that a solution like the Ancient Greek one would prevent that issue. 🙂
I think this is exactly the point: Of course you can use descriptions if a language lacks a particular term. However, as a consequence thought processes are almost inevitably muddled. Requiring a description to make up for the lack of an existing concept also implies that there is a certain deficiency in how the world is perceived by speakers of that language. I do not mean this in a merely philosophical way. In particular when you contrast German with English, it seems that the latter is pretty imprecise. Of course, I can pretend that the German “Männerbund” is translated as “male society”, but this is definitely not the case. The English term is at best a weak approximation to the German concept.
@Karl et @Aaron: exactly. Or the well known by English speakers “Schadenfreude”. If you need to more or less describe the thing you’re trying to convey, it defeats the purpose.
It happens both ways. I (and a lot of normies as well) have a hard time not using Spanglish when I try to translate the concepts of “cringe” or “second-guessing”, for example. No one-word Spanish equivalents for those concepts in modern usage.
I’ve also heard that Kampf, as in Mein Kampf does not directly translate to “struggle” in English. That it means something much stronger.
This is indeed the case. “Kampf” can be a fight, a struggle, or, and this is the double-meaning of the title, an extended battle, be it with yourself or the outside world. There is also the term “Kämpfer”, i.e. a guy who strives towards a goal. The English term “struggler”, i.e. someone who struggles, conveys something entirely different.
Exactly, Aaron. No American would want to called a “struggler.” Even though most of us are that indeed 😂
So, “Kampf” was given the same treatment as “jihad”, but for different reasons.
Aaron:
Yeah, I meant that English actually has a term, and does not need to use descriptive language. I think I made that unclear by bringing in the “like a friend”-thing. That’s my error; sorry for muddying the waters.
The term I was thinking of is “platonic love.”
Manuel S:
Schadenfreude is a good example of a word that didn’t have an equivalent term in English, so that’s a bit different. Platonic love, however, is an English term.
Of course we could quibble about Schadenfreude being a single word and platonic love being two words, but then we’re back to what I wrote earlier about the peculiarities of the language. Schadenfreude is actually a combination of two words as well (“Schade” and “Freude”), it’s just that the German language often compounds words while English usually doesn’t.
Would the English term somehow be better or clearer if it were “platoniclove” instead of “platonic love” ? Of course not; the only difference is a space.
GLAS & Aaron:
Agree about “Kampf.” It’s like the Swedish word “kamp.” If there is a direct English equivalent, I don’t know of it.
“Platonic love” is an established term, so this is a concept that clearly exists in English. However, it seems that tspeakers of English are still at a disadvantage overall as you diminish the meaning of the word love. I think Ancient Greek clearly has the upper hand here.
Aaron:
Hmm. I kinda see it, and kinda don’t. My objection is mainly against the notion that designating subtypes of a concept would diminish the meaning of it.
For example, if we keep looking at Schadenfreude, does the word/concept diminish the meaning of the word “Freude” ? I’m not convinced that it does, so then if the concept of “platonic love” does indeed diminish the meaning of the word “love,” there must be something else that causes the diminishment.
This is probably no a good example. You can assume that Schadenfreude is a very common term. Even little kids know it. In contrast, “platonic love” is not. You can probably easily find adult speakers of English who have no idea what this is, which is why they say that they love someone “like a friend”.
If its of any relevance, there’s the term “Queerplatonic” by the AVEN community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queerplatonic_relationship
This reminds me of the thread I started back in the day of je nais se qoui. No English equivalent, so we borrowed it from the French. In fact, I think Aaron said it doesn’t even exist. It just means a hot guy.
I think the closest on English would be “suave,” but u would have to be good looking and well dressed in the first place to pull it off.
When women speak of a “je-ne-sais-quoi” they normally speak of a hot guy but this term is used much more broadly. Probably the French came up with it because they were a bit more polite than some others. Court culture, including eating manners, emerged at the French court, for instance. Similarly, ballet is a French invention. All of this is the pastime of people who are very comfortable and are shielded from the realities of life.
Aaron:
Sorry, but I’m gonna have to disagree with you there. Virtually every adult native English-speaker is going to know the term “platonic love.” It’d be the rare exception who doesn’t.
The reason people use expressions like loving someone “like a friend” has more to do with the term “platonic love” sounding kinda highbrow, and conceited when used in regular conversation.
I did not make a distinction based on age. German children know the term “Schadenfreude”, basically regardless of social class. In contrast, I am not so sure whether the children of urban gentlemen know of “platonic love”. In the music these people produce, this concept also does not seem to have a place, albeit I may simply not be familiar with the finer points of rap music.
I’m not sure many of the urban gentlemen of America are familiar with any concept of love, to be honest, heh. 🙂
On “eros”: Even though sex is a cool thing and feels great to me in most cases, almost always after sex if felt the post-nut-clarity sensation of “And this was really all to it there is? Was it really worth the entire investment of time, energy and attention?” This sense of disapoointment sometimes can also manifest itself as subjectively experience of guilt.
Now, one highly positive side-effect of this knowledge of Greek terms already while in university (I actually studied Classics) was, that it helped me e.g. to better not search for the kind of love X in a place where only the quality of love Y only ever exists.
It seems to me that such lack of clarity, and the illusions it can cause, can plague many people and in many different regards: To desperately search or hustle away for something special one hopes to gain or achieve – in vain, thus to never get it because nobody ever told you that this special thing simply doesn’t exist at the very place you are labouring away for it.