The Ancient Greeks’ 6 Words for Love (And Why Knowing Them Can Change Your Life)

The Ancient Greeks’ 6 Words for Love (And Why Knowing Them Can Change Your Life)

Looking for an antidote to modern culture's emphasis on romantic love? Perhaps we can learn from the diverse forms of emotional attachment prized by the ancient Greeks.

Today's coffee culture has an incredibly sophisticated vocabulary. Do you want a cappuccino, an espresso, a skinny latte, or maybe an iced caramel macchiato?

Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks.

The ancient Greeks were just as sophisticated in the way they talked about love, recognizing six different varieties. They would have been shocked by our crudeness in using a single word both to whisper "l love you" over a candlelit meal and to casually sign an email "lots of love."

So what were the six loves known to the Greeks? And how can they inspire us to move beyond our current addiction to romantic love, which has 94 percent of young people hoping—but often failing—to find a unique soul mate who can satisfy all their emotional needs?

1. Eros, or sexual passion

The first kind of love was eros, named after the Greek god of fertility, and it represented the idea of sexual passion and desire. But the Greeks didn't always think of it as something positive, as we tend to do today. In fact, eros was viewed as a dangerous, fiery, and irrational form of love that could take hold of you and possess you—an attitude shared by many later spiritual thinkers, such as the Christian writer C.S. Lewis.

Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks. Which is odd, because losing control is precisely what many people now seek in a relationship. Don't we all hope to fall "madly" in love?

2. Philia, or deep friendship

The second variety of love was philia or friendship, which the Greeks valued far more than the base sexuality of eros. Philia concerned the deep comradely friendship that developed between brothers in arms who had fought side by side on the battlefield. It was about showing loyalty to your friends, sacrificing for them, as well as sharing your emotions with them. (Another kind of philia, sometimes called storge, embodied the love between parents and their children.)

We can all ask ourselves how much of this comradely philia we have in our lives. It's an important question in an age when we attempt to amass "friends" on Facebook or "followers" on Twitter—achievements that would have hardly impressed the Greeks.

3. Ludus, or playful love

This was the Greeks' idea of playful love, which referred to the affection between children or young lovers. We've all had a taste of it in the flirting and teasing in the early stages of a relationship. But we also live out our ludus when we sit around in a bar bantering and laughing with friends, or when we go out dancing.

Dancing with strangers may be the ultimate ludic activity, almost a playful substitute for sex itself. Social norms may frown on this kind of adult frivolity, but a little more ludus might be just what we need to spice up our love lives.

4. Agape, or love for everyone

The fourth love, and perhaps the most radical, was agape or selfless love. This was a love that you extended to all people, whether family members or distant strangers. Agape was later translated into Latin as caritas, which is the origin of our word "charity."

C.S. Lewis referred to it as "gift love," the highest form of Christian love. But it also appears in other religious traditions, such as the idea of mettāor "universal loving kindness" in Theravāda Buddhism.

There is growing evidence that agape is in a dangerous decline in many countries. Empathy levels in the U.S. have declined sharply over the past 40 years, with the steepest fall occurring in the past decade. We urgently need to revive our capacity to care about strangers.

5. Pragma, or longstanding love

Another Greek love was the mature love known as pragma. This was the deep understanding that developed between long-married couples.

Pragma was about making compromises to help the relationship work over time, and showing patience and tolerance.

The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that we expend too much energy on "falling in love" and need to learn more how to "stand in love." Pragmais precisely about standing in love—making an effort to give love rather than just receive it. With about a third of first marriages in the U.S. ending through divorce or separation in the first 10 years, the Greeks would surely think we should bring a serious dose of pragma into our relationships.

6. Philautia, or love of the self

The Greek's sixth variety of love was philautia or self-love. And the clever Greeks realized there were two types. One was an unhealthy variety associated with narcissism, where you became self-obsessed and focused on personal fame and fortune. A healthier version enhanced your wider capacity to love.

The idea was that if you like yourself and feel secure in yourself, you will have plenty of love to give others (as is reflected in the Buddhist-inspired concept of "self-compassion"). Or, as Aristotle put it, "All friendly feelings for others are an extension of a man's feelings for himself."

The ancient Greeks found diverse kinds of love in relationships with a wide range of people—friends, family, spouses, strangers, and even themselves. This contrasts with our typical focus on a single romantic relationship, where we hope to find all the different loves wrapped into a single person or soul mate. The message from the Greeks is to nurture the varieties of love and tap into its many sources. Don't just seek eros, but cultivate philia by spending more time with old friends, or develop ludus by dancing the night away.

Moreover, we should abandon our obsession with perfection. Don't expect your partner to offer you all the varieties of love, all of the time (with the danger that you may toss aside a partner who fails to live up to your desires). Recognize that a relationship may begin with plenty of erosand ludus, then evolve toward embodying more pragma or agape.

The diverse Greek system of loves can also provide consolation. By mapping out the extent to which all six loves are present in your life, you might discover you've got a lot more love than you had ever imagined—even if you feel an absence of a physical lover.

It's time we introduced the six varieties of Greek love into our everyday way of speaking and thinking. If the art of coffee deserves its own sophisticated vocabulary, then why not the art of love?

Roman Krznaric is an Australian cultural thinker and cofounder of The School of Life in London. This article is based on his new book, How Should We Live? Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life (BlueBridge).

The end of the human race?

The end of the human race?

By Rabbi Hillel Goldberg

THE END of the human race as we know it might be upon us. I refer not to some very distant, natural evolution of the human species — perhaps possible, perhaps not; in any event, unknowable to us. Rather, I refer to three prospective human interventions in the nature of humanity that, if let to proceed unfettered, will have far reaching consequences, namely, an end of the human race as we know it.

These three interventions are a radical tethering of humans to computers, a radical change in genetics, and a redefinition of gender. What each of these interventions have in common is speed. It takes far less time to effectuate radical change than at any time in history.

What these interventions have in common in a much narrower sense — the sense in which they are presented here — is that each is more complex than a column can allow for. But if we do not begin to face these issues, history may overtake us in ways we do not expect. So, for the sake of stimulating discussion, investigation and, possibly, action, here goes.

ROBOTIC, computerized humans. If you think that human beings, with their ceaselessly moving thumbs, with trillions of electronic messages sent or received daily, with the exponential jump in commerce and research online, is revolutionary, consider this: Human beings not separated from their computers, but unified with them. Unified — not metaphorically, not behaviorally, not visually, but literally.

Imagine a day in which the computer is plugged into the brain or attached to other parts of the body. Imagine a day in which preprogrammed instructions drive not just a computerized robot, but the human being attached to it.

Imagine a day in which human behavior cannot proceed absent the input of a computerized robot directly into the biochemistry of the human being.

A dissolving line between the human and the robotic is not science fiction, but just around the corner.

Unfettered extension of the use of computerized robots from measuring to intervening in bodily functions will, no doubt, be presented as a boon to health. Perhaps it will indeed be a boon to the health of individual organs or cellular or intracellular processes. But along with these health advantages will loom a new shape to humanity — human beings no longer blessed with the free choice to take medicines, or not to take them, or to undergo procedures or surgeries, or not to; but human beings ruled by decisions that will be made by a computer, based on initial instructions programmed into it.

Look forward to intimations of this radical change in humanity as the range and sophistication of robots gain speed. The time to begin thinking about the ethics of the combination of robotic instruments and human beings is now.

GENETICS. David Baltimore and Paula Berg, both Nobel laureates, inform us in the Wall Street Journal (April 8) that the old-line racist nonsense of eugenics is now a technological possibility.

Hitler and Mengele thought they could breed a superior race. They did not know how; they only knew how to torture and murder. Today, however, it is now possible to alter not just somatic cells, the effects of which are not transmitted to the next generation, but germ-line cells. Changes to these cells unalterably affect all future generations.

In what surely earns an award for understatement, Baltimore and Berg write: " . . . the decisions to alter a germ-line cell may be valuable to offspring, but as norms change and the altered inheritance is carried into new genetic combinations, uncertain and possibly undesirable consequences may ensue." Indeed.

But still more. " . . . germ-line modification would involve attempts to modify inheritance for the purpose of enhancing an offspring's physical characteristics or intellectual capability. . . . choosing to transmit voluntary changes to future generations involves a value judgment on the part of parents, a judgment that future generations might view differently." Indeed.

The authors ask for voluntary genome alteration to be outlawed at the present state of knowledge due to the unexpected consequences of a given gene alteration, which, if I understand this arcane expertise, is irreversible.

The counterargument is that germ-line alteration could prevent the transmission of a disease to offspring. However, the authors argue, there are different ways to achieve the same result without the risks entailed by germ-line genetic alteration.

The authors related that at a critical conference on genetics back in 1975, germ-line alteration seemed so far into the future that it was not seriously discussed. Now, human beings must choose whether to allow technology to march on unfettered by human values.

GENDER. Genesis 1:26 states, "And G0D created Man in His image, in the image of G0D He created him; male and female He created them."

Accept or reject the biblical account as you like, but it has hardly been surprising for millennia that human beings come in two distinct genders.

Later, in the second chapter of Genesis, it says that G0D formed man from the dust of the earth (2:7), that it was not good for the man to be alone (2:18), that G0D built woman from a rib of man (2:21-22), that G0D then said, "let a man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and they shall become one flesh" (2:24). Again, take the biblical story as you like, but starting here and continuing down through the religious and secular literature of humanity, the presupposition has always been two ineradicably distinct genders.

Perhaps no more. If a person can legally and socially define his or her gender by how he or she feels, then gender becomes a meaningless marker: feeling, not biology. This alters humanity as we have known it.

Some think this is wonderful — an expansion of human rights. Others observe that in both its legal and narrative segments, and not just in a verse here or there, the Hebrew Bible posits the reality and value of two distinct genders. Is Genesis, in specifying these two genders, and thus in saying that the human being is created "in the image of G0D," still relevant?

The prospect of a genderless, or a gender-fluid, humanity is not overwrought. A quarter of a century, short as it might be in the span of human history, has proven to be more than an adequate time span for a major evolution of human attitudes toward sexual orientation. Gender could be next. Genetics could be next. Robotic, computerized human beings could be next.

I DO NOT think it is too late for society to ask whether this is the future it wants. One thing is clear. This is a future that, if won, will be won in small, seemingly harmless steps. If this is the future you want, welcome these steps. Advance them. If this is not the future you want, do not be fooled, for example, that a school kid winning the right to use the bathroom of the sex that is opposite to his biological gender is an oddity. Not responded to, small steps like these will determine the social, genetic and medical future of humanity.

People speak of the great changes in civilization coming due to alterations in racial composition, or indistinct national borders, or nuclear proliferation. Large as these changes loom, they are not the major issues on the horizon of humanity.

Race to me is a purely neutral category; the racial composition of society is of no concern to me, one way or the other. Nationalism to me is still an important determinant of freedom, but admittedly not an inherent value; while nuclear proliferation is a critical risk to the human condition. But even if nationalism and nuclear proliferation go in the wrong direction — even then, short of the actual use of a nuclear weapon, these changes would be nothing compared to the possibilities of human variation due to radical new approaches to robotics, genetics and gender.

One thing I think we can all agree on: These radical interventions in the human condition shouldn't just "happen," shouldn't be allowed to catch us, unawares. If we want one or more of these interventions, we should guide them. If we do not want one or more of them, we should oppose them

Nations’ ticket to prosperity is to pay attention to the future

By Walter E. Williams

Gaza is home to Palestinian people, who have suffered injustices and have a history of legitimate grievances against both Israel and Arab governments. If there’s one immutable fact of life, it is that history cannot be changed or controlled. What can be changed and controlled is the future. That points to the most tragic aspect of people in poor territories such as Gaza — focusing attention on the past, which they can do nothing about, and not paying enough attention to the future.

In the case of Palestinians, the first order of business is to recognize that they cannot militarily force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and meet other territorial demands. Therefore, they should cease all military and terrorist actions against Israel. If there were peaceful coexistence, there would be reciprocity and accommodation on Israel’s behalf. The major accession would be for Israel to end its military blockade of Gaza’s port and border. The most important first step for Palestinian people is to recognize that they have been betrayed by their leadership and that their destiny truly lies in their hands.

A real-world example that Gaza might follow is that of Hong Kong. At the time of liberation from Japanese control in 1945, Hong Kong was a poor colony of Great Britain. Geographically, Hong Kong is little more than a rock off the coast of China with few natural resources. Hong Kong’s wealth was its plentiful supply of cheap labor, which attracted many foreign manufacturing firms. Hong Kong’s experience of going from a Third World colony in 1945 to having a gross domestic product per capita that ranks among the world’s 10 highest in 2015 can serve as a useful blueprint for both Gaza and poor countries around the world. The basic ingredients for Hong Kong’s progress were not foreign aid and other handouts from Western nations but instead law and order and a free market. A similar story can be told about Singapore. Both rank in the top 10 in wealth and the top two in economic freedom.

Despite decades of economic aid, many recipient nations are worse off now than they were before they first received development assistance. What foreign aid usually accomplishes is to enable tyrants to retain power, letting them be able to pay off cronies and buy military equipment to suppress their people and engage in military ventures. Foreign aid also enables tyrants to set up multimillionand even multibillion-dollar personal accounts in foreign banks.

Today’s Third World poverty is mostly self-inflicted — indigenously created. The growth-promoting characteristics of the non-poor countries that are all but absent in poor countries are protected private property rights, personal liberty, enforcement of contracts, rule of law and a market- oriented economic system.

A country need not be rich to create these wealth-enhancing institutions. That’s much of the story of the U.S. In 1776, we were a poor nation, but we established the institutional structure to become rich. That institutional structure attracted not only foreign investment but talented, hardworking immigrants, as well. Contrast that with today’s poor countries, whose policies and institutional structure do just the opposite — repel investment and export their most talented and ambitious people to freer and richer countries.

People with limited understanding make the mistake of making a link between economic freedom and democracy. There is no such necessary link. India, for example, politically is a democracy. Economically, it is mostly unfree and poor, ranking 128th on the 2015 Index of Economic Freedom. There are countries much higher on the index that do not have much of a history of democracy, such as Chile, ranking seventh, and Taiwan, 14th, yet these countries are far wealthier than some of their more democratic counterparts. Why? It’s because their economic systems are free or mostly free, something that is not guaranteed by a democratic political system.

The bottom line for why some countries are rich while others are poor is best-explained by the amount of economic freedom.

How do you proceed when everything is a crime?

How do you proceed when everything is a crime?

By George Will

What began as a trickle has become a stream that could become a cleansing torrent. Criticisms of the overcriminalization of American life might catalyze an appreciation of the toll the administrative state is taking on the criminal justice system, and liberty generally.

In 2007, professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School recounted a game played by some prosecutors. One would name a famous person – “say, Mother Teresa or John Lennon” – and other prosecutors would try to imagine “a plausible crime for which to indict him or her,” usually a felony plucked from “the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield.” Did the person make “false pretenses on the high seas”? Is he guilty of “injuring a mailbag”?

In 2009, Harvey Silverglate’s book “Three Felonies a Day” demonstrated how almost any American could be unwittingly guilty of various crimes between breakfast and bedtime. Silverglate, a defense lawyer and civil libertarian, demonstrated the dangers posed by the intersection of prosecutorial ingenuity with the expansion of the regulatory state.

In 2013, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, University of Tennessee law professor and creator of Instapundit, published in the Columbia Law Review “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime.” Given the axiom that a competent prosecutor can persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and given the proliferation of criminal statutes and regulations backed by criminal penalties, what becomes of the mens rea principle that people deserve criminal punishment only if they engage in conduct that is inherently wrong or that they know to be illegal?

Now comes “Rethinking Presumed Knowledge of the Law in the Regulatory Age” (Tennessee Law Review) by Michael Cottone, a federal judicial clerk. Cottone warns that as the mens rea requirement withers when the quantity and complexity of laws increase, the doctrine of ignorantia legis neminem excusat – ignorance of the law does not excuse – becomes problematic.

There are an estimated 4,500 federal criminal statutes – and innumerable regulations backed by criminal penalties that include incarceration. Even if none of these were arcane, which many are, their sheer number would mean that Americans would not have clear notice of what behavior is proscribed or prescribed. The presumption of knowledge of the law is refuted by the mere fact that estimates of the number of federal statutes vary by hundreds. If you are sent to prison for excavating arrowheads on federal land without a permit, your cellmate might have accidentally driven his snowmobile onto land protected by the Wilderness Act.

Regulatory crimes, Cottone observes, often are not patently discordant with our culture as are murder, rape and robbery. Rather than implicating fundamental moral values, many regulatory offenses derive their moral significance, such as it is, from their relation to the promotion of some governmental goal.

The presumption of knowledge of the law is, Cottone argues, useful as an incentive for citizens to become informed of their legal duties. Complete elimination of the presumption would be a perverse incentive to remain in an ignorance that might immunize a person from culpability. But “there can be no moral obligation to do something impossible, such as know every criminal law,” let alone all the even more numerous – perhaps tens of thousands – regulations with criminal sanctions. The morality of law, Cottone argues, requires laws to be, among other things, publicized, understandable and not subject to constant changes. Otherwise everyone would have to be a talented lawyer, “a result hardly feasible or even desirable.”


The presumption of knowledge of the law is refuted by the mere fact that estimates of the number of federal statutes vary by hundreds.

Will Christendom Fall?

Will Christendom Fall?

I've studied and written about the outright war between Christendom and Muslim.  I've advocated that Christendom (all religions that follow the Abrahamic God and Jesus Christ) cannot coexist with the Muslim belief system.  Further Muhammad's God is not our God.  The laws of Muhammad and memorialized in the Koran are antithetical to our Bible.

The gist of my study and writings is a bold and harsh reality: the followers of these two religions will not and cannot coexist.  That fact has been obscured by the followers of the false notion of "multiculturalism".  I won't go into again why it is a false idealism in this writing.

The answer the question in the title is "yes".  But it does not have to be.  The followers of Christ have become meek and silent.  The pulpits have gone quiet.  This is not Biblical nor is it what the Bible teaches. There are many scriptures to use in fighting an enemy, be it the Devil, a demon, or anything else. Here are but a few:

Old Testament

If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them … you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. I will give you peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid; I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.” Leviticus 26:3

“For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and give your enemies over to you; therefore your camp shall be holy, that He may see no unclean thing among you, and turn away from you.” Deuteronomy 23:14

“… For we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You … Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel … thus says the Lord to you: ‘Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God’s … You will not need to fight in this battle. Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, who is with you, O Judah and Jerusalem!” Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, for the Lord is with you.” 2 Chronicles 20:12-17

New Testament

“Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”Luke 10:19

“Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” James 4:7

“And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom.” 2 Timothy 4:18

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” Romans 8:31

Being right and just is not enough.  Satan has is at war with Christ no differently than he was 2000 years ago.  We cannot go quietly. We cannot be sheep lead to slaughter. Evil is alive and well and Christendom must come together, segregate ourselves from evil and prevail in the name of God and Jesus Christ.

Why do I write this impassioned plea? I get and see many articles and meme's circulating the internet. The intent is obviously heart felt.  However, they fall short. God has commanded us into action.  None of these are a call to action.  We must become Christian activist and persevere against evil in all its forms.

I would go further, to say that all of Christendom around the world should rise up for the Kingdom of God and slay the enemy and at least segregate ourselves from them.  They can live in peace, but not in our land and not in the land ordained by God to be free.

Left Has Fear and Hatred of Christianity!

Left Has Fear and Hatred of Christianity

The left's  "fear and hatred of Christianity"  and religion in general has driven America's culture wars for the past 30 years.

That is what people on the left just have the biggest struggle with. It's a giant enemy.

Christianity is a powerful enemy the left has no control over and will never be able to dominate, he said. It is "an enemy they will never be able to obliterate and they know it, but they nevertheless try."

The left has found a huge appreciation for Pope Francis because some of the things he says seem to line up with their thinking.

"So when the Vicar of Christ now and then comes out, utters some economic policy that makes them think he's one of them, they celebrate," Limbaugh said in an interview. "I think it's fascinating they desperately want the Pope to be one of them. … Then the Pope will come out the next day and makes it clear he's not one of their guys.

Leftists vacillate from love, hate, anger, reassessment, appreciation. It's a fascinating case study.

Liberals have done much the same with religious freedom laws. They loved the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) when it was signed by President Bill Clinton. But they didn't like Indiana's state RFRA, saying it targeted gay people.

A  story by David Weigel on Bloomberg Politics showing Democrats are on the "wrong side of public polling" on the issue, even among voters in their own party.

In other words, whatever happened in Indiana, it's not the majority position in this country. It's the minority position.

Polling indicates it. Weigel's trying to point it out to Democrats, "Hey, look, you don't own this issue. Most people agree with the pizzeria owner in Walkerton. Most people do not agree with us walking in there and trying to shut them down."

The reality is that the mainstream media, gay activists, civil rights activists, you name it, are trying to make it look like the vast majority of Americans agree that Indiana is a backward, racist, bigot, homophobic state, and they want them penalized. And Marist says it's not even close to being true. It's the exact opposite.

Attacks on Religious Freedom Underscore Why Protections Are Needed

Attacks on Religious Freedom Underscore Why Protections Are Needed

Indiana and Arkansas lawmakers headed back to the drawing boards recently to rewrite language for their states' respective Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA), due to heavy backlash from businesses and advocates of homosexuality.

The angry opposition to religious freedom is the exact reason every state needs legal protections for faith.

Every American, regardless of political or religious views, should be free to live and work according to their conscience without fear of punishment and backlash from the government. Regardless of what advocates of homosexual behavior say, our government was formed to be freedom's greatest protector, not its greatest threat.

I'm calling on the state's citizens to urge their governors to call for Religious freedom measures  by their state's lawmakers. 

Last Wednesday, in the wake of pressure, Arkansas' Hutchinson instead called for changes to Arkansas’ religious freedom bill. He signed the revised bill on Thursday. Similarly, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed his state’s revised bill on Thursday.
  
I have often shared case after case of Americans who were forced into making business decisions that were not in line with their faith convictions, such as bakers, florists and photographers who were pressured into providing services for same-sex weddings - or punished for not doing so - even though their convictions dictated otherwise.


Americans should never be asked to violate their convictions against homosexual behavior by endorsing it through their businesses. Our nation thrives only when we tolerate a diversity of opinions and not allow the government to punish citizens for their beliefs.