[Protoclown]

Originally Posted by Jamesman

Considering the original context of the word's use in this thread, I figured the romantic part was a given. But OK. I mean romantice love. That kind of love that gets your willy singing and your jeans steaming. In other words, the love that is just a figment of our imagination, because we'd hate to accept the truth that we were born, will live, and will die alone.

Sounds to me like you're just bitter because you see what other people have, and you have thus far failed to achieve it for yourself. I mean no disrespect to you OR wreck, as I like you both, but you both come across as desperately bitter in your attitude towards love. The whole "oh, it hasn't happened to me so it must not be real" schtick. You think I haven't been there? Oh, I've been there. But I outgrew it. I still have never experienced romantic love to this day, and maybe I never will. But I've finally put the childish "if I can't have the toy I want no one can" whining aside. Because that's EXACTLY what you're doing. You're trying to say that if YOU haven't felt it, then it isn't real for ANYONE. That's bullshit. I have friends who are in love. Do I KNOW for sure that they are? No, but I believe it, because they act that way. They display it with everything they do. I don't know their heart, but I know what I can see plainly in front of me with my own eyes.

Originally Posted by Jamesman

Just like death. We are so afraid of death that we put all out faith into some fictional concept of an afterlife or reincarnation, when the truth is everything about us will vanish. Our minds and conscious will just zap out of function. You won't even know you're dead, because you'll cease to exist. No floating foggy ghost, no coming back as another person, no floating into the clouds to live in luxury beside "God."

So I take it you've died before, Jamesman? You seem pretty sure of yourself here. Personally? I believe in God, and I believe in the afterlife. But to say there IS or ISN'T an afterlife for CERTAIN is to willfully embrace ignorance. I won't say you're right, or that I'm right. How can either of us know for certain? It would be arrogant and foolish to suggest that we do. I accept the POSSIBILITY that I could be wrong. I leave myself open to new ideas. Can you do the same?

Originally Posted by Jamesman

And you're right, Proto. I haven't experienced love. The reason being that love doesn't exist. I can't experience something that isn't real. It's that simple.

And yet there are apparently millions of others that CAN experience it. And millions of others that experience God and a belief in the afterlife as well. All of these things "don't exist" to you, but can you deny that people are "experiencing" them, even if what they are experiencing is nothing more than a belief IN them?

Originally Posted by Jamesman

Sure, there were times that I thought I cared about people, but that was because I was naive. Now, I can accept what we are, and I'm much happier now than I ever was falling victim to a fantasy land of happiness of gumdrops, and having someone to "love" forever, until you go into the afterlife. It's all incredibly stupid.

Translation? I'm hurting and lonely and I need a girlfriend. You know how I know that's what all that really means? Because I've said it myself more than my share of times, too. But looking back on myself, and looking at this now, it all seems really fucking silly to me. That is NOTHING more than bitterness talking, that's all.

And Wreck...did we or did we not talk for hours upon hours on AIM over the love you felt over a particular girl roughly a year ago? Was that just my imagination, or have you just become so insanely bitter that you deny the existence of the thing you used to yearn for more than anything?

The fact that I have turned around and now believe in this thing that I have never personally experienced, which you so emphatically suggest does not exist in the first place, either makes a strong point for the argument that it is a real and powerful thing...or I'm the biggest idiot ever.