My noodle

6.

Within this paper are two opinions on love.  Marathe (the Frenchmen) believes in choosing carefully who or what to love, while Steeply (the American) believes there is no choice but rather we just fall in love.  I personally lean more toward Marathe’s argument.

Americans have been manipulated by the media in terms of what constitutes beauty.  We all want to be and to fall in love with a beautiful person, according to images we have been exposed to on TV, in the movies, magazines, advertising, etc…

Usually when we “fall” in love, its because we happen to meet someone who fits our image and expectations of a beautiful person.  Often character traits take second seat to outward appearance, but when we do consider character traits, and personality, we look for things in the other person that make us feel good and which agree with or validate our own beliefs which is somewhat selfish.  In the paper Marathe states that being so in love with someone you would die for them is selfish.  Simply because you are not thinking about the welfare of them, but you can’t imagine your own life without them, looking out for yourself.

In other countries, in olden days, parents would usually choose spouses for their children.  Often the two getting married wouldn’t even meet until the wedding.  They certainly didn’t love each other at that point, but most of the marriages worked out because they were based on building a successful family and contributing to society, not just individual gratification.  I’m sure that most of these couple grew to love each other over the years because they were working together on something bigger and more important than themselves.  Divorces were rare.  Compare to broken marriages and divorce rate in America today, as people keep looking for the perfect person to fall in love with.