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The I Love You Gesture

Important

Then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "I love you" -Frank Sinatra

Here's a way to know you are falling in love someone:
you very much want to say to say "I love you" to that one.

Depending on the circumstances it can happen pretty quickly and by surprise.

We take it as just a phrase that we feel like using sometimes. Sometimes it is used frivolously or manipulatively. But it's a phrase that WE, as conscious entities, WANT to say. Or so we think.

But do we really consciously choose what to say? I'm writing now I certainly am consciously aware of what I'm trying to express. But what's the best way to express it? What I find is that I type a bit and then read it. If I agree then I keep it and continue but where did this particular thought come from? And how do I decide whether I agree with it or not? The whole process seems coherent, I feel like a whole but there's a lot that's mysterious.

And at various times in my life I've had a very strong urge to say "I love you" to someone.

This is accompanied with various physical gestures; looks, hugs, kisses.

The American psychologist David MacNeill has looked at the relationship between gestures and speech. He shows that speech and gesture are not separate that they are both part of a whole unified system. What we think manifests itself both in our behavior and speech at the same time. For McNeill, gestures are in effect (or, McNeill would say, in reality) the speaker's thought in action, and integral components of speech, not merely accompaniments or additions.

Much evidence supports this idea, but its full implications have not always been recognized.
(thanks Wikipedia @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McNeill)

When In was younger saying "I love you" was always associated with physical behavior too. Hugs and kisses and holding hands and sitting together all that stuff. That's why I call it the "I love you" gesture; the words are part of a total body response.

I went for a long time (maybe 25 years) without being able to express that gesture and that was a strange time. Not bad but isolated. And that was a part of the life experience that made me what I am now I like isolation quite a bit. But the need to make the gesture never left me and in Second Life the chance to say "I love you" returned and I embraced it. (It didn't work out very well at first.)

And the very action of saying it to somebody changed me opened me I couldn't go back to not saying it. I mean that I was physically changed by the act of genuinely saying "I love you".

It's not that the words have some sort of magic power. It's that SAYING them indicates that your whole body is in a certain state. You can feel it physically.

To be in the state of saying "I Love You" means that many systems in your body are in a very particular state a state particular enough that it can be recognized in brain scans. And you feel it as a shift in the things that are important to you. One moment you are engrossed in doing something and the person you say I Love You to comes by and then you are engrossed in them if only for a minute.

SL presents an interesting way to observe the gesture of "I Love You" In Second Life all the physical behaviors are gone replaced by words like "I love you" and "hugs" and "kisskiss" We even replace the physical behaviors with animations for our avatars. And here's the interesting thing in the absence of physical contact saying "I love you" seems to have the same physical effect as if there was physical contact. I can feel it in the same sort of psychic calm and satisfaction I've always felt when I'm in love and feel loved.

But I gotta say to say "I Love You" is serious business. It takes a lot of time and attention to be in love. It's not just a bunch of words it's a gesture that involves your whole being

What do you think?

Star I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life. I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it. Each week I write a short essay to set the topic. I show a selection of them here.

I've been thinking and reading about philosophy for a long time but I'm mostly self taught. That is I've had the good fortune to read what interests me rather than follow a course of study. That has it's limits of course but advantages. It doesn't cost as much and is fun too.

My interests are things like evolution and cognition and social issues and economics and science in general.