Can you measure love? 3 experts discuss

We think about love as primarily a psychological phenomenon, something that we don't have a great

deal of control over. Aristotle famously said, when you really love a friend, you experience that

person as a second self. And the love ethic says those same feelings should be extended to strangers

How do we navigate our lives in an era where our politics, our economics, our technology is causing

us to become far more isolated and divided. I would define compassion in a nutshell as a

natural sense of concern that arises in us in the face of someone who is in need and wanted to do

something about it. And much of the current scientific studies that overlaps the science

of compassion is the study of empathy. Empathy is this ability to vicariously experience someone

else's pain, and that's what allows us to connect with the other person. There are some interesting

studies coming from meditators who meditate many hours on compassion, and then looking at their

brain, you can actually see the brain's expression in action. The whole mapping of the brain regions

that are involved in an experience something like compassion is beginning to be done What is really natural to our human being is the ability to connect with someone an ability to relate to that person at a deeper level and have a much more open interaction

The common perception tends to be that a quality like loving-kindness is a sort of weakness

that it makes you sort of silly or very complacent, being a doormat, letting someone walk over you

Why do we have such a sense of loving kindness that is degraded into this foolish reaction compared to the force that it genuinely is

We can have a genuine compassion for someone and also protect ourselves and have a strong boundary

We really can redefine strength. If you can't be brilliant and you can't be courageous and you can't be wonderful, be kind

It actually is great to really feel into the pain of someone and to wish them well

A love ethic or a love-based approach to ethics says to love your neighbor with the same intensity with which you love yourself

The love ethic is asking us to feel something about the people who are in need, who are around us

to open ourselves up to have that kind of emotional reaction again

and also giving us a glimmer of hope that maybe our emotions

especially one particular emotion, might be the path forward for us learning how to build a better society

where people are genuinely cared for