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Aisling Maguire's avatar

That's a beautiful image, Erik, and you're right we can learn a lot from observing animals. Have you read Maupassant's story 'Love'? If not I commend it to you - it's very tender and affecting and features the love between two birds.

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Erik Lokensgard's avatar

My opinion is that we can gain some insight by looking at the rest of the animal kingdom, at creatures like those birds who collect blue things to show their love.

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Aisling Maguire's avatar

That's true, Catriona, but I wonder if the stories we grow up with were changed - as some people suggest they should be to give women more autonomy - would our attitude to Love change? The feelings would of course still arise but perhaps some of the ways we believe we must behave in response to them might change. Or we might expect different things as their consequence . . .

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Catriona MacArthur's avatar

You pose an extremely difficult question! How can one separate naturally occurring phenomena from our exposure to love stories, advertising and so on ? I do not believe it is a naturally occurring phenomenon but that unless one is a complete recluse one will always be influenced by the all-pervading discourse. A fascinating and extremely thought-provoking blog as always - thank you

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Aisling Maguire's avatar

Yes it is cool Derbhile. Lennox's novel is very funny even if the language is a bit old-fashioned. It has a poignant undertow too.

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Derbhile Graham's avatar

Never knew there was a female Quidote. That's cool.

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Joseph Hennessy's avatar

Very interesting 🤔

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