A Love Competition - Video - Thirty Thousand Days

Imagine there was a love competition. People competed to see who was most able to love another person. How would you measure this? Well you might have to evaluate the person over a long period of time. You’d have to examine their relationships. What evidence do we have that this person is loving? . . . Kindness? Generosity? Compassion? Empathy? Sensitivity? Maybe the person demonstrates their love by their willingness to sacrifice their own life for the person they love.

Here’s another option. We put a person in an MRI imaging machine for 5 minutes and ask them to think/experience love in their mind and body. We scan their brain every two seconds and we evaluate the computer imaging. The person with the highest score in the parts of the brain that we identify as the brain’s “love centers” is the winner. Not particularly romantic. It assumes that love is most clearly measured by an internal experience and not by the person’s behavior or conduct at all. It’s a rather strange idea. Well . . . someone actually did it! They made a film of the project called The Love Competition. Is this how we measure a person’s capacity to love? Watch the film and see what you think.