Baby Don't Hurt Me

As I walk around the neighborhood nearly every morning I see the identical sign on several lawns. It is a litany of brief slogans, such as 'Science is real' and 'Love is Love'. How quaint.

Certainly, science is real. But I have a hard time believing that the sign folks accept that a unique human being comes into existence immediately at conception or that male is male and female, female. Ah well. Man proposes.

Certainly, too, love is love. All right, but what is love? The first person who sings baby don't hurt me is going to get Gibbs slapped.

Mindless humor aside, let's return to the point. What is love? If it is merely whatever the, I'll say modern, individual claims it is (and there's little doubt that's the point of the signage) then we're talking nonsense. We would be staring at potentially billions of definitions of love and each with their own their own self serving justification. The sign may as well say carrot is carrot, except that that assertion has real value: we all know what a carrot is. As such, the statement reflects the neatly obvious truth about a vegetable which is independently, and dare I say scientifically, verifiable. Yet your own opinion on what love is, left entirely to itself with merely your own expertise as foundation, quite frankly lacks value and verifiability.

I, for one, am unwilling to offer blanket support for such an indeterminate phrase. The world would benefit if more people would express a like skepticism.