Monday, February 14, 2005

The Valentine's Day 2005 Discourse

Recently, I went through the backlogs of another's Xanga. A particular post, that was probably my personal highlight throughout that reading. (A point of nearly expected disappointment; I'm forever disappointed in how much musing people actually do. But that's because I come from a set of values most people have never really been exposed to, or have long since rejected. My disappointment is a mere artifact of the belief that I have good values.)

The question was simple: How do you define love?

It prompted me to think; I haven't been thinking about my philosophies quite as much as the hard fatigue set in. Indeed, I'm not sure how strong I'd still be if I didn't keep finding these little motivations that poke and prod and revitalize me just barely enough. I digress. I thought while showering (an excellent time for thought, with the hard contact with water searing impurities from your flesh, a time where you're alone with what thoughts you might have, and minimal chance of interruption, a time when you stand naked, exposed and vulnerable, though you're likely enshrouded by privacy) and then while I lay in bed.

Then I got out of bed and went to the computer and spent half an hour writing this post, God Is Love.

In ninth grade, I had a crush. In tenth grade, I had to seriously call into question my feelings. I had to ask myself: Is what I feel for this girl love? Do I love her?

I couldn't answer the question, because I had no useful definition of love. What conceptions were in my mind were contradicted by evidence, what I saw elsewhere. So I thought about it, and thought about it. I had to find out. I wrote a paper and handed it off to a few peers for critique. I didn't get much back. (Some.. not enough.)

But the seed had been planted. It was a call to adventure, for me. It was a quiet voice that said, "Here is a doorway into the human soul. Step through, Michael! Find the truth and hold fast to it always!"

And the doorway was quite the place. The revelations were not unlike that of Neo, entering the mainframe and coming face to face with the Architect. And here are the key ones, in which I answer this person's question on her Xanga nearly a year ago at the end of April, when I myself was looking back to high school and remembering times.

Revelation: There isn't more than one kind of love.

The twin concepts of family and marriage are artificial. They're institutions set in place by man with no intrinsic value other than that of the census. Consider the excerpt by J.V. Jones. Marriage is a sacred institution, but only so long as its spirit stands as the central principle, rather than merely its founding principle. Marriage comes from love. There is no suggestion in the Bible that regards marriage as an institution ordained by God or anyone else. And thus I place little to no value in the institutions of boyfriend/girlfriend, in marriage, or in family. Because the simple word all three institutions are meant to teach are not being learned in earnest. Instead, like Valdis (you did click the link, right?), the institutions have become mediums of control.

How differs the love of a sibling from the love of a parent from the love of a friend from the love of a spouse from the love of a child from the love of God from the love of knowledge from the love of an object from the love of a cause from the love of an idea from any other love?

A point that was brought up was that different languages have many different words for love. As a student of linguistics, however, I am aware that this perceived difference is no difference at all. Different cultures conceive of different things in different ways; that doesn't mean that those things are different. As a student of mathematics (particularly linear alegbra), I know that transposing a matrix does not change its determinant. A matrix is a description of an object; to tranpose means to significantly change your viewpoint; a determinant is the volume of the object described. The object stays the same; the perception changes as the viewpoint does, because perception is relative.

And ultimately, some of those linguistic-based arguments boil down to the same monolingual argument: if there is a single word for "love from a sibling" and another for "love from a spouse", does that mean they are different things, or does that mean the language is more suited for describing the specific love from different people? If I have a word that means "love" called "ba", and I have the word for sibling "chub" and the word for spouse "ten"... and when you place the word "ba" as a suffix, it means "love from a", then the words "chubba" and "tenba" mean the SAME love from two DIFFERENT people. (Unless you're married to your sibling, but that's inconsequential.)

Corollary: There are different degrees of that single love.

Often, what is perceived as a different love is instead simply a different expression of it. Also as frequently is a perception that the love is different because it is offered in differing frequencies and intensities. If you define love in terms of how often it is expressed, in its manner of expression, and in its strength of communication, then perhaps it is different. I don't. I think that love is still love no matter when or how or with what you express it. The delivery is not the package.

Revelation: Love is something you do, not something you feel.

The most poignant revelation I ever had was hearing a simple anecdote, presented as a question: "How much love did your mother feel for you when she changed your diapers?" Love isn't a trance in which you stare at something and let all abandon as it fills your mind. That is awe; that is adoration. Love is neither.

It is a critical revelation, because one of the greatest stoppages in individuals' ability to love is the lack of a related emotion that they have come to expect. It doesn't feel like love anymore. But emotion has never been a critical component of any action. Watch the set in production of a movie with a few talented and skilled actors: how much of that emotion is thoroughly genuine, especially given the setting? Yet the actions remain the same. The actions are separate from the emotions; the emotions are coloring that changes one's interpretation of the actions into something believable. The relation between particular feelings and love itself is a false generalization, nothing more.

Revelation: You can love more than one person.

The Dunbar Number suggests that there is a limit to how many meaningful relationships a single individual is capable of maintaining. This may be a scientifically proven and factual truth, but it does not mean one should ever restrict oneself to a small group.

Group identification is an extremely powerful force among social animals. Described with a few differences, it's called the herding effect. It is the driving force behind such things as nationalism, patriotism, religious fanaticism, and any number of -isms where you sacrifice your personal identity and individuality for the sake of the common and greater collective. It's hardly the worst thing in the world, depending on your philosophy, but its a treacherous and potentially lethal ground to walk. As a side note, group identification doesn't necessarily mean buying into a self-sacrifice doctrine; it simply provides the force by which they work.

Identification with a single other person is a facet of this effect. The "cleaving" done by a pair is an unquestionably special thing, but sentiment hardly has a place in truth. (Worse still, it usually occludes truth from those involved. Bayesian probability judgments.) What must be seen is this: there is no such thing as a soulmate. People are not made as two halves to be brought together. We need contact with beings such as ourselves; that is what it means to be a social creature. But this contact mandates variety and novelty, particularly in the earlier years of life, and less so in the later years. Our best friends are those who can provide this variety and novelty, and at the same time grant an aura of familiarity and comfortableness.

One of the most grevious mistakes many people make is feeling guilty for loving more than one person, or for splitting their attention between two or more people. I have never heard of a case of simultaneous love (that is, at the same moment), which means that one person came FIRST, and then the rest in some irrelevant order. There's nothing, in all honesty, to be guilty over. Let me explain.

Attention devoted to someone you love is a Pareto optimal solution. If it's anything less, any kind of underutilization of your capacity, then consideration of what you love is in order; why aren't you putting your all into it? When you're confronted with a second object of your love, then it must be asked: which is more worthy? And by how much? At the point of Pareto optimality, you cannot give anything to this burgeoning love without taking away from the older one. This is a direct result of the limitations of human beings: we can only do so much. The balancing act is dangerous depending on circumstance, of course, but at the end of the day, the balancing act is what is required of us. There is an obligation to make that hard decision, which to favor when, and how.

Corollary: You should love more than one person.

Spread the love. Share the love. Simply because something is difficult is hardly reason not to. If you love your husband, and then give birth to a child, should you stop loving one in order to fully love the other? It is a fair thing to say, also, that if you can love something that deserves to be loved, then you ought to make the effort if you can spare it.

Sometimes you cannot; sometimes you must say no. It's a valuation of different things, that says I value this more than that. Such a decision is to be respected, of course, and it also must be remembered that times, people, and circumstances all change. The impossibilities of yesterdays are the easily achievables of tomorrow.

It should be remembered that, since love is an action, it is possible to not love and yet to love no less. This provides for a simultaneity that is often felt to be lacking. The utter devotion people devote to particular things often leave no time for anything else. Yet when conventional wisdom states that you should separate work from home, it should be taken to mean love your work while you work, and love your family while you're at home.

Revelation: There is no greater type of relationship than friendship.

There is no such thing as "more than friends", and therefore the idea of "just friends" is simply invalid. Within friendship, all involved build a rapport of love between each other. That's what friendship means: to love and to be loved back. And in fact, there is no action, no emotion, no obligation or responsibility, nothing whatsoever that can be claimed to be the exclusive domain of something greater than friendship. Because there is nothing greater, in the grand universe of human relationship. Ultimately, to claim another human being a friend is the most daring claim, and to treat them as such the largest act.

There are degrees of friendship, of course. There are best friends; there are friends you don't see often, but are close to anyway; there are friends in whom the memory is the best thing; there are friends who have changed, and friends who aren't so intimate; there are friends amongst family and friends without. But the love is the same; it's simply applied at a different intensity, a different frequency, a different source, a different way of expression.

Sometimes friends grow apart. This is fine. The Bible puts it more succinctly than I can: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." (1 Cor 13:11, NIV) People change. People grow. That's an important part of individuality, of the human spirit. And people will grow in such a way that their friends might no longer be able to be something they can love easily. That love will grow too difficult, and at that point, it may be that it is foolish to hold onto something that has obviously been lost.

And sometimes they don't. One of the best things in life is a kindred spirit, one who is familiar with your ways and knows the small jokes and hidden subtleties of your words. The reassuring familiarity, coupled with the ability to be new and surprising in a delightful way, is the epitome of a lifelong friend. A change perceived to radical may be a mere challenge that can deepen your friendship, generating acts of love that are of greater intensity than ever before.

Corollary: Love does not belong to any individual.

How foolish it would be to say, "This kick is mine, and only I can use it," or to say "Only I am allowed to be punched in this manner." So in the same sense, love cannot belong to a person. A person may be the source of love, and also the object of love, but they can claim no dominion over the action itself.

Furthermore, just as love itself cannot be owned, loving something or someone does not create ownership. You do not own your friend, nor your pet project, nor your car because you love it. Perhaps you do own them, but the reason is not directly love. Perhaps in a country where slavery exists, you might own another human being; perhaps you own the intellectual property rights to a project; perhaps you bought the car with your money. But also, you might live in a place where human beings are assumed created equal, or your contract stipulates that any project begun is owned by the company, or the car is another's you saw in a magazine, on the television, on the road. Ownership has no bearing on love, in and of itself. The two are not actually related.

Ownership is an important thing. It is an impetus by which individuals are driven to improve that which is owned. But in the realm of human relationships, ownership becomes tricky ground, because the impetus to improve must exist, but the actual ownership is not always a reality. Thus, it is a different impetus that is required in order to "make it work," as it's commonly phrased.

Revelation: The purpose of love remains ultimately in the achievement of greater understanding.

There comes a point where love is no longer desirable, where you should not love. This is the point where love has fulfilled its purpose. Why love at all? Remember that earlier I spoke about social animals. Human beings are undeniably social animals. And the purpose of this repeated contact, like two ships calling to one another at sea in the night, is to deepen individual understanding. Not of any particular thing; what it is that is better understood as a result doesn't technically matter. Indeed, it is highly dependent upon the circumstances what you learn from the experience. In fact, you ought to learn many things. That's why kids are given pets to take care of.

One of the more laudable traits of love is that, as it grows, it drives out fear. The more intense, the more frequent the love, the more fearless the lover is shown to be. To the point of recklessness in the immature, foolish, and imprudent, but in others, better results. There is no address as to why this is so. I'll tell you; because love causes understanding, and with understanding, fear no longer has a foothold. Certainly, with a little understanding, perhaps fear might be heightened. But the greater the understanding (from a greater love), the more likely fear is banished, rather than increased.

Dunbar Number aside, this is really why you ought to love as much and as often as you can. To do so methodically and systematically banishes all fears and brings a person far, far closer to understanding all things. Once you're there, you can effectively do anything that could possibly need doing. Dunbar Number accounted for, that doesn't mean you have to do everyone at once.

Conclusion

I've done a lot of thinking, as you might have noticed, over the past five and a half years. There's a lot here, and there's a lot that's hard to swallow. Personally, I encourage thought, criticism, feedback; people let that kind of thing slide all too often. I don't mind if you attack my ideas from any angle, and as long as it's not ad hominem or unfounded, I do my best to keep an open mind.

Love is a mysterious thing, though no thing can remain mysterious for long if an inquisitive mind if willing to pry into its depths. There is much I still do not know about love, much that I am only guessing at, am unsure of. Sometimes I'll see or hear about something that contradicts what I think is true, and I'll make an effort to reconcile this new perspective. It's an ongoing process.

I never answered the question at the beginning of this discourse; I don't intend to yet, either. The truth is, my answer is "I don't know." Because I don't know. I have some inklings, some ideas, some guesses and partial answers. But nothing I'd put myself behind and say, "This is what I believe. This I hold to be true." Hopefully, though, what I've said here is enough to inspire some ideas of your own, to suggest courses of action that may have be preferable where once there was a dilemma. If I have, that's enough for me.

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