On Love (patch to 28th April 2009 On love and Work)

This excerpt touches on concepts highlighted on the topic of truth, epistemology, ontology, materialism, idealism, personal identity, social identity and love. For clarity and comprehension, please read this excerpt after completing the entire faculty of ‘The living Best’.

“Man’s two greatest purpose of living is of work and love” – Sigmund Freud

What is love again?

From the topic of identity we get to see the nature of love. Love is an ontological intuition that unifies two or more individuals (or subjects); when subjected to the individual perspective, love becomes an emotional experience that brings about a certain affection, and attachment. Love forms the basis of positive (unifying) interpersonal relationships, and indirectly affects one’s sense of social and personal identity. The passion towards one’s interest derives from the love of oneself, and the love of oneself in turn derives from the love towards one’s neighbor.

Summarizing, love defines the identity, and brings about unity. It is from the concept of love that socialization can occur successfully, and from the act of interpersonal socialization we build up that faculty of Ethics and Morality. Ethics and Morality are a certain set of introspection that questions the values of the individual and the community. Subsequently, the question of ethics and morality leads to the significance of existence, which then leads to the question of meaning- to finally the universal question of a God, should He exist. We would leave such lofty topics to be addressed at a later point in time- in the meantime, let us focus in greater detail on the preclusions of ethics: namely Love and Work.

Love itself is completely ontological in nature, and no amount of theoretical (epistemological) knowledge can bring about the complete understanding of love as much as a moment of intuitive experience can provide. We cannot learn love from books, and neither can we describe the true essence of love in any form of conceptual representation (be it words, pictures, film etc). Even within a medium, the conceptual representation of love (by the novel, picture or film) has to be inferred via personal experience by the individual before such conceptual representations (as in the act of kissing, hugging or declarations etc) can fully make sense.

But even in its ontological discipline love is still materialistic and idealistic in nature. A common example would be the concepts of true love and passionate love: True love is idealistic (since it is an ideal form of love), and passionate love is materialistic, and yet both aspects of love have to be present should any form of love be considered ‘complete’ and ‘true’. Now while it is simple to understand the concept of materialistic love when it comes in a form of a passionate kiss or a hug, the ontology (experience) of love becomes harder when it is applied in idealistic terms.

Now, what is idealistic love? Do allow me to quote a phrase as analogy:

...There are easy farewells like 'see you tomorrow'. And there are sad farewells when we know we will never see each other again. But no matter what kind of farewell it is, I want to believe that even if we can't see each other, even if death parts us, our feelings will never change...

-Mei, Itsudatte My Santa (film opening)

I believe that such quotes from films and other literary works are very common, and it is evident that the above quote is a quote of idealistic ontological love. Love entails unity, and farewells breaks the (materialistic) physical unity between two or more individuals; but we know that idealistic love (and the concept of idealism) transcends the parameters of physical space and time. In this case the proponent believes in an intuition that transcends the limits of ‘seeing’ (physical appearance) and ‘death’ (transition of circumstances). Henceforth, we can safely assume that should the above words be an accurate (more or less) conceptualization of the ontological sentiments felt by the proponent, that ontological sentiment is idealistic in nature.

It is also interesting to note that such idealistic love is commonly already referred to as a statement of ‘True Love’ or ‘unconditional love’ so as to speak. We know that a simple ‘I love you’ from a boyfriend to a girlfriend does not necessarily entail true love, for the fact that such love is not ‘eternal’ and might not withstand the tests of physicality, circumstantial transition (conditions), and death. Idealistic love, on the other hand, transcends passionate love, because since it cannot be created out of epistemological knowledge, it can only exist when some basis of passionate (materialistic) ontological love is already present. The layman has already assumed that the physical passion (materialistic ontology) behind such an idealistic statement is already true, and that ‘she had already actually fallen in love in him by the time she had made such a statement’.

Henceforth, since idealistic love has to be based on materialistic love for it to exist (there is no other way of epistemological creation), we commonly do away with the extra step of having to re-integrate idealistic love with materialistic love to form the ‘true love’ that we speak of. Strictly speaking, love can only be fully manifested (true love can only exist) when both idealistic and materialistic natures are encompassed within that unifying relationship itself. Most people do not recognize the idealistic nature of love, or misinterpret idealistic love to be epistemological love (since idealism stems from epistemology), and this is the fundamental reason why the layman observes that the world lacks ‘true love’.

The order of appearance of idealistic and materialistic love is still subjected to debate. The Christian Doctrine has it that love is a free act of the soul, and manifested by the body. While the soul is eternal and dimensional-less, bringing forth the idealistic nature of love that is not bounded (like the soul) by time and space; the body, on the other hand, realizes this idealistic love and manifests it. Others may construe that it is the influence of the human cognition (which understands epistemological idealistic concepts) to wish to preserve such ontological (materialistic) intuition beyond the decay of circumstance and transition, hence alluding the idealistic nature of love. But just as to the order of love to the neighbor or the self, we will not be concerned whether idealistic love came before materialistic love (or the other way around).

Now, we already know that much of this world lacks true love (which is also idealistic) due to the overemphasis of materialism and the self. The next question we would have to address would be on the reason of such- As stated by Rolheister, it is ultimately due to the biological evolution of genes that leads to ‘the survival of the fittest’, to affect our psychologies to ‘struggle to project image of calm, poise and easy accomplishment… where we never want to show signs of weakness, of being needy or lonely, of being ruffled and not perfectly in control.’ Rephrasing, we get to understand that it is the struggle for survival that compels the individual to tilt the balance of love away from the neighbor towards the self, and it is the need of evidential success that causes many to rely on materialism (physical results) rather than idealism, which they believe to be no more than empty castles in the air. As a result, many people emphasize overtly on the self, and fall into the fallacies of materialism and immediate gratification.

While materialism towards self-interest promotes success and power in life, the unifying concept of love is often misinterpreted to be a concept of dependence (since love is interpersonal), passion and weakness. Love is usually reserved for the religious humanist, as a projection of the weaker side of humanity to attenuate the harsh demands of natural selection and genetics, or to the ignorant teenage girl with her childish romance drama serials. As observed by Dawkins: the naturalistic world has no time for such childish ‘lets-pretend’ games such as true love, morality and God. To chomp or to be chomped at, that had been the essence of nature itself, let alone our futile struggles for meaning and equality…

Such has been the stereotypical views of love, that had led to the abandonment of love, and yet to another futility of human nature today. Materialism towards self-interest does bring about its fair share or benefits to ‘the living best’, but beyond the glory many have been seen to live ‘isolated, meaningless lives’. The initial logical aim of ‘earning money to live a successful life’ blurs when the definition of ‘success’ gets increasingly abstract, and soon warps to an aim of ‘earning money for the sake of earning more money’. At the end of the day, should one reflect upon his life on earth on Erikson’s seventh and eighth psychosocial crisis stagnation, disappointment and despair would be the only truths he would be bringing to his grave.

While ontological love is seen as a stumbling block on our quest for knowledge, achievement, power and success- it is in actual fact that such a unifying intuition is needed, on top of the epistemological domains of the individual and materialism, should we wish to truly flourish and live successful lives. From the discussion from the previous project, we know that truth is epistemological and ontological, and should we want to live our true ‘best’ we need to integrate the conviction of experience to the wisdom of theoretical dynamics. Also, we have to emphasize equally on the neighbor as of on the self. Naturally love, being a unifying ontological intuition has to be incorporated to the dynamics of our lives should we wish to go beyond the selfish reliance of epistemological materialism. The reasons for such are two-fold.

The first reason holds that while the materialistic epistemology tends to focus on the dynamics of life (i.e. the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of success and strength), intuition in general provides the personal conviction (in a form of feelings) to drive the dynamics of success and power. It is via the integration of both epistemological and ontological domains (see the Moderation Doctrine) can we fully realize the ‘what is’ and ‘why is’ to the given subject. This point is succinctly re-quoted as follows:

“One who does not know the power of love will eternally be unable to gain true power. Love itself is an entity that ought not to be mocked; for love entails conviction, and conviction entails the will of the soul. Dynamic power without will can never be truly powerful, and remains no more as idealistic theories and meaningless stances. To the dynamics of power must be added the conviction of love, can we then bring out the essence of true power and work.”

Christian doctrine, in this respect, holds that creation (work) was based on the dynamics of wisdom and the will (conviction) of love. It is of this reason why Christianity holds that ‘work is a manipulation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, done in the service (love) of the community, to build up the church- the body of Christ’.

The second reason would be the complementary doctrine of life. Recalling from above, many have viewed love as a form of dependence, acceptance and weakness- although such views are often misinterpreted to be weakness in general, we know that love as a form of unifying ontological intuition does require us to ‘hold our horses and rely on the map’. While our lofty epistemological aspirations on achievement and power allow us to forge new paths of improvement; the ontological respect of love reduces such ‘truths’ empirically back to the fundamentals of experience and intuitive feelings, and reduces the pride of personal accomplishment to the shared success of the community. Such reductions come in a form of appreciation of where we currently are, acknowledgement of others, and allow us to understand what we have yet to know or gain in our quest for perfection and success,

The complimentary doctrine holds that the journey of knowing (or success) can never complete unless one knows the distance left to go, as well as the distance already travelled. Indeed, personal identity can be deduced by an act of dissociation and mutual exclusion, but cannot be fully realized till we know who we really are. Similarly, success and power cannot be fully embraced via the logical ‘to do’ that epistemological materialism provides, but also require the intuitive appreciation that ontology (love) advocates. This can be re-quoted as follows:

Acceptance of one’s strength and weakness is mandatory for one to be truly powerful. It isn’t until you truly do attain infinite strength and wisdom you realize how impossible attaining it is. You will never understand in fullness what you can do, until you know what you are still unable to do. Strength without acceptance of weakness is a sham… and so is maturity without acceptance of childlike-ness… you may as well compare who’ll get the first pimple-

Yue Ayatse

Of course we do not go to such commanding extremes as both quotes have presented their conceptual equivalents (in a form of you), but we can see the prevalent underlying message throughout: that be it in a form of conviction, or a form of appreciation, ultimately love and its ontological qualities are essential should we wish true work to manifest or attain true success and power.

As a conclusion, we have discussed on the concepts of love and its significance to work, success and the ‘living best’. It would be here that I would leave you with the fundamental concepts prologue to the second installation of Project Re-Affirmation. In the next post we will dwell in greater detail into applied love and work, in the form of morality and ethics; to hopefully seek out the meaning behind these actions, and ultimately the meaning of life.