Project Re-Affirmation (Thought ) 2; Prologue - 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

From the topic of identity we get to see the nature of love. The passion of one’s interest derives from the love of oneself, and the love of oneself in turn derives from the love towards one’s neighbor. Love defines the identity, and brings about unity. It is from the concept of love that socialization can occur successfully, and from there we build up that faculty of Ethics and Morality. 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 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. But even in its ontological discipline love is still materialistic and idealistic in nature. True love is idealistic, and passionate love is materialistic, and yet both aspects of love has to exist in harmony should that love be considered ‘true’. Now, it is understandable that certain people would regard idealistic love to be non-existent. Indeed, while it is simple to understand the concept of love via a passionate kiss or a hug, the ontology (experience) of love becomes harder when it is applied in idealistic terms. 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...

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 transcends the parameters of physical unity, and in this case the proponent believes in an intuition that transcends the limits of ‘seeing’ and ‘death’. Also, we know that this love is not theoretical, because the intuitive passion that drives the above sentiment is ontological.

It is interesting that such is commonly referred to as a statement of ‘True Love’. Idealistic love of course, has to transcend 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 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’.

On the other hand, we know that a simple ‘I love you’ from a boyfriend to a girlfriend does not necessarily entail true love, for the fundamental fact that such love is not ‘eternal’ and might not withstand the tests of circumstance, transition and death. Strictly speaking, love can only be true (true love can only exist) when both idealistic and materialistic natures are encompassed within that unifying relationship itself. And since idealistic love entails passionate love, therefore such statements are usually considered statements of ‘true love’.

The Christian Doctrine has it that love is an enactment of the soul, 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 intuition of passion that leads the human cognition (which understands epistemological idealistic concepts) to allude the idealistic nature of love. Either way, we still get to see that both idealistic and passionate love is essential to exist for true love to exist.

Now, we know that much of this world lacks true love (which is also idealistic) due to the overemphasis of materialism and the self. 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.’ As a result, we emphasize overtly on the self, and fall into the fallacies of materialism and immediate gratification.

On the other hand, the unifying concept of love is often misinterpreted to be a concept of dependence, 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 love 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.

While love is seen as a stumbling block on our quest for knowledge, achievement and power- it is in actual fact that love is needed, on top of such epistemological demands, should we wish to flourish and live successful lives. Part 1 has it that truth is epistemological and ontological, and should we want to live our ‘best’ we need to integrate the conviction of experience to the wisdom of theoretical dynamics. Naturally, ontological love has to be incorporated to the dynamics of our lives should we wish to live truly. This is succinctly rephrased 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 states that creation was based on the dynamics wisdom and the will of love.

Moreover, 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. Such reductions come in a form of appreciation of where we currently are, and allow us to know what we have yet know or gain in our quest for perfection and success, for:

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-

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 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.