Love and Stuff

Okay, so I have two questions that I'd like to work out here. Here they are:

1) do we love for value or do we value for love?

2) do we choose to love or do we "fall" in love?

Okay, so onto question 1. Even a year ago I would have said that the answer was definitely we love people for their value. I probably would have been of this opinion because of Aristotle. He had a theory on love that basically said there are three causes for love: pleasure, utility, and goodness. Of these three causes he said that goodness, which is a love based on the recognition and valuing of the goodness in another, was the only permanent type of love. He argued this by saying that goodness is a potentially permanent and ever increasing quality. Passion can dim, sometimes people stop being useful to us, but someone's goodness (where goodness describes the steady upswing of someone's well lived life) can last forever. When we love the good in someone that love is as strong and as ever-increasing as their virtue.

When I was younger Aristotle's theory made a lot of sense to me. It really simplifies the idea of love, it makes love a practical and almost measurable thing. However, I think, as I age, I'm agreeing with him less. You see, while I can't think of anyone I love that I don't think of as good, I can't strictly justify my love for those I love based solely on their goodness.

I can't justify my love strictly on goodness because I love some people far more than their goodness merits. Also, I know lots of people that are probably better people than those I love but I don't love them at all. So, I don't think goodness is a necessary or sufficient condition for love.

The best example I can think of this is my little sister. When she was born I loved her. I don't know what it's like to have a kid, I hear you immediately love them too, but for whatever reason, when the little Munchkin was born I loved her. It was strange cause it couldn't have been based on her goodness (she wasn't really functioning at the time), it wasn't because of anything she had done for me or I had done for her. It was really strange because when I met her my heart was just open, I was ready to love her immediately.

Now, this type of love really scares me. I have never been a fan of the idea of unconditional love. Unconditional love is kinda pointless. I mean, if someone told me they loved me that didn't even know me I'd say "why?" If they just said "because you're you" I'd think they were crazy. Basically, love without conditions is love without meaning. If love is without conditions it could be argued that it is forced. I mean, you have no understanding, no choice, you just love because you love and that's all you can say on the matter. I don't know if that bothers anyone else but it certainly seems to take away a lot of the beauty of love.

So I was really scared when I felt love in this way. I used to have a very strong, simple, and comfortable view of love. I agreed with Aristotle and thought of love as a response to the goodness of another person. Because I held this view I was able to think of love as a choice. I thought of love as rational decision where you analyzed the overall goodness of the person, took into account complimentary characteristics and then said "looks good I"m going for it."

One thing that this view granted me was a type of smugness when people would talk about "falling in love." I'd think to myself "you don't fall in love, you choose to love." You see, people don't fall on purpose, it's just something that happens to them. When you're walking you don't think "hey I think I"m gonna fall down right now." If we refer to love in the same way it's like we're just walking along and then one day BAM! you got a scraped knee and a bleeding heart.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, not sure yet), as I've grown older I've realized that my original views (and Aristotle's for that matter) were a bit limited. Now, while I cannot explain love as well as I used to, I can at least appreciate that I need to take a more post-modern approach to it and admit that there is some mystery to it.

So, in answer to my first main question, "do we love things because they have value or do we give value by loving"...while I like to think that what I love has value I'm prepared to admit that my love doesn't necessarily equate proportionately to the goodness of what I love. So, I have to admit that at least partially my love creates, for me at least, value. I think the two might feed off each other. Something has value so you love it, then by loving it you increase its value. I think this is why people that don't love very well aren't very happy. The world has no value unless you have love because love creates both meaning and value.

Okay, so if love creates value, how do we choose to love? Is it volitional or does it just happen. Once again I think it's gonna have to be a compromise. The example of my little sister was non-volitional love. I just loved her. I didn't make a choice to love her, I just did. Now, I've had girls I thought I loved in the past that I chose to love. I think I made a mistake those times. I just analyzed up the girls good qualities and, in a very Aristotilean fashion, I decided to love her because she was good, and good for me. Of course, judging by my single status that never really worked out well.

So now I am prepared to admit that it is possible that love might just happen. While I still think unconditional love is silly, I think that there are often conditions that we just aren't aware of, and that perhaps we can't be aware of, that lead us to love someone. This idea kinda scares me. I don't like the idea of having something so important in my life outside of my control. Now, while I still believe that I can choose to not love someone, and that for the most part I'll be successful in carrying out my decision to not love someone (say if the person isn't morally upright or abusive), I now freely admit that there will be times when I will just love someone for reasons I can't quite point to. Whether this makes love mysterious, powerful, or just plain inconvenient I'm not sure, it'll probably take years to figure out.

Well, I'm tired of writing but I thought I'd share one more thing about love that isn't totally related to the argument thus far. One thing I feel pretty comfortable saying about love is that it is disinterested. Now, most people don't know what disinterested really means so I'll say that really quick and then get on with my point. When someone is uninterested in something they don't care, they have a negative or merely an absence of care regarding something. However, when someone is disinterested they are impartial. A judge is supposed to be disinterested in that he wants the right thing to happen and he doesn't favor a side.

So why is love disinterested? Well, Harry Frankfurt argued it this way. He wrote, "Love is, most centrally, a disinterested concern for the existence of what is loved, and for what is good for it. The lover desires that his beloved flourish and not be harmed; and he does not desire this just for the sake of promoting some other goal."

When you love someone it should be a love that focuses on their development, growth, and advancement, a love that amplifies and betters them. This type of love sees the beloved as an end in itself and not as a means for evoking some emotion in the one who loves. What I mean by this is that this type of love sees the happiness of the beloved as reason enough for action.

People often do not understand this type of love when they see it. They see a kind act performed and they say "I can't understand that person's motive, why on earth would they do that? What's the angle?" But if someone really understands how to love disinterestedly they'd know that's the wrong question(s). Because, when you love disinterestedly, there doesn't have to be an angle-- the happiness of the person you love is the angle (if the word "angle can be used in such a way). Real love creates reasons for action and doesn't necessarily require reasons for action.

When you love someone disinterestedly you really just want that person to be happy, and you are kind to them because you want them to be happy. Not because their happiness makes you feel good (although it should) and not because you think being kind will improve your relationship (although it should). When you are disinterested their well-being/happiness is enough. You want them to flourish, you want to help them, whether it be self-improvement, help with work, with school, any random task really, sometimes even telling them something that they don't want to hear.

What's great about disinterested love is that it's pure. A disinterested love doesn't worry about every little thing, about power struggles, about whether someone updated their facebook status to show they are in a relationship, they don't worry about who calls more, who is putting more into the relationship...they just worry about how they can improve the life of the person they love. You see, they focus on the person, not their connection to that person. That's the trick.

Well, I think I better stop there. Basically what I got from this ridiculously long post is this. Love happens to us sometimes without our deciding to love, love creates/adds value in the people we love, and finally, love should be an end in itself, not a means to an end.

I can think of counter-examples but I'm tired. What are your thoughts?(if you even made it this far :)