Necessity

I just proofread a paper my friend wrote on unconditional love. It got me thinking on the topic, and then, while I was thinking about unconditional love (and all the problems with that idea) I re-read that portion of Russell's autobiography that I posted a while back and I thought about a book I was reading (The Reasons of Love (I've quoted it here before)) and then I thought up this post.

(yeah, I know, this idea took a lot of things merging together at the same time)

So, here's the post....(and by the way I can't take full credit for all these ideas, I'm not sure where my ideas begin and the writing of better men end)

Bertrand Russell cited 3 things (in a sort of vain way) that he based his life on. They were love, knowledge, and compassion.

What stood out to me was how he put love and logic side by side. I think this is important.

Logic and love have 2 things in common.

1) they both are greater than us.

2) the both bind by necessity.

Okay, now what do I mean by being greater than us? Well, when you look at a logical proof you see something that is nearly flawless. You see ideas flowing on a page that are perfectly connected without any sort of equivocation. Plato often lamented the transient nature of life and he looked to the heavens where he envisioned pure reason and a world of forms, where things existed in perfection. When we see a proof, we're seeing pure reason, we're glimpsing into Plato's heaven. When we see a correct proof we know with certainty -at every possible level- that it's right. This is a very inspiring experience.

In our day to day lives we don't have that. We live in the instantiation (sorry--logic term for deciding what a variable names). We're in the world of names, where there are particulars. Logic is perfect because it avoids the particulars and rests in pure thought.

But my main point here is this: logic reveals a world where things make sense, where everything fits, where you can accept something without feeling like there's a good chance you're buying wooden nickels (slang from another old post on slang).

Love is similar. Love is something higher than us. When you love someone you become more than what you were before. Love is something that we don't understand, but which moves us. Something that we desire, sometimes painfully, but comes and goes as it will. Love is better than us, it's more pure than us (true love at least). Love lets us glimpse a world that is beyond our current experience (maybe what heaven is like?). In a way, logic lets us glimpse Plato's heaven, and love lets us glimpse the heaven we talk about in church. Who knows, maybe the two have some overlap (although I don't think God's heaven is immune to change but that's a different post).

Now for similarity 2

Logic and love are binding (this is Frankfurt's idea I'm pretty sure). When you do a logical proof, if it's valid, the conclusion necessarily follows. There is no room for error here. You can't deny the power of logic. If you contradict it you're wrong. It's that simple. Logic forces our hand. We can't decide what we want to be valid, what is valid is what is valid (a tautology is a tautology (sorry bad philosopher joke)). Logic takes away choices, it binds us to something greater than us, and we go along for the ride. And why do we do this? Because when you see it all fit together you just get this thrill, you see clarity and precision and you get to experience something purer than your usual experience of wallowing in the mire of life.....as the muck of life gums up your mind (probably overstated that but you get the idea).

Love is similar. Love binds us. It is true that we have some choice in what we love, but we can do this only indirectly.

We do get to choose what we care about. That's what caring is. When we care about something we say to ourselves "I like this thing, but furthermore I like liking this thing, so I choose to continue liking this thing." At this point we care about something. Caring is self-reflective. It's more than liking something, it's being aware that you like something and liking that you like it.

Love doesn't work this way. You can't choose who you love (believe me if we could this world would be a way different place). Love is something that happens to you. And in a way this is part of its charm. Love (similar to logic) takes away some of our freedom and forces us down a path. And the kicker is that just like a logic proof, a good love is something you want to follow, something you're happy to give your choice too. Something you're happy to be bound by. Because love, like logic, opens us up to something beautiful, something that we couldn't experience in any other way as we're limited by this life.

Now, I realize that many people will argue my last point. They'll say something like "no, love is a choice, I choose who I love." My answer to them is "nope, you're an idiot" (I thought that one up all myself...good comeback I know).

But I'll now clarify. We do choose who we love indirectly. This is how we do it.

We choose what we will let into our lives. What we let into our lives is what we love. Also, through the choices we make we create a pattern of behavior, a sort of habit, and from that habit we build a character. Your character will in turn affect who you fall in love with.

Simply put, we can decide who we will become, we have that choice, and who we are determines the sort of person we'll fall in love with. People are attracted to people that have qualities they admire. They love people that help them reach a little higher, people that inspire them to be better (hopefully). If you cultivate values for these good things you'll fall in love with someone that has these values.

So, you can choose who you become, and who you are determines who you love, but you can't skip the step in between and choose who you love.

So, love, like logic, is something we don't freely choose. It's a movement of necessity.

And, before I end this post here's a corollary (although this might be a painful one to hear), and that's this: because who you love is a direct result of who you are (of the "self" you have cultivated), when you question who you love, you're questioning yourself.

That is, you've made a lot of choices about what you value, about who you are, about what you find important. And the person you love reflects these choices. So, when you don't like the person you love, or you question why you might love them, you have admit that there are parts of your life that aren't right, or that you're at least not reconciled with.

The love we have for others is based in the confidence we have in ourselves. If you're a good person living a good life, and you feel that you are in a good place, and if the person you fall in love with reflects that...well then you know that that love is a good thing (with at least as much certainty as you know you're a good thing (and maybe I shouldn't say thing when referring to people...oh well).

This all goes back to a point I made a while back: you can only love someone based on the model of love you have for yourself. I'm not talking about vanity here. I'm talking about a healthy self-love.....a steady confidence. A love for the self that is only found in someone who lives well. A sort of joyful exultance that comes from being reconciled with everyone you love (and God).

And here's a corollary for my corollary....those we love can be used by others to determine what kind of person we are.

I use this point to justify some of my snobbishness. Very recently my roommate (the crazy one) had a few girls over. I was sitting playing the guitar when they all walked in. One of the girls took a shining to me and just sat there and listened to me play for a while. After they left my roommate said "pretty sure she (insert a crude way of saying someone likes you here)."

Sure enough a few minutes later he was on Facebook talking with one of the girls and I guess that one girl would not shut up about me (I'm not sharing this story to pass myself off as some ladiesman....I'm certainly not. I have had way more attention than usual lately, but I'm still an idiot that could screw anything up).

Since then things have become sorta creepy. She has exerted a few borderline stalker tendencies ( I really empathize with girls in this area now).

Anyway, the point of why I shared this....she's a cute girl and my roommate asked why I wasn't interested. I can't remember what I said to him...but the true answer (what was in my head) was this "I wasn't interested in her because she is a member of your group of friends, and I doubt I could ever like anyone that likes you."

I know that sounds harsh, and I guess it sounds harsh because it is harsh, but it's the truth. My roommate uses women,and any woman that would spend time with him has no self-respect. They are all looking for something completely different than me. They are looking for a hook up, I'm looking for something much more permanent.

(sidenote that same roommate asked if I wanted to go to the hot springs to pick up on women. He walked into my room and asked me if I'd like to go and then turned to my roommate John and said "I'm not gonna ask you because I know you're not into that." This led me to ask the question "does that mean you think I am like that?!!" I told him he severely misjudged me (then went to the mystery dinner of my previous post))

So, yeah, I judged her by the company she keeps...or in other words, by the people she loves. And I'm okay with that.

I'm beginning to become the person I want to be. Hopefully soon I'll be a good enough person for the sort of love I'd like to have someday. Because I think this is the trick. I know my mission president found this sort of love. Just the other day he was talking about his wife and he said "she enlivens me, it has never been work for us, people say relationships take work, only bad relationships take work, my love for my wife helps me work, she is not a burden, she is what helps me carry my burdens"---and when he said this it didn't come across as trite or ridiculous (like most men do when they overly praise their wives)--he just sounded sincere.

I was floored by this because that is way more idealistic than anything I'd ever imagined. I told him that he was very rare and that that kind of relationship can't happen very often. He said he wasn't sure why he was so lucky.

But, now I think I've figured out why. He has found the best relationship (the best love) of anyone I've ever met, because he's the best person I've ever met. I think that's the trick. He found the love he deserved, and that love was a reflection of his choices as a person, and he's an amazing person.

Anyway, I've typed a lot. I better get to studying. I'll clean up these arguments later if I feel the inclination.

Ta ta for now.