Love, Union, and Psychological Egoism
I have often battled with the question of how is it that we can really care and hope to depend on others while truly maintaining a connection with them that is not merely out of selfishness. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines psychological egoism as: “People having but one ultimate aim: their own welfare.” Since we are confined to our bodies we can only be cognizant of our conscious states in reference to ourselves in totality. The information pertaining to our perception at any given moment is unique to our position and configuration in the physical world. The state of communication that occurs after that is through the channels of body language, emotion, and spoken and written language. It is a combination of sensory, emotional, and logical faculties of the mind that power our capacity to communicate (as well as memory). Since it appears that we are only directly connected to the mechanisms that provide our consciousness with the means to exist, then is it sensible to assume that the function of these biological components are only to serve themselves in order to allow for the well-being or persistence of themselves in nature?
This question has driven me to a point of madness time and time again especially due to so many of my experiences in life in which I perceived that I was merely a means for an end for someone’s agenda. I do think I’ve created a fairly decent argument to dissuade myself from being trampled by such a depressing notion. I first plan on discussing the idea of synchronization and its utility in terms of how we might operate as a species and then connect this more abstract concept to romantic love.
Can we ever truly find comfort in the people we strive to get close to? A common dilemma called the hedgehog’s dilemma goes like this: a group of hedgehogs all seek to become close to one another in order to share heat during cold weather. They must remain apart, however, as they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp spines (just keep this is mind for now). First I’d like to explore the concept of what it is that human beings seek at a very fundamental level in terms of existing. There are a great deal of fundamental points in which various philosophers have claimed drive us, but where I’d like to begin is a place that is similar to a hedonistic perspective; that which is the personal pursuit of pleasure. To now make it a bit more abstract I want to define the most general framework of pleasure that I’d like to apply to all of humanity in terms of a fundamental drive. I call this fundamental drive a pursuit of union or bliss in which a person synchronizes their awareness with their internal functions and the external forces they are subject to. This concept is not new and is essentially a similar idea as interconnectedness in dependent origination (Buddhism).
Desire in itself is the process of seeking some type of change in state. Whenever we desire anything we are seeking a state change that is contrary to whatever it is that we are actually doing. Even the desire for some experience at an exact moment (such as a wonderful moment of joy with a companion) is hoping for a state that will be contrary to all other states that are not the one which is being experienced in the present. No matter the circumstance, desire is something we are constantly subjected to which is a part of our multidimensional existence. One of the times in which we see that the state of desiring is flushed out is in these moments that I call bliss. They are moments in which the conscious mind are minimized and synchronization with oneself and the world occur. This unity via interconnectedness provides a pillow of emptiness for awareness to rest its head.
But we are all familiar that desire serves as the spikes that plague the hedgehog and cause constant struggle and strife between the illusive binary between individual and environment. So then I still ask, is there such a thing as true connectivity in these states of union between a being and that which is external to them? Or is the process of recognizing oneself the point of error in which this interconnectedness is hidden to begin with? Regardless I am not concerned with the nature of distinguishing between an individual and all other categories in which they are not, but rather, the point in which we all recognize that we seek to grow close to one another yet we are separated by our bodies.
When it comes to passionate romantic love we often can see the greatest blurring of the pursuit of self. These scenarios are very confusing upon close inspection. For instance if you were to aggressively question a person in regards to why they love someone or why they chose to make a sacrifice for someone then would not all of their responses be self-oriented? Or an even more simplistic example: if you love someone hold onto them, or if you love someone you will let them go. Or for instance: if we take the sentence I love her because 'x'. All values of 'x' are then defined by that person, making them the only definer of the qualities that produce their feelings associated with the sensation of love. What if some of those qualities were undesirable to the person at some point and then became qualities that fell under their positive emotional sensations qualifying them for love? This would suggest that something that was undesirable had the capacity to change its positioning in terms of emotional satisfaction for said person, and that they can actively pursue a desire that is undesirable (or is contrary to their welfare). Wouldn’t that suggests that there was just a competition of qualities in which one of the companions endured undesirable traits because they valued other more prominent traits that were desirable? It appears that love is a complicated example but it leads me to my next point.
If you were to put a person in a prison for instance (think stockholm syndrome), and deny them all possible avenues to things in life that would be paths that would allow them to seek out their own personal welfare, what would be the result? A person cannot just cease the process of desiring, so then they would desire something even though all possible avenues have been removed in regards to their definitions of welfare are absent. As we all know, desire has the capacity to forge for itself a positive response to a wide variety of potentially contradicting states in existence that make the concept of welfare no longer static. Since this then shows that welfare itself is malleable we now can say that desire can define welfare and vice versa. Because of this ambiguity we cannot claim for certain that it is a fundamental principle that we are purely self-serving. For the claim to make sense the concept of welfare must dictate desire, otherwise it is then possibly for a person to desire something directly contrary to their previous conception of welfare.
This still leaves me with the unpleasant notion of absolute isolation, and by this I mean, we will always be to some degree alone in our experience in this life. I want to attack this idea of complete isolation that is determined by our consciousness being limited to our physical composition of our brains by once again examining love. In particular the act of sex between two lovers directly allows for the possibility of a living being that is both partially of each party to be brought into the world. When it comes to creating life, aren’t we in a way physically becoming unified? How about our consciousness? Well physically speaking we know that we are intermingling but we are still physically separate. The information transfer is a matter of transferring fluids. But what about the mind? Our brains obviously never leave our skulls, but it is undeniable that there is a powerful connection associated with this act. Is this just a powerful emotional illusion of interconnectedness provided by the mind? Is this spiritual unity merely a projection of our desire coupled with the one we love as someone who approaches the most tightly woven boundary that rests upon our conceptions of identity and even awareness itself?
This is a theoretical point that I swallow with a glass of romanticism. I often believe that when such a connection presents itself to someone this is more than a mere trick, or illusive synchronicity provided by one’s mind. The mind is itself a field that encompasses so much more than that which is contained purely by the physical attributes of the brain. Love offers us one of the most powerful glances at the grand unity of being. The physical frequency of joy in regards to love is connected to its conscious counterpart. This of course does not mean that both people are experiencing a unified consciousness, but then again they are. It is just as strange to me as trying to picture a 4 dimensional object.
In the end all I'm trying to say is that I like holding hands.
Ha.