An oft-used cliche, “Wax Philosophical” means to “grow philosophically”. That phrase has made a lot of sense to me recently as I have been thinking about my life goals, my values, and my personal relationships a lot recently. The purpose of this blog is to share my technical and scientific endeavors, and teach people what I’m all about. There are some private posts which would not be appropriate to expose to the world in this, a scientific and career-driven blog. This post, however, I feel is core enough to who I am that I must make it public so people trying to get to know me, my friends and potential dates, can learn about this important viewpoint I have.
It all started Saturday night. A dear friend had called me over for some late night stir-fry. It has been a recent pattern of ours to try something new in the stir-fry genre and I am glad to say it went really well. Stir fry takes about 5 minutes to cook, but about 2 hours to prepare (if you cut everything up without a food processor). This naturally lead to the old “how goes the dating front” question, which naturally lead to more deeper philosophical discussions. In retrospect, I realized I was trying to communicate something very specific about what I believe love and relationships really are.
I did a very poor job at the time of congealing my beliefs into logical consistent ideas, It was only tonight, talking to a dear friend from college, that I managed to create the metaphors and descriptive glue needed to make my ideas ambulatory in the memescape and the blogosphere alike. First, I would like to discuss what is for me the highly scientific concept known as love.
Love is…
I love you, not for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.
-Roy Croft
Most people want love to be something “special”. They want it to be magic – some metaphysical bond, love at first sight, god-approved, sanctity of marriage, my one special soul mate, until death do we part. This is a natural consequence of the patterns our brains evolved to create and prefer – but that is a whole other blog post. The reality, for me at least, is that love is explainable completely within the “strange loop pattern framework” of Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach and I am a Strange Loop (both of which I highly recommend).
Love (whether big ‘L’ Love or little ‘l’ love) is about a connection between two people. It is more than just a fondness – it is when your brains’ granular representation of someone becomes so complex, it is like their brain partially exists within your own – and vice versa. You are no longer just individuals, you are part of a “couple”. Your wants and needs merge and become one – you finish each other’s sentences, know each other better than you know yourselves. You feel a closeness which is so powerful it is described again and again using metaphysical terms, like a “psychic link”. But this link need not actually be metaphysical. Also, like so many things in life, it need not be binary, or black and white. There are many descriptions about how people in a “loving relationship” grow deeper in love as time goes on, “deeper than they ever imagined possible”. Of course, it can go the other way too as people “fall out of love”. In an era where 50% divorce rate is a commonly accepted figure, there is ample evidence to support this.
So where does love come from? What makes two people love each other? I think love is the result of a long term beneficial relationship between two people. Love grows over time just like lesser bonds, like friendship, respect, and familial bonds. Unlike these other bonds though, love is about sharing everything – at the very deepest level our brains operate at. Is there a single person out there somewhere who is my soul mate? Are they the only person I could ever love? Highly unlikely. Soul mates are a hologram, an image project by our brains. In reality the “capacity for love” between any two arbitrary people can be represented as some value which, when compared to the general population, would probably form some sort of bell curve.
Could it really be that simple? Could I have talked to 10 potential “soul mates” today alone? There are a lot of dimensions to this “capacity for love” figure. In fact, there are at a minimum three dimensions. There is some “compatibility factor” which is an “external” measurement of two people’s compatibilities. What I mean to imply by the term “external” is that it deals with external things, like race, appearance, education, socio-economic status, and so on. The remaining figures are person A’s internal compatibility with person B, and person B’s internal compatibility with person A. These figures could be affected by things like first impressions, opinions and stereotypes one things about another person, whether or not one “things of another that way”, and other internal factors which, by definition, are difficult to measure. Dating sites, especially ones which tout their mathematical and statistical chops (a la OKCupid), are probably mostly measuring the first number. Like I said, by definition, the second two numbers are internalized and difficult to measure.
This “vector” of values fluctuates wildly, especially the two internal ones. Can’t you remember a time you were hanging out with a coworker, and they said something that made you think “oh… I never thought about this person that way, but…” Things like that alter our perspective of people all the time. The meaningful value to chart or graph, in my opinion, is the “peak capacity for love” over a period of time, probably a couple of weeks to half a year. This peak is representative of the “best potential” for two people to form a loving relationship. Obviously, when two people are already in a relationship, or courting each other, they each “want it to work” to varying degrees. Since most of the “internal” factors are also factors largely in each person’s control, when two people both want it to work out they will subconsciously raise these internal measurements of feelings and attachment.
Regardless of what exactly determines whether a loving relationship will eventually form, we can predict from the model I have outlined that, given optimal conditions (that is to say, if “both people really wanted it”), most people could love most other people. It’s about finding someone “in the right place in their life”, with the right combinations of shared interests and physical attraction to convince someone that they really want it. Then, over time, a loving bond can form.
Relationships are…
Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future –and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.
-Albert Camus 1913-1960, French Existential Writer
The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won’t be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence.
Stephen R. Covey, American Speaker, Trainer, Author of ”The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”
So now that I’ve outlined my beliefs about love, how does that apply to relationships? If love at first sight is an illusion, and love can only form between people in a relationship, what is a “loving relationship”? What is any relationship?Relationships are like trade routes. This is probably going to be the most “controversial” part of my post. This is how I see things, I don’t think it has a bearing on my professional career or anything, but it is a part of who I am.
Relationships are like trade routes. Everyone has their own needs they must import and assets they may export, just like a country. Some people have more “natural resources” than others, and some have more “unmet needs” than others. The metaphor is a surprisingly powerful one. Relationships are the vehicles by which people can get their needs met which they cannot fulfill themselves. A long and fruitful relationship may involve a level of intimacy which includes love as outlined above. And such a relationship is a true asset, an “entity made from mutual trust and gain”. But again, it need not be described in superlative or metaphysical terms.
Note also that international trade, and relationships, need not be exclusive. This model can describe monogamous relationships as well as open relationships, poly-amorous, and polygamous relationships. Some people want exclusive trade routes, and if they can get all their needs met on both sides of the trade that way – then it is a powerful, valuable, mutually beneficial arrangement indeed. Other examples of non-exclusive arrangements are plentiful in our day and age as well. Also note that even a faithful monogamous married couple has “relationships” with friends to serve needs besides sexual ones.
What does this imply about relationships? Well, one consequence my friend pointed out in our discussions is that this point of view could be used to claim any sexual relationship is really a form of “the oldest profession”, wherein a guy (usually) trades some thing of value for the physical “talents” of a girl (usually). I think this is a normal and natural consequence of a model which I hope includes all sorts of relationships, including the “transient relationships” of prostitution. While initially this may seem like an excuse for prostitution, arguing against the stigma it has in our society, I would actually disagree. In my opinion, most prostitutes are taking advantage of a market situation – a customer is going to pay a ton of money for 15 minutes to an hour of time – that’s very different from what members of a healthy relationship “pay” each other. You can’t put a dollar value on the “goods” received in a typical relationship. Support, actualization, love, sex, shelter, food, companionship. There is no grand scale, most members of a relationship are not measuring and weighing each contribution, trying to keep things “equal” – it’s not about that.
So what do I hope people will learn about me from this long-winded exposition? I hope people will know that I am not afraid to love, and I am not afraid to build strong relationships. I don’t demand an exclusive relationship, but I see it as a high possibility eventually. In the time being, I have needs and I will see those needs met. Additionally I have plenty to offer. I am successful, I have a great career and plenty of material possessions. I have food and shelter. I am also a great companion, and I like to think, a fun guy to talk to. I hope some day I will meet someone whose needs are wants so rightly align with my own that we establish a strong, trusting, meaningful relationship, and I hope that that relationship grows into a loving one. That is what I am looking for in a long-term partner.