Love

This is a more personal post I have been waiting to do for some time, and presently, I believe it is going to ultimately be a shorter one.

In several posts I have discussed how friendship and love are some of the highest forms of selfishness not selflessness as people frequently assume. One chooses another as a friend because he values that other more than mere strangers. The reason he values that other more than mere strangers is because the other follows the same moral standards as him. Therefore, similar people are friends. Dissimilar people cannot be friends, for they follow different moralities. Thus, they think one another is vicious. For example, a Marxist and a capitalist cannot be friends because the Marxist believes the capitalist is vicious, and the capitalist believes the Marxist is vicious.

The same goes for love. The only difference is that when one loves another, he chooses one person above all others, even his friends. One can have several friends. One can value several people more than strangers. However, one can only have a single favorite. That favorite, the best friend, is the one he loves.

Of course, this person, the one he loves, is only second to his self. The mere fact that he is choosing another person to love indicates that he values his self the most, even greater than the person he loves, for he is choosing that person because he enjoys being with that person, that person does not corrupt his virtue, that person makes him happy. When one is happy one is acting selfishly. Thus, love has nothing to do with sacrifice.

Unfortunately, most people assume that love is completely about selflessness and sacrifice. They believe love is about compromise. The assumption is, if one loves another, one will give up things - actions, items, etc. - for the other. This is not love. This is self-destruction. This is the atrocious sickening delusion that when two people love one another they become one. 1 + 1 does not = 1. 1 + 1 = 2. When two people love one another they are still two individuals; however, together they become more in the sense that they are happy, they enjoy life. The teaching of two loving individuals becoming one indicates that the individuals of the relationship decrease in value. They destroy parts of themselves so they can be one instead of two. They begin with more value than when they end. Since love is about happiness, about selfishness, one cannot destroy his self to love another. If he does so, he will be miserable, not happy. For before one enters a relationship he loves his self. He loves who he is. He has chosen to be a certain person, act a certain way because it is virtuous because it makes him happy. However, if he enters a relationship demanding sacrifice, he is aborting some of his virtues, aborting what makes him happy. In turn, this will result in one hating the person he allegedly loves because the other caused him to destroy his self, and it will also result in one loathing him self, for he is being less than who he was, the person he chose to be because it made him happy.

Last year I had a girlfriend for three months and I did not understand what I know today. Of course, neither did my ex-girlfriend. Starting the relationship itself was incorrect for several reasons. Firstly, the two of us were different. Though I was really just trying to make friends to make myself happy I still maintained a scarp of my identity, a scrap of what I have today. She was of the opposite thought. Though neither of us were extreme as a capitalist or a Marxist, we were on those ends of the spectrum. Therefore, we thought one another was wrong, meaning we thought one another was vicious.

The second problem was that I really wanted a relationship because I loathed myself. I hated how I looked, I hated how I acted, I knew people thought I was strange, I just wanted others to like me in order to convince myself that I was not vicious, bad, worthless, etc. I remember looking at myself in the mirror several years earlier and internally insulting all my physical characteristics. When I was finished I thought, "If I had a girlfriend, I would finally be convinced that I was mistaken." Obviously, by making that statement I admitted I was lying to myself. I admitted that essentially equating my physical appearance to that of the elephant man or a troll was a falsehood. However, I could not convince myself of it. I needed another person to do it for me. I needed another person to make me happy. Unfortunately, happiness is achieved through selfishness - the realization of one's values - not charity, so the relationship never really satisfied me as I thought. However, I was unaware of this truth, and I know when I was pursuing a relationship in my senior year, my last option to have a relationship before heading to college, I was thinking of that statement I had said to myself in front of the mirror. What I said was my motivation for having a girlfriend, for loving another.

A further problem with this is that one must love him self before he loves others. A self-loathing individual cannot love another. If one loathes him self, he is basically saying that he is shit, that he is worthless. He admits that he is a failure, meaning he has not realized his values; thus, he is also admitting that he is vicious. Consequently, he is saying that he is unworthy of love. He believes that no one should selfishly choose him over all others, for he thinks he is worse than all others. Therefore, one contradicts himself by searching for love to cure his self loathing.

Additionally, as I have stated several times before love is a selfish act. Thus, one loves another because he believes he deserves love. Essentially, he values himself enough to pursue and enjoyable relationship with another. If one loathes himself, however, he admits he is of no value, that he is so horrible he does not deserve to enjoy a relationship with another. Therefore, one must obviously love himself before he loves others. I certainly did not fulfill this requirement, and I do not believe my ex-girlfriend did either.

As my relationship with my ex-girlfriend continued the sacrifice started to develop. Honestly, it developed immediately. Even my scrap of identity was no match for society's false rhetoric and the incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo of my Catholic school. I apologized for everything I did. Occurrences that were not even under my control. I also immediately began sacrificing parts of myself. At that time I was interested in politics. I am still somewhat interested in politics, but now it is more on a philosophical level. During high school, I was interested in political strategy and party politics. Now I recognize all of that as nonsense now. However, some of my political positions still had a sound philosophical basis. Unfortunately, my ex-girlfriend did not want to hear any of that. She did not want to speak with me about it, and she did not want to hear me speak about it. This means that if she is in the room and I was talking to someone else about politics, she wanted me to stop.

Firstly, I now realize that I must love another that enjoys the same activities as me. If I am to love another, the other must be interested in philosophical discussion like this. I am not saying everyone must like philosophical discussion. Everyone should be concerned about truth and being virtuous, but not everyone must enjoy the exploration of it. My argument here is that two people who love one another must enjoy similar activities. For example, one who enjoy skiing, and loves the winter, cannot love someone who loathes the winter and despises skiing.

Secondly, it is completely nonsensical that one should not be able to enjoy innocent activities with other friends. It would make sense for one to oppose his loved one's use of heroine with others, for heroine indicates all kinds of unstable moral positions of the other person. Discussing politics, playing sports, playing video games, board games, card games, watching movies, listening to music, all pretty innocent activities that one should not demand his alleged loved one not to partake in.

In one instance, my ex-girlfriend actually demanded that I stop talking about politics. I was at her house and her older sister asked me about some of my political positions. I spoke about how I was opposed to redistributing of wealth because it relied on taxes, which I regarded as armed robbery. Her sister appeared interested in the conversation and wanted to talk more, but my ex-girlfriend came over and essentially told me to stop by making a frustrated sigh as she came over. Obviously, I stopped because I had no sense of how skewed the entire situation was.

Of course, throughout the relationship I was not without fault. As I already stated starting the relationship itself was a fault. However, there was another situation where my ex-girlfriend wanted me to talk to her parents more and say goodbye to them. To this day I still do not understand it, for I was interested in a relationship with her, not her parents. When one loves another he does not love a collective, he does not love the family clan. Love is individual. It does not concern others connected by blood. In any event, she did get angry because I was not conversing with her parents. Finally, she asked me what I thought, and I completely avoided the topic. I asked for directions to where we were going. That is a huge mistake. Communication sustains a relationship. Otherwise it is just two bodies, not two people. Relationships are as much about the minds as they are about the bodies. Furthermore, when individuals have a disagreement the only way to resolve it is through communication. One does not even have to explain himself fully. The conversation can begin as simply as, "I feel this way about this, and I don't know why." Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio constantly emphasizes this, and as I understand it, his book Real-Time Relationships is all about that. I plan to read it some time in the future.

Of course, I do not completely understand love or friendship; however, I am much closer to understanding it now than I did last year. Through more reading of Ayn Rand I may discover more, but I believe further information on love and friendship will come from listening to Molyneux's podcasts and reading his books, especially Real-Time Relationships.