Studying Love

You love someone. They're very special to you. It might be your boyfriend or girlfriend, but it can just as easily be your brother, your mother or your child. Your love of them is so strong that anything that happens to them happens to you. As a result, you have an innate desire for good things to happen for them, just as much as you'd want good things to happen to yourself.

That begs one question to be asked: what is good?

That question must be asked because if the natural expression of love is to encourage good things for those that we love, then we need to figure out what's good and what's bad. If I draw someone that I love into a life of crime with me, am I loving them or despising them? My intention might be good, believing that we will have great wealth as a result of our life of crime, able to enjoy life to the fullest, but the intrinsic character of a life of crime is that it is bad.

Inviting one that we love into a life of crime is an extreme example, used to illustrate a point. Most everyone will agree that a life of crime is not a good thing. That's because few people's instincts and environment draw them towards it. But what about some more modest examples? Beating children that we love because we believe that they need discipline. Drinking heavily with those that we love because we believe it enriches the experiences of our lives. Dressing in an overtly sexy way and then dancing suggestively in public because we believe that our date enjoys it. Those acts are called "discipline", "partying" and "clubbing". We grant them innocent appellations so that we can avoid making any moral or ethical judgements about them.

Yet ethical and moral judgements are exactly what is needed if we're going to express love to others. We need to know that drinking heavily is a bad thing. That very knowledge will help us to resist the instinctive temptation to drink heavily - and to help others to resist their temptation. Nobody is perfect and able to resist every temptation to do something foolish or harmful to themselves or others. That doesn't mean that we can't learn what is foolish or harmful. The very fact that we know is what permits us to choose to love or to turn our back on someone.

I'm a lazy, greedy man. I'm lazy because I want to follow the most efficient path to the greatest happiness in life. I'm greedy because I want that greatest happiness. Because I'm reasonably bright, I know that learning what will bring true, lasting happiness is critical to my avoiding false paths that will waste my time and won't bring me true happiness.

Alas, today, we have many philosophies of life. We are immersed in them without even being aware of it. There is the Political philosophy, the Capitalist philosophy, the philosophy of the Better Home, the philosophy of Being Right, the philosophy of the Better Party and so on. These are relatively new philosophies of life that invite us to focus our attention on certain specific aspects of life. The Capitalist philosophy tells us that what we own is the best path to true happiness. The Political philosophy tells us that our political beliefs are the key to happiness.

You can tell what a person's philosophy of life is by discussing various topics with them. The ones that they become most emotional about are the ones that are linked most closely to their philosophy of life. That's because when a person's philosophy of life is asaulted, things get serious. If I sincerely believed that the planet was flat, that belief would be ingrained in everything I believe. It's an axiom of my world view. To show me a picture of a spherical planet would shake that, and I would reel from the impact. Likely I would reject it out of hand. So it is with any philosophy. We don't abandon them casually, even when they're wrong.

With so many philosophies of life telling us what is good and what is not, how are we to know what is really good and bad? By studying. A significant element of your life should be to study right and wrong. It's a bit like studying how to drive a car when you know that you're going to be driving one soon. Here we are, driving our lives, yet we don't really study life. We just live our lives. Using the driving analogy, we're casually turning the wheel and pushing various buttons, only to find that we keep smashing into obstacles, or overshooting our destinations, or arriving late, or breaking down. All because we haven't studied. Learn how life operates and you will know what is good and what is bad. Only then will you be able to love.