The Underlying Meaning of Love

Love is a universal religion, and just as all practices of faith, it can be an enlightenment to our existence, but when twisted or misinterpreted, it becomes a powerful tool of enslavement. Nowadays, the notion of love has been capitalized in a way which diverges us from its authentic essence. The word "love" has been abused so radically that it numbs our senses. We say and text about love merely because it feels like the "right" occasion to do so, but we rarely evaluate what it means to love. Love has been marketed as a product, a merchandised ideal that advocates for consumerism. The media, for example, often enclose our vision (toward love) in the boxes of romance and interpersonal relationships. The idea of love lingers on that red, pumping image of the heart, the gossips of celebrities' relationships, the lavishly set-up table with candles, wine, and rose petals, and other sorts of artificial impressions. These impressions have formed our"guidelines" of a biased doctrine of love: propagated by stories, literature, movies, social networks, etc. To love, you must "advertise" the details of your relationship on social media; to love, you need to send gifts on special occasions; to love, you must put a fabulous ring on it; to love, you must obtain the "certificate"of partnership. We assume that as long as our behaviors remain compatible with this doctrine, we are part of the "love circle", within which we eventually master this concept. Gradually, we not only grow stereotypical views on love, but we also start to think of its meaning as insultingly obvious and clichéd to discuss. We've become chained-up creatures who worship the reflection of reality (of love), like those portrayed in the allegory of the cave.

In fact, while love does manifest in interpersonal relationships and remains a significant ingredient of our social structure, it merely represents a tip of the iceberg, for loving a person is only one of the many practices of love. In ancient Greece, for instance, love is philosophically categorized into 6 genres: eros (sexual love), philia (love of friends), ludus (playful love), agape (selfless love), pragma (longstanding love), and philautia (love of self). However, merely knowing how love manifests in different practices still doesn't tell us about its essence. Our habitual understanding toward love is like Freud's portrayal of the human psyche (as an iceberg): the conscious, easily perceived tip floats above the surface, whereas what lurks below is a much larger component; this hidden, unconscious region, however, is often the source which gravitates our thoughts and behaviors. The same goes with love. Our conscious mind has become used to associating love with one type (or a few types) of expression/meaning; we cease to acknowledge and explore the "spirit" of love, the unchanging, authentic principles that reveal themselves once freed from the socially-constructed packages. Ignoring the authentic form of love is like seeing chemical reactions without acknowledging their existence on the atomic level. If we frame our vision toward love in such fixed standpoint, it will hold us back from transcending our pursues in life to a more long-term, self-actualizing state; it will trap us in an exhausting, apprehensive cycle of materialistic worships.

Thus, we need to bear in mind that, beyond the commonly propagated form of love in our surroundings, there's much more to dig-in. The more we learn about the nature of love, the more clear we are with regards to what to invest, what attitude to possess, and what actions to take once we decide to love. Through employing Socrates' philosophical perspective in Plato's Symposium, we can systemically decode love, a broad and slippery concept, down to a set of concrete characteristics.

      What would you find if you search the word "love" on Google?

Love's Nature and Characters

What is a chair if nobody's there to perceive it? It would be a piece of plastic, wood, metal, or other materials, nothing more. A chair is a chair because we define it with its own and relative meanings: a chair is to be used by a person; a chair is a place to position your body upon; a chair's function goes with a desk; a chair's quality varies with its material and design, etc. Similarly, to answer what love is, it would be much clearer if we figure out its meanings, or as pointed out by Socrates, "...describe who Love is, what his character is, and then describe its effects." Let's start with love's nature.

The first characteristic of love's nature is its neutrality. Love stems from a form of desire, and we can't say that a desire is good or bad without acquiring further information. If someone were to ask you "is wanting something bad?", you would probably ask him to clarify what is it that he wants and how he's going to get it. Therefore, where we can apply moral judgement is what we love and how we love, rather than love itself. Love is innocent in nature.

The next and probably the most obvious point is that love always has a subject to act on, or as described in the Symposium, "...Love is of something." For love to occur, two things need to present: someone who loves, and something to be loved. Hence, love is always directed toward a goal or a purpose. Another associated idea worth clarifying is that the thing you love is what you don't currently possess, but would like to possess in the future. A desire occurs only when you are lacking something yet to be satisfied. If you are absolutely, perfectly satisfied on your own (physically, psychologically, and spiritually), you wouldn't be attracted by a person, an object, or an event, not to mention wasting your energy to pursue it. You would never possess the love of food if you constantly feel full; you wouldn't desire to have more money if you've believed to reach your ideal amount. This is also why Socrates describes love as an intermediate entity that "enables the universe to form a interconnected whole. In other words, love paves the way between this absolute nothingness and the absolute ideal. Take Socrates' idea on wisdom, for example, if you love wisdom, it means you are at the moment neither absolutely ignorant nor absolutely wise; instead, you are in the middle of pursuing it, aiming to approach the state of being absolutely wise as much as possible. In addition, Socrates points out that this object of love is not only to possess the "good", but also for this possession to last forever.

The Universal Love and Its Function

Since each of us holds a different interpretation on what's desirable and idealistic in life, it might seems like there's no pattern in determining what we are ultimately looking for through love. It's obvious that we all naturally love the "good." However, how do we more specifically define "good"? Socrates points out that beauty is what universally and ultimately directs our love. In other words, we are all naturally driven toward subjects with harmonizing characteristics (in both physical or abstract forms) that appeal to our sensory experiences. Beauty is the essential formula, the backbone of all manifestations of love.

Why, though, do we love the beautiful? How is chasing something beautiful beneficial to us? Socrates' explains that the love of beauty stems from humans' intrinsic craving for immortality. To be more specific, this immortality has an ideal form - to be fused with beautiful characteristics. Loving the beautiful catalyzes a series of actions: recognizing the beautiful, pursuing the beautiful, and finally, reproducing the beautiful, or in Socrates' words,"...giving birth in beauty both in body and in mind". Piloting us through this journey, therefore, is Socrates' idea of the function of love. It whispers to our ears, telling us that, as all other forms of life, time is our greatest enemy. We are merely a dot on the never-ending timeline. However, we want our existence to last, to be embodied in forms of preservation that continue on after our body perishes. We want to produce legacies that escape the restrains of time and space. Furthermore, we want these legacies to be "good" in quality, or in other words, to reflect characteristics of the beautiful. This is true both on a biological and a psychological, or a physical and abstract level. We want a part of us to live-on in something profoundly meaningful, like how in Harry Potter, the dark lord Voldemort preserves pieces of his soul in the horcruxes, which takes form in objects that are either subjectively meaningful (such as his childhood diary and his pet python) or objectively valued as treasures in the wizard world (such as Hufflepuff's cup and Slytherin's locket.) This is why, as animals, we inevitably want to produce offspring, biological tokens that fuse our genes with other "good" ones and carry them onward; as humans, we inevitably want to reproduce things, physical and psychological zygotes that are reflective of individuality and beauty. The reproduction of beauty is the greatest ritual of life, for it not only fulfills our fundamental purpose both as animals and as humans, but it also neutralizes our ultimate fear of death. It ultimately brings security, peacefulness and happiness. Below is my model that summarizes Socrates' idea of love's function:

Equation of Love: Pursuing the Ideal Immortality

Future: ideal, immortal form of existence

^

Loving: see beauty -> understand beauty -> acquire beauty -> reproduce beauty

^

Present: partially lacking, mortal form of existence

Self-Sabotaging Acts in Love

If we're all naturally attracted by the beautiful, why are many still trapped in sufferings and miseries? The main problem rests in focusing on the superficial form of love and failing to move-on to the authentic form of love. For instance, one might be preoccupied by pursing the love of money, the love of materialistic wealth, the love of entertainments, and other purely socially/ culturally-constructed idolatry that hypnotizes us, telling us what to want, need, and worship. The problem is not incorporating these goals as part of our life. Rather, what sabotages us is failing to move-on and look pass this superficial level. Like Pinocchio, we all yearn for "becoming a real person", a self-actualizing individual who is freed from the instrumental constrains of the physical world and capable of interacting with the authentic love; however, many of us remain the children of the pleasure island . We are distracted and compelled by the temptations of the superficial love. As we give-in to this value system, we forget to continue seeking the authentic love. Our definition of what's ideal, good, and beautiful become twisted. Little do we know, superficial love merely resolves superficial sense of hunger. Furthermore, what superficial love triggers us to give birth to (in response to our yearn for immortality) would be an empty "product" ; like an unfertilized egg, it takes an image of fulfillment, but is an illusion after all. This vicious cycle is our unwitting neglect of "transforming from a puppet to a real person. Instead, like the children on pleasure island, we turn into donkeys: self-destructive animals enslaved by external entities, and constantly trapped in chronic fear and insecurity.

What we should do instead is finding the right form of beauty to love: one that resonates and intrigues us; one that elicits passion, motivation and persistence, allowing us to go through the entire process of loving: see, understand, acquire, and reproduce. Let's say that, for example, one is interested in fashion. To him, clothing is more than a trophy of financial competence. He's intrigued by the harmony created by colors, textures, and style. His sensitivity allows him to recognize and appreciate the messages and individual expressions of different designers. Once he's found the form of love that speaks to him, he constructs and conducts the "equation" : what's the ideal in the future, what's lacking in the present, and how he's going to link these two phases together through pursuing the love of beauty (in terms of fashion.) It is important to note that, the ultimate goal here is never money and fame. Rather, it's the process of finding a congruence between how the world defines beauty (in his case,fashion) and how he develops his own expression of beauty through a unique combination of ingredients. This is the ideal state of reproduction, for it is neither a complete isolation (of the subjective mind) nor a total dependence (on the objective world). This is the transcendence of knowledge to wisdom, and then preserving it in an ideal shell. This is the ideal immortality.

Of course, we can't ignore the importance of our current value system; money, for example, is fundamental to our well-being in the modern world. On top of that, financial strength can greatly contribute to pursuing the love of beauty. Traveling, reading, and participating in social events, for instance, are all gateways to expand our interactions with beauty, for they integrate new knowledge and experiences into our schema. However, while co-existing with the value system of capitalism is inevitable, we should also be aware that we will be dehumanized, manipulated, and consumed if we don't remind ourselves of our ultimate goal (pursuing the authentic love). Conforming to the pleasures of superficial values is always more direct and facile. Life is short, and the majority around us conform, so why not? However, once we allow ourselves to completely indulge in this superficial value system, we gradually lose our interest to continue on pursuing the authentic love. It's like abusing psychoactive drugs: once you've become used to the intense, direct, and quick euphoria that hits you, your patience and interest toward pursuing long-term pleasures diminish. As time goes by, we start to feel anxious and insecure. Time is ticking, but we remain the players of the physical world. We no longer have the courage and the patience to search for the authentic love. We try to resolve our fear by investing more in the game of capitalism. We become shopaholics, attention-whores and tyrants. Balancing our pursue of the superficial and the authentic love, therefore, is the key to salvation.