Hopeless Geek

Have you ever had one of those moments where you’re just sitting there doing something that’s more physical than mental and then your mind starts to wander and think about other things entirely and then you stumble across a truth that really changes things for you? I think I’ve had a Toilet Epiphany of this nature.

Often, when bored out of my mind (like having read all the available items in my porcelain library), I’ll ask myself a question in my mind and force myself to elaborate on it. It helps to keep me thinking, in general, and it usually makes for some interesting discussion … with myself … in my head. You have to work with that you’ve got. So I asked myself today: “What is love?” Initially, it was for no more reason than to see what semi-poetic answer I could come up with that wasn’t playing off of someone else’s quote or what-have-you (Victor Hugo: “Life is a flower for which love is the honey.”; Franklin Jones: “Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love makes the ride worthwhile.”).

After I went a few rounds and came up with nothing either useful nor quite poetic, I then asked myself: “Well, that was an attempt at the emotional answer, what’s the logical answer?” Fairly quickly I said to myself: “Well, it’s fear.” Specifically, it’s a fear of losing someone. Love could be described as a nebulous attachment that animals make to one another, or it could be described in more concrete terms as saying that you love someone when you fear that someone being removed from your life.

It makes perfect sense as a survival instinct, given that fear itself evolved that way. The natural size of a group of humans has been said to be around 150 people (this is known as Dunbar’s Number). That is to say that if we were in “the wild” that we would naturally form tribes of about 150 people. If you look at Native Americans and African tribes, that’s about right. Some are exceptions, but in general man picks a number around there. Why that number? If you read the studies, that’s how many people we can actually care about. This is important because that’s the whole point of animals banding together: protection. We don’t like to see other people for the sake of it, we like to see other people because that means we’re not alone and will have help in fighting for land, property, or survival. A concept central to being protected is being cared about by the others, and that care is, in this case, a fear that losing you will leave them open and defenseless later on. Safety in numbers.

So, in that group of people you need to care about maintaining who you have. It’s a family of sorts, and you’re going to be worried about losing anyone because numbers matter. More specifically, and more central to true animal survival (protection of your genetic line), you’re going to care about your blood relatives more than others. You’re going to fear losing them, and protect them because of it. You’re going to feel relief in their safety because you don’t have to feel the fear of losing them. That is love. Love is the result of accepting someone in your mind as family or as otherwise important to you (be it survival, like blood relations or a spouse, or even something as nebulous as one’s mental health) and then feeling relief at both their present state of being safe and being in your life. Ever have a stronger feeling of love towards someone when that one returns from a trip safely or acknowledges their need of you in their lives? Bingo, relief.

You love younger blood relations because their survival means your genetic history will survive. You love older blood relations because they still have much to teach you, and fill a solid “teacher” role in your life (this goes to safety). You love mates/spouses because they will help you carry on your genetic history. In any case, you fear someone’s removal from your life and that fear is the single sign that you love someone.

What of other relations like same sex, friendships, or the nebulous “mental health” I referred to earlier? This goes back to the tribe mentality. One family isn’t enough for real protection for humans in the wild — you need several families. So to that end, we accept people into our tribes and assign an attachment to them that’s linked to our well-being (physical or emotional). If someone is funny or always happy, that’s linked to preventing one from getting depressed so that person is taken in as a counter to a natural tendency. Likewise the lighthearted would take in a so-called realist to help ground him and keep his humorous ways from getting him in trouble. Opposites attract because we are compensating for our deficiencies. People looking for similar minds either have an ego problem or haven’t fully realized what their own problems are yet. As one understands more of himself, I would fully expect that person to seek out someone that carries the traits opposite to those he finds in himself that are loathsome. This goes again to safety.

In the end, it’s quite possible that love is a defense, and a variant of fear. We fear being alone or being the end of our genetic line and we also fear being weak in one area (physically or mentally). So we attach to our families and we find a group of people that complement us in as many ways as possible and keep them near. The bond that grows is merely our understanding of their importance to ourselves for our various primal needs and the growing need for the protection of that relationship to maintain our own security in this world.

So, I think I have the simple guide to always properly answer the question: “Do I love this person?” The answer is, simply, are you scared of that person being removed from their place in your life forever? Would the removal of that person leave a hole either in the genetic or mental complement areas that would cause you any sort of fear? The level of the fear you would have is the level of love that you have, all things being equal.

This explains those that love someone merely because they fear being alone. Their greatest fear is solved merely because the other person exists and will keep their company. The specifics do not matter in this case — a relationship of mutual acceptance would be enough to fill the gap. I’ve seen many couples that appeared to have a very weak bond between them, requiring little time together and just enjoying that the other person is around, somewhere. For them, their needs are just an occasional, reliable companion. That they found someone else with a similar need yields their love.

Others need a more oppressive smothering to assuage the fear of loneliness, so you have the couple that cannot be separated by anything other than death or work. Their greatest fear is abandonment, so they don’t let it happen. If there is a perceived need in one partner, the other will happily fill it within reason to prove that person’s worth to the other. Similarly, if one partner notices a dip in such actions, that person may begin to feel unneeded and thus distance is created and love “dies” as a result. It’s not love, per se, but the feeling of mutual need that is dying. The other person is not working to prove their worth in the relationship and so, the logic goes, the relationship must not be something that person needs. This is actually a central concept in relationship counseling in various forms: “demonstrate your love”.

So, Love is the state of pleasure that one’s personal needs for safety of some kind have been fulfilled by someone else’s presence in one’s life. The resulting fear of potential loss that ensues is the marker that it’s happened. Therefore, one could say that love is simply the resolution or silencing of a fear.

Addendum

There’s also emotional safety, also known as reassurance — a trait more common to woman than men, but seen in both sexes. The overweight prefer to take on friends smaller than they are so there is the reassurance of social acceptance. The opposite happens for comparative reasons. The poor seek the rich for sustenance and the opposite happens to “feel good” about helping others. Either way, there’s a need being filled in the relationship. This filling of an emotional void with an opposite, if the need itself is strong enough, can become something expected and required in one’s life and thus become a friendship love or stronger on that basis alone. This is rarely healthy…