A Theory of Love?

The thing is that we are always captivated by theories and we must wriggle our way out of them. There is no theory about love or about the self, otherwise there would be no way of humans coming up with new forms or even developing different ways of loving in different contexts. That is something we must learn and learn painfully. It also means that if there is a fixed theory, then we fail to do justice not only to the imperfect circumstances in which one might fall in love, given the world and its imperfections, but to also our own imperfections and limitations and the imperfections of those we fall in love with.

And not having a theory means to have the power to explain and evolve the practices of another human. The sort of explanation and evolution again would not be theoretical, although a theory might be involved in its rudimentary stages. Because if there is an advanced theory, then any revision of it will have to be dictated primarily by the stipulation of the theory itself rather than the free choices of those it is trying to explain (but this would not be so in scientific theories, because these free choices aren't involved). What I’m talking about would simply mean that all we have to do is to open our eyes to the special in those who we have managed to come close to, and not to be slaves to our own expectations. Because as long as we our slaves to our own expectations, we will never come out of our solipsistic states, since a mere fulfillment of our expectations would mean that there is no possibility of the freedom of the other, in the sense that the other is free only insofar as they conform to your expectations. Falling short of them would simply mean that there is no leeway for their spontaneity.

Now I’m not saying that one must not have any expectations, but only that one must not have expectations that ought to be fulfilled like the requirements of an analytic statement- that of the 2+ 2 of expectations one must not expect a four, but one must be allowed to add on the left hand side and on the right hand side, so that not only creativity is allowed for expressiveness on both sides, but that there is space for personal evolution for both the lover and the beloved.

A Dialogue on Contentment and Freedom

It started with a quote from Socrates, which said- "He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have." The following are the responses that ensued.

Chinmayee: I disagree.

Shamik: I think a consumer generation would find it hard to agree with this (and this is not to sound patronizing. It applies to me too). But one must understand the difference between the sort of discontent that propels one towards progress and the other that is a discontented disposition. A blurring of this distinction might be the root of the disagreement.

Chinmayee: I can understand if you are talking about pure consumerism. You possess thing X and you want thing Y also. There Socrates is right. But if thing Y happens to be an ideal or an unrealized potential then certainly State Y will make me happier than State X

Suppose I have a great poetic genius within me which is locked because of say reasons a,b,c. I will never be happy till that genius is unlocked and a state in which it is neccesarily better than one in which it isn’t.

Shamik: The thing is, only if one cherishes something that one can know what they have to look forward to, otherwise you are on a wild goose chase towards an abstract ideal and because its nature is such, you cannot know that you will be content with it or not. The point is to cherish and be content with the little that one has, and our own natural imperfections, the imperfect nature of this contentment and our will to not remain in one place will propel us forward.

Moreover, if one moves discontentedly towards unrealized ideals and prioritizes them more than everything else, one will not only be blind towards what they have in front of them and leave out the charm of the process, but also by overvaluing the ideal by hyping it, would never be content, precisely because there is no possible situation that will match up to the hype. And this is not only a caution about hyping the value of everything, but also to make us realize that that in the long run, even though life has to offer us a lot, it can only give us this much, and whatever little it gives is to be worth it. The rest is illusion and like a bubble, it will burst.

Nebu: But suppose a slave wishes for freedom. Would you say that he would be dis-contented once he's been freed? I don't think so.

Shamik: Nebu, I might have explained a bit of that above. Also, if a slave has not seen somethings to be content about in his slavery, as in the open fields etc., then the slave cannot possibly know what is cherishable when he is free. The slave would then be escaping to a vacuum of freedom. (Same goes for the poetic genius)

But one as to see the condition of the slave as not an absolute condition of slavery, as in that they have nothing to be content about, but the slave too preserves his autonomy in a certain sense and his will towards autonomy even during slavehood, during which he sees and is contented with things that are worth cherishing. Socrates' caution is towards a disposition and worldview of discontent. His assumption would be that we are creatures of habit, and if we form habits of discontent, then those habits will not leave us even when the 'ideal' conditions for contentment would arise.

Chinmayee: But you are assuming too much naivete on part of a person. I’ll tell you why. Building on your slave example you must understand that freedom in itself is a desirable state. Now the slave may be a fool who say- drinks away his freedom or commits a murder and ends up in jail. So yes- he may not be happier but the state is more desirable and has the potential to confer greater happiness because it can allow a greater, deeper realization of human faculties.

 Shamik:  I don't see how the example leads to the conclusion that freedom is in itself a desirable state...my argument is that freedom would be a desirable state only if there are things that you actively cherish in whatever state you are in. So freedom becomes a requisite to their maximal realization.

Also, one might pity the slave in his condition of freedom when he is squandering it away in drink even while one is accepting the condition of freedom as a better one. So we must come up with a more refined idea of freedom.

 Chinmayee: But if you are human, then freedom of the mind is always desirable because you can use it to attain a better state POTENTIALLY. You may not attain it but it gives you the 'freedom' to do so, the opportunity if you will.

Nebu: I do agree with the bit about different sorts of discontentment. But I disagree with your slave response...and I'd like to supplement what Chinmayee said with a more concrete example. 

Anyone who's had to break his/her back for some Overlord, is sure to appreciate freedom from said bonds. Also if wanting more in life is counter-productive, then the entire concept of dreams/dreaming of a better anything is put to shame! What say?

Shamik:  Nebu, I still don't see how your response to the slave question is incompatible with what I'm saying...you seem to understand freedom in absolute terms and so does Chinmayee, which is indeed important if we are to understand the idea of freedom in any sense, including the sense that one has to understand freedom in degrees. 

As a counter to my argument, Chinmayee said that "human freedom of the mind is always desirable because you can use it to attain a better state POTENTIALLY. You may not attain it but it gives you the 'freedom' to do so, the opportunity if you will." But if a prerequisite to understanding any other sense of freedom is indeed the absolute condition of freedom, which is what makes freedom desirable and that is the concept that enables us to judge a particular condition as a condition of slavery, other senses of freedom follow from that. And then again, what I am saying is compatible with what you're saying.

So freedom is secondarily conceived in terms of degrees and not in absolute conditions because, as I have already mentioned, even in the condition of slavery, a certain degree of human autonomy is retained that enables the slave to look forward to freedom even while he has things worth cherishing in even that state. This is precisely because of the freedom he possesses, even if it is extremely limited.

The reason why you guys seem to have a problem with my idea is because the concept of freedom and dreams/dreaming is seen in absolute terms, which is in itself important, but they have to be brought down to time and place and context. Contentment, if it is to be seen as an important experience in determining what we want, even in ideal conditions of freedom, has to be situated in concrete experience, in the here and now, and not in some abstract realm of unrealized or unrealizable abstractions and dreams. Because, true freedom is not possible, just as it is impossible for an ideal square or triangle to exist, since reality by its very nature blots out its ideality. 

Or to put it in a slightly more technical way but for clarity. Freedom in absolute terms is logically prior to any other conception of freedom, because this is a concept we have to understand before we understand any other sense. But as to how we arrived at the concept in the first place was to abstract it from our everyday notions of freedom in which we live out our freedoms and experience our moments of contentment.

So the point is, that is we are to live in time, and we do live in time, we have to give priority in our experiences to notions of freedom situated in time, while at the same time using the abstract notion as a yardstick to judge where we are. But one must not forget that the abstract must be tempered by the concrete, simply because even though the abstract is a comfortable place to live in without the frictions we experience in the everyday, the multitude of experience is the source of what we cherish.

And yes, contentment too is not a permanent state because of the nature of this hell of flux we inhabit.

Chinmayee: Well yes, I see this point that a 'slave' must at least appreciate things like- food and drink- which are avaliable to him even in his enslaved state. Freedom for him would be that plus something else...so he must appreciate the bare minimum he has

But consider another state- say a starving man who hasn't eaten for days. Now if you give him a piece of bread, it seems quite likely to me that he would find this situation better than the previous one...that he would be MORE contented

Also consider a micro-state...say a slave has been chained for an entire day in a corner. Food and drink have been placed before him- but are just out of his reach. Now suppose in the next instant, a kind man enters the room and places those items within his reach. Again, is it too much to say that he would be happy in this situation- and would have found nothing to appreciate in the old one?

Socrates is generalizing. What he says may be, (and perhaps is) true for many sitations, but there are exceptions possible- circumstances that take all the joy out of a moment. If they are removed, that joy would be restored... 

Shamik: Again Chinmayee, I doubt if the case of more contentment is incompatible with what I’m saying. Again if there are degrees of freedom, there can be degrees of contentment. As for each of them finding something, I’ll try to make a case for them trying to find something at least minimal. 

Let's see what might happen if I stretch Socrates' sense of 'content' a bit more for the sake of argument, in accordance with some of what I've said before. Now I know I'm treading on very delicate ground as I haven't experienced this kind of suffering before. But since the Stoic philosopher Epictetus who was also a slave had, there have been precedents, so I will proceed albeit cautiously.

One assumption Chinmayee makes is that the sort of contentment that has to come has to do with the possession of things, and even I have talked about 'things' worth cherishing. But I have also mentioned that the source of contentment is the possession of autonomy as such, in whatever degree possible. And if the person is alive, in whatever limited circumstance, this autonomy seems to be ever present since it represents the possibility of freedom and the ability to hope.

The thought that I seem to be getting at is that maybe contentment does not need to be seen in terms of possession and satisfaction, but is intricately linked up with hoping and being enlivened by the hope of retaining one’s humanity. But it’s not only that. The imperfect and transient nature of our contentment points to the idea of accepting its finitude, and as Nissim Ezekiel put it, to “bear your restlessness with grace.” So at each moment, our contentments are defined by these constraints, especially of grace covering up for the eternally non-absolute nature of it.

 Now how does it fit into the picture of the starving man and the cornered slave? Well I find it horribly difficult to say it without sounding smug, but I’ll try to say it. One can in these moments pine and pine and scream and shout or remain calm and strengthen themselves by the sense inner self sufficiency had by the sort of person who in a boat of starving people maintains their calm and offers each one hope. And that perhaps is the minimal sort of contentment that one can find even in these situations.

An Ontological Argument for the Existence of this Blog? Huh!

Ah! Finally! My unconsciously long-awaited idea to find a way to disburse my philosophical reflections into the great big world outside has finally been floated in my head and materialized...

Or should I say concretised? And 'world'? Is the internet a world? Well, then, perhaps we cannot conceive of the internet as a world without the people linked up to it-- past, present and future. To call the internet a world per se would be such a misnomer! But then, imagine a world in which God rules from the outside. Can we call that a world per se without conceiving of God along with it, especially if we think of the internet as a world and each of us as God. But wouldn't the difference be that the former has animate inhabitants and the latter doesn't?

However, a broader point can be made that intrinsic to the idea of the world is what sustains the order within it (even if it is intrinsic to it)-- which includes its origins, its persistence through time and its future. One of the implications of this idea can be that we cannot talk of a world without the humans involved in it.

If this is so, then even though in my previous context, the distinction between the inner and world might be valid (because of an important value laden distinction between the private and the public), we cannot postulate an ontological discontinuity between the inner and the outer. And perhaps the problem of the external world and other minds arises because the idea of the world that I am talking about is not respected.

Then one might ask, "What about the world outside, the objective world that exists whether we are dead or alive?" To that I might reply that one might simply rephrase that as a theory dependent entity (and yes, an entity nevertheless) that needs to exists if 'the world' is to be made possible, for we cannot conceive of the world without that too. My previous argument also implies that when we conceive of the world, we cannot conceive of it as being a world with the possibility that we might not have existed, but as a necessary world which which it cannot be otherwise that we do not exist, because our existence is linked up with that of the world's.

But what about free will? And does that mean that the future cannot be otherwise? But that forgets the fact that the world essentially includes beings with free will, and if beings with free will act, then it is necessary that there are possibilities and that it cannot be otherwise. Moreover, this necessity is given in the the concept of the world and need not be part of the nature of things, but of how we interpret the word 'world', because if the concept is used without it presupposing what I have mentioned, then it would disintegrate, shatter to pieces in conceptual space. Which takes us to the idea that the world cannot be naked, and that it must of necessity, wear pants...

Moving on, the name for the blog was at first thought in terms of more conventional philosophical rants, but it seems that if pants are involved, then we can think of philosophy as giving us support and preparation for one wonders what, but those things nevertheless...yes, and its time I got my pants dirty...