General Theory of Love - Part 1. Intro

We contemplated what it means to truly love oneself. Truly loving oneself is equivalent to making decisions and taking actions consistent with a direction that is best aligned with self-love, even if alternatives seem more attractive. Truly loving oneself and living wisely are indistinguishable and interchangeable.

However, we know that we are bound to love others. Many of us have at least one person we love other than ourselves, and even if we do not, we have a sense of hope that we could love somebody other than ourselves.

Often the case, such love for others or hopes of loving others seem to possess greater value than we love ourselves.

In this piece, we will become wiser by showing how wisdom is internally consistent even if we expand the set of loved ones. We take the theory of self-love and valuation together to generalize to a space where one can truly love anyone - including oneself. We will find that true love for others has a shared foundation with true self-love. There are only a few addendums we need.

Suppose that you and I are from any walks of life, and further assume that I love you.

Here is a general view of valuation. This piece is an important foundation before we move on to the general theory of love.

Definition: valuation is a system that assigns value - to resources, decisions, actions, and consequences.

My naturally developed valuation is subjective. My valuation has been naturally formed, learned through case studies, trial and error, experiments, and other active pursuits. Because I can influence my mind to some extent, some of my baseline valuation is also engineered by my own effort, and my surroundings also affect it.

Proposition: my valuation becomes augmented with my belief about your valuation. When I love you, I genuinely care about you whenever I make decisions and take actions that affect you in some way that I believe your valuation is affected.

This is easy to see. My valuation when I do not genuinely care about any other people besides myself, I do not need to consult others and I can keep operating with my valuation. But suppose I love you - meaning I am assigning values to what you feel and experience is good or bad from your end. I then must care to some extent about you making a good judgment for yourself, and if I make any decision that affects you in some way, I must then value what I believe on how you value different choices. Hence, my valuation must be then augmented when I am making decisions that affect you.

Without losing generality, we are going to keep vocabulary slim by doing the following:

Generalized definition: my valuation is a system that assigns value - to resources, decisions, actions, and consequences, (with a possibility that my own valuation is augmented with my most up-to-date beliefs about your valuations)

Reason why valuation augmentation must follow is because, I genuinely care about you for I love you and whenever I am evaluating resources, decisions, actions, and consequences that involve you and I, I must be valuate them with your view considered.

With the generalized valuation sorted out, we can now discuss a general view on love. Parentheses are used to highlight differences between the general definition and self-love definition.

Definition: love

If I make decisions and take actions consistent with my valuation (which takes account of my best prediction of your valuation) from each decision point and each day (whenever decisions affect you), then I must believe that I love (you).

Here is an issue though - this definition skipped discussing one thing that separates genuine kindness and liking somebody to loving somebody. Because for self-love, this clause was obvious and implied: when I love myself, my total resources expended include the lifetime accumulation of daily expenditures in fundamental resources of life. Self-love has a cost of all fundamental resources of life, embedded.

When it comes to loving someone else, maybe this idea may not be obvious. Hence, the definition will add a conditional clause as follows.

Definition: love

If I make decisions and take actions consistent with my valuation which takes account of my best prediction of your valuation from each decision point and each day whenever decisions affect you, [and I have the willingness to expend the entirety of fundamental resources of life each day to continue doing so,] then I must believe that I love you.

This definition certainly sets love apart from other types of good deeds for others. Don’t be mistaken – self-love also need to buy with the same amount of costs – you purchase daily love with all fundamental resources.

This definition is very useful and gives us an amazing results as follows.

Proposition: if I love you and myself, then my best course of decision is best aligned with loving you and myself. Also, we can simplify by saying that my best course of decision is best aligned with loving myself.

Because I love myself, and I love you, I must now be augmented with my best belief in your valuation, as if I do not, then I am not genuinely interested in what you value. Hence, my valuation must already reflect what you seem to genuinely value. Hence my valuation must be augmented with what I believe yours is. Therefore, loving myself by following my augmented valuation is enough to love you.

Proposition: if I love you then it implies that I must love myself.

Suppose that I love you, but I do not love myself. I am willing to expend entirety of fundamental resources of life to continue making decisions and take actions consistent with my valuation, on your behalf. The value of loving you must be greater than my fundamental resources of life as I used them willingly in love. That value must be registered in my mind, hence my life's value must be then more valuable than my fundamental resources of life. I must hence love my life. The contradiction shows that I must love myself if I love you.

Proposition: if I love you then it implies that I must at least allocate my fundamental resources to learn how you value things, to the extent that I expect to make decisions that affects you.

Suppose I do not learn how you value things and I still love you. Then I must expect that my augmented valuation is foreseeably inaccurate to align myself to love you. This is contradictory because, learning about your valuation must be part of decision and action which I must find valuable if I love you.

Discussion: Selfish and selfless love.

Is the definition of love too selfish? That's right. Wisdom is the knowledge of making a good judgment. Who is making the judgment on what is a good judgment? I need to be convinced that a decision is good or not. If I am making self-loving decisions each time, each day, then I must judge that I love myself. My life expends all my fundamental resources for doing so. If I am making decisions that is best aligned with loving others, then I must judge that I love them. I need to collect the best information and come up with the most systematic process that they value, and follow through with a courage to execute decisions when the decisions affect both you and me.

But does it also sound selfless? My best course of decision is dictated by accounting for my best belief of what you value - hence this is the most selfless calculus I am solving in my mind to love you - for each decision that involves you and me. Provided that I need to decide and act, loving you binds me to look out for your highest valuation and respectfully adjust my valuation, while I am willing to spend entirety of fundamental resources of my life for. I must believe that this is close to as selfless I could be.

Today, we became wiser by understanding how we convince ourselves that we love others, and what must be true when we love others. If I genuinely love others, my valuation become modified with my best belief of loved ones' valuations. My love for others must imply self-love. My love for you is both selfish and selfless as I genuinely care what you may feel, but I ultimately have to make a decision.

In the next piece, part 2 of this series will show true love of others and how to love others with wise valuation augmented with wise valuation for others. We will be wiser by establishing what it means to truly love others and how wisdom is necessary to do so. We will establish that the best attempt to estimate loved ones' valuation is not enough to be wise.

Keywords: Theory of love, how we love others, valuations that account for others.

Suggested previous piece: True self-love and Wise valuation.

Suggested next piece: General theory of love - Part 2. True love for others, and useful facts [To be written].