General Theory of Love - Part 2. True love

Defining love clearly is foundational wisdom. Mankind has devoted so much effort to produce art, history, philosophy, and science, all striving toward one common goal: to love oneself better and to love others better. Every industry caters to us by offering products as a means of truly loving ourselves and our loved ones, or at least they present themselves as they are.

All readers, including myself, would consider our lives most valuable if we truly did one thing right - that is, to manifest the truest version of self-love and to love the people we believe are significant around us. All other incentives and intermediate goals can temporarily become important and relevant, but the ultimate goal always triumphs when one assesses the values of their own life. True love is the common goal that connects humanity into one, and it is the essence of how wisdom transcends specific details of our lives, settings, culture, and time.

In the last section, we contemplated what it means to love others, and several results carry over from the self-love discussion to the general theory of true love we are discussing today. As you may have guessed, we will consider how one can be convinced that they are truly loving somebody, as opposed to merely loving somebody in general.

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

Because I now have two people to consider, and your thoughts and feelings are something I do not have control over, yet I care greatly about them, I will have to introduce some concepts.

Definition: Expectation.

If I expect you to do something because I did something for you, that means I believe your follow-up is necessary for me to decide to do something for you.

In some ways, you can think of expectation as a self-made contract between me and future you, and the actual outcome matters in how I assess what I did for you.

Definition: Hope.

If I hope for you to do something because I did something for you, that means I believe your follow-up is highly desired for me to decide to do something for you; however, the favorable outcome is not necessary for me to decide to do something for you.

In some ways, you can think of hope as a self-made commitment, likely with a motive, but the commitment is made regardless of the actual outcome.

Proposition: Since I cannot expect myself to naturally make wise decisions, I cannot expect you to naturally make wise decisions for yourself.

Recall the flipside of wisdom. I acknowledge the existence of wisdom, and I want to be wiser because I realize my natural inclinations often lead me toward bad decisions and my own destruction. I cannot expect that your natural inclination is always going to be wise either, hence I cannot expect that you will always be wise.

Proposition: Since I did not engineer my feelings to love you, I cannot expect that you will love me back with certainty.

This one should be a trivial claim. Because I love you for whatever reasons and I reserve my right to come to the conclusion that I must love, you reserve your complete right to your fundamental resources and to determine if you love me or not. Hence, I cannot grant myself certainty that your love is expected for whatever I do.

We need one more concept to generalize general love, as self-love implicitly has this.

Definition: Working Relationship.

A working relationship is a relationship between two people where both understand that the relationship is mutually beneficial.

We need this because, in the case of self-love, your relationship with yourself is compulsory since your mind is encased in your body, and you are bound to keep your relationship with yourself "working" by actively seeking value addition from expending daily resources.

In the case of a relationship between two people, the concept of a working relationship is necessary.

Definition: True Love.

(Whenever I do something that relates to your values of life and your resources), if I make decisions and take actions consistent with wise valuation (that incorporates my best understanding of your valuation) from each decision point and each day, no matter how attractive it seems, then I must believe that I truly love you.

Again, "(Whenever ... relates to your values of life and your resources)" was a necessary addition because self-love always implicitly expends my resources. In the general case of true love, it isn't obvious.

Proposition: A truly loving relationship cannot survive between you and me if it is not a working relationship and it is expected to stay that way.

As much as I truly love you, I understand that you may believe that the relationship between you and me is not a working relationship and further believe that there is no good chance that it is going to stop. Then the best value I could grant you with my wise valuation, which accounts for your valuation, must be concluding that my true love for you is not sustainable, and my use of fundamental resources should cease. Hence, I must decide and follow the wise valuation's calling for the termination of the relationship.

It is my right to keep the feeling as long as I want to, so long as I do not do anything that would interfere with your life. However, I must expect that my input must be kept to none for you, and my input's impact on your value will also be expectedly zero going forward, and that's most I can do to improve value from your end.

Proposition: If I truly love you, then I must hope to truly love myself.

In other words, this proposition is equivalent to the following statement:

If I love you and I am wise, then I must hope that you become wise.

This is a fundamental result, and I must spend some time convincing readers. Suppose that I truly love you, and I do not hope that you love yourself truly. That means I do not care if you end up either (1) loving yourself (but not truly) or (2) not loving yourself. If I truly love you, then I certainly do not want you to not love yourself because that means you are making decisions and taking actions that are not consistent with your valuation of things, which will certainly lead to reduced value of life, as assessed by you. Hence, I'd at least hope that you love yourself - ruling out possibility (2). If I truly love you, then I must hope that you make decisions and take actions that are most aligned with your valuation of loving yourself when I am not around. Since I truly care about your valuation, I augment my own valuation when you are around. I make each decision and take actions consistent with truly loving you. Hence, I must believe that I care about you getting the most value you can for your daily life, for each decision point, even when I am not around. Hence, I must hope that you truly love yourself - ruling out (1).

Proposition: If I truly love you, then I must hope to truly love myself. Since I must hope, there is no good reason not to truly love myself.

This is another fundamental result that I must devote some time to. Suppose not. Suppose I love you truly, but I still do not hope to truly love myself. That means either (1) I hope to love myself but not truly, or (2) I hope to not love myself. But, if I truly love you, then I must at least love you. In the last part of Section I, we found that if I love you, then I must love myself at least because I am at least willing to expend my fundamental life resources to love you, and the value is registered in my mind. Hence, case (2) is impossible. We only need to address case (1).

There could be other approaches to rule out (1) but this one is through reflexive property of hope.

If I truly love you, then I must be willing to exhaust my fundamental life resources in the hope that you truly love yourself, truly love me, and truly love your other loved ones. The critical piece is that I truly hope that you truly love me. But our previous result says that if you truly love me, then you must hope that I truly love myself. Hence, my hope for true love from you must lead you to have willingness to expend your resources to hope for my own true self-love. But I must be truly hoping for you to love me. and how can I not then truly love myself? This contradiction rules out case (1).

We established basically contagion of true love through hope - which is a powerful foundation which definitely makes us wiser. Combining two results leads to one of the most beautiful results of the fundamentals of wisdom.

Corollary: If I abide by wise valuation, truly loving myself and truly loving you are indistinguishable, integrated, and inseparable.

We will discuss the beauty of this result in the next section, along with other amazing characteristics.

Keywords: True love

Suggested previous piece: General Theory of Love - Part 1. Intro.

Suggested next piece: General Theory of Love - Part 3. Characteristics of true love. [To be written]