Theory of Self-Love

The foundation of wisdom lies in aligning our values with the truest version of loving ourselves and our loved ones. But what is meant by love exactly? A weak theory of love is equivalent to a weak foundation of wisdom. At least, anyone who is willing to believe the axiom of wisdom knows that love is a value which all walks of life are willing to give up a significant proportion of their resources in their lives to attain. We want to truly love ourselves, but what does it even mean?

In this piece, we focus on the concept of self-love, and a later piece will talk about true love for others.

Recognizing the flip side of wisdom - unwise decision and me.

Suppose I am a person from any walk of life. Wisdom is the body of knowledge that helps us make judgments that are best-aligned with loving myself and my loved ones. Wisdom then must include a collection of all knowledge that enables me to love myself better and to love my surroundings better when known and applied.

The body of wisdom exists because of two necessary flip sides. There are such things as bad, unwise, and less wise decisions. There I am, also contributing to the existence of wisdom; I am often naturally inclined to make unwise decisions. I must know that unwise decisions exist if I believe in wisdom.

I would be willing to invite wisdom into my decision process solely to deviate from my own natural inclination to make a better decision. I inquire of wisdom what I must do to love myself the best. One of the most fundamental wisdom is this - I love myself such that I hate my natural inclination which makes bad decisions. But if I hate myself making bad decisions, how can I be wise? But if I let myself make bad decisions, how can I be love myself? These are the puzzles that seem impossible, but we will resolve it in this piece. If I invite wisdom to decide what is my best course of action - then by listening to wisdom, I can be wise and I can still love myself for following the decisions that are most aligned with self-love.

Definition 1: self-love

If I make decisions and actions consistent with my valuation from each decision point and each day, then I must believe that I love myself. Note that the valuation is a general one and does not necessarily be a wise valuation.

Proposition 1: Admitting that I need to be wiser means there is a value in rejecting a naturally-inclined choice. It is also equivalent to admitting that the value of an alternative is more aligned with truly loving myself.

Suppose that I make natural decisions all the time, and my valuation of natural decisions deems them no less valuable than the decisions aligned with truly loving myself. Then the decision is equivalently valuable to the wise decision. Then my natural decision-making is no less valuable than wise decision-making; hence I do not need to be wiser.

Proposition 2: To love myself, I must learn about myself and relevant surroundings sufficiently well such that my wise valuation is aligned with loving who I believe I am.

All decision point that seeking wisdom is needed involves myself, it is wise for me to spend some resources to at least learn about myself and my surroundings, which are common denominators of all decision points. This is almost trivial and natural to all people, but it is important to make it clear. If I don't know what I truly value then my wise valuation is weak and I can't make wise choice. If I don't know my surroundings and knowledge relevant to making critical decisions, then I can't make wise choice even if I understand myself very well. My fundamental resources are finite, and I must use them to feed me, fulfill my goals and dreams, entertain me, and manage my resources. To make wise judgment each time, I must have a good understanding of myself, what I truly want and value. I must also learn about surroundings such as environments, facts, and laws of science and society that would be relevant.

Proposition 3: Unless the person is perfectly wise or wisdom itself, the person cannot truly love oneself without seeking wisdom.

If I love myself and acknowledge that wisdom exists, and I am not perfectly wise, then I must make unwise decisions. But if I make unwise decisions, then I make a decision that is knowingly deviating from loving myself. Hence, I can not truly love myself.

Proposition 4: Wise self-love has a totally selfish goal, but the process is entirely selfless because wise decisions involve rejecting all unwise choices that are look naturally compelling.

Suppose I am wise, then all decisions I make and consumptions of my fundamental resources must be done in the way that is best-aligned with loving myself. Hence, I must have a selfish goal. However, when I make each wise decision that deviates with my natural inclination, I reject my inclination to override it with wisdom. I will use my fundamental resources only in the direction of wisdom. For every decision point, I yield to wisdom, I reject myself with a possibility that my natural inclination may coincide with the wise decision. Even if they coincide, the decision is only made because it is approved by wisdom. Wisdom will govern my decision and subsequent actions. Hence, I must use a selfless process to be wise.

This proposition sounds counterintuitive, but it is in fact easy to relate.

Following wisdom seems ironic in that it is the only way to attain the highest value of my life, but it is only through rejecting my naturally inclined choice. True self-love is only through true self-rejection. How could this be true? Because my naturally inclined choice is definitely not always aligned with loving myself to the fullest - in fact, it is very frequently aligned with my own destruction.

I can come up with infinite excuses to defend my natural choices. I blame environments: my past and present situation. The choices come with much deception, complexity, and external pressures. I am often ignorant about relevant factors, lacking resources and motivations to solve the puzzle wisely. I am biased with my experiences which hinder clear identification of the problem. I am often inclined to choose something that seems more attractive, desirable, convenient, and easy. I like short-term pleasure and gains and the thrills of risk-taking. I am lazy, greedy, careless, rude, and ruthless. I want to get results without efforts and want to look great, important, and popular. I want more of all good things, but I don't want to pay the real costs needed.

My natural choices paint a definite conclusion - I am not naturally wise. I am amazed at how I naturally crave choices that are so antithetical to truly loving myself - choosing to go with my natural inclinations all the time will deprive me of my fundamental resources on all four fronts - wasting time and wealth, deplete physical and mental energies on things that go against my true goal of loving myself. Always letting my natural inclination is certainly headed for destruction of my own life. I am not a natural self-lover.

I thank the essence of wisdom that resides in all things, and it was in my mind all along. I have maintained my health and my loving relationships to some degree, if any, then it is probably because I knew better than not to listen to my natural inclination for critical moments - I was depending on wisdom before I knew and thought about it, and let it take over my opinions at some critical times.

Once I understand true love and the potential of my life, I can reject my natural inclinations that are not aligned with loving myself. My endowments are so valuable because I ought to love myself with them, and wise choices will ultimately convert my life to the maximum attainable value. I know the existence of wisdom and I want to pay respect to wisdom by following it. It is a good life and I enjoy the fruits wisdom collects on my behalf.

Corollary 1: True self-love implies earning self-respect from rejecting natural self's inclinations that are unwise at each decision point, which is greater value than alternatives.

Definition 2: True self-love

If I make decisions and actions consistent with wise valuation over any unwise inclinations from each decision point and each day, no matter how attractive they seem, then I must believe that I truly love myself.

The definition also means: A wise person must truly love oneself, and if one truly loves oneself, then the person must be wise.

Today we began with a flip side of wisdom, which may paint a discouraging picture that the path of wisdom involves rejecting one's natural inclinations. But we can always seek wisdom, and seeking wisdom consistently makes us more natural to come up with wiser choice.

Proposition 5: Discipline in wisdom will make us resemble wisdom over time, and natural inclinations will tend to be less distant to wise decision.

The idea is intuitive. Maybe, if I continuously strive to make wiser decisions at each decision point, no matter how small the matter is, and how simple the decision is, then I will be able to fend off my unwise inclinations quickly and easily over time. And if I follow wisdom as closely as possible, and as frequently as possible, then I must be close to naturally seeking choices that are best-aligned with self-love. In other words, choosing to be wise at each decision point will help me resemble wisdom, or become the wisest version of myself. [We will expand on this in a later piece.]

A person that truly loves oneself must be wise. A truly self-loving person is a wise person who exudes strong self-love through their decisions and actions. A wise person is equipped with a strong wise valuation derived from careful studies on self and surroundings. A wise person does not spend time coming up with excuses to defend their natural inclination once their wise valuation deems it inferior. Rather, a wise person rejects unwise inclinations swiftly and decisively, and would practice to resembling wisdom using each decision point as an opportunity.

Keywords: True self-love, selfish goal and selfless process.

Suggested previous piece: Wise valuation

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