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Every Valentine's Day a certain philosophic crime is perpetrated. Actually, it is committed year-round, but its destructiveness is magnified on this holiday. The crime is the propagation of a widely accepted falsehood: the idea that love is selfless.
Love, we are repeatedly taught, consists of self-sacrifice.
Love based on self-interest, we are admonished, is cheap and sordid.
True love, we are told, is altruistic. But is it?
Imagine a Valentine's Day card which takes this premise seriously. Imagine receiving a card with the following message:
I get no pleasure from your existence.
I obtain no personal enjoyment from the way you look, dress, move, act or think.
Our relationship profits me not. You satisfy no sexual, emotional or intellectual needs of mine.
You're a charity case, and I'm with you only out of pity.
Love,
XXX.
Needless to say, you would be indignant to learn that you are being "loved," not for anything positive you offer your lover, but--like any recipient of alms--for what you lack. Yet that is the perverse view of love entailed in the belief that it is self-sacrificial.
Genuine love is the exact opposite. It is the most selfish experience possible, in the true sense of the term: it benefits your life in a way that involves no sacrifice of others to yourself or of yourself to others.
2 comments:
when one calls conventional love 'selfless', it refers to the act of giving more than you take. Hull seems to make an absolute translation of the word selfless in order to criticize 'conventional love'. A manifestation of selfless love would be to do something that benefits the person you love more than yourself. It does not imply that you do not get 'anything' in return, it just implies that the exchange is not equal. Valentine's day has turned into a commercial enterprise, but like all cultural traditions that have gone awry, it's roots are esentially commendable..to set aside a day a year when you can acknowledge the people in your life who would truly be willing to perform 'selfless' acts of love, should the need arise.
From dictionary.com:
self·less:
Having, exhibiting, or motivated by no concern for oneself; unselfish.
Hull uses the word selfless in its true sense. I cannot fathom the distinction you are attempting to make by labelling his as an "absolute translation". If our words are to mean anything their meanings must be consistent, grounded, unmoving; in essence absolute.
Your comment is indicative of the state of the culture. We have been philosophically programmed to accept selflessness as "the good" and selfishess as "the evil". Since this ethical scheme has no logical basis, it is impervious to argument. To learn about a true, philosophically consistent ethics, read my post titled "Loving Life".
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