Moments of Love

Understanding and love play different roles in the different relationships that we have over the course of our lives. We might say that the love shared between friends generates a sense of belonging; family love creates a reliable sense of comfort and romantic love a deep intimacy of body and mind. Of course, having just read that list you might think of many counter-examples; Human relationships, in their infinite configurations and complexity, defy categorisation into these three groups. Rather than think about types of love that apply to types of relationships – “friend love” for friends and “romantic love” for lovers – I would like to instead look at the fact that we can feel different kinds of love for the same person at different times without always consciously processing it. There are certainly times where we feel as intimately close to our friends as we ever have been with a lover and arguably many lovers spend most of their time behaving like friends. Equally important I think, if we are honest with ourselves, most of the time we are not feeling love for friends, families or even partners. We know we love them and we remember what it felt like when we realised we did, we’re just not feeling it right now. I am not talking about falling out of love – I am talking about the fact that our feelings aren’t timeless, they relate directly to what’s going on with us at the time. It is our minds that later make the conscious move of saying ‘that moment that I just shared with this person means that they fall into the category of people that I love’ – a category that can be more static than our capricious emotions. Because of that far more conscious move, what we say we feel and what we actually feel do not always match up perfectly. While this act of consciously categorising our relationships the actual feelings that comprise them are usually more varied than we allow ourselves to think about.

I would like to examine some of these ‘moments of love’ that cause us to consciously think that we love a person. In doing so I hope I will shed a bit more light on what I mean by ‘synchronicity of consciousness’, understanding and love. If love is understanding and a synchronicity of two consciousness’, then for the most part, that synchronicity seems to only really occur over a series of moments. It is the way we attend to and treat such moments that helps us pin down and define our relationships. What follows is a rather hurried look at some ‘moments of love’, I am sure that many, many more exist and I hope to hear of and discuss more examples in the coming months.

A moment of love can be one of recognition or coordinated thinking. For example, think of a conversation with a friend or a stranger that you have had where you just ‘click’. Sometimes that sensation of ‘clicking’ is one of the reasons that we enter into a romantic relationship, more often it’s just a good chat between friends. We tend to surround ourselves with people that we ‘click’ with and consider them loved ones but we shouldn’t understate the sense of affirmation and joy that one gets from revealing your thoughts to another and have them say “yes, I agree – and what’s more, what you’ve said reminds me of this thing…” A conversation that can continue down this structure almost indefinitely is a moment of love – an affirmation of your beliefs that is also productive. That is certainly not to rule out productive disagreements, as opposed to destructive arguments, as a moment of love; the common ground between a discussion based on agreement of principles and an intelligent ‘argument’ is that both require a deep understanding of the core meaning of what the other is saying and the way their reasoning is developing. Either way in such instances we do feel a moment of love (of affirmation of self, of belief, of discovery of another and a newfound sense of connection) but it is also often so fleeting that we do not put a name to the sensation. Just because we fail to name it does not mean it isn’t there.

We enjoy talking about ourselves, our feelings, our beliefs and our views of the world. This is because if we talk about such things with a person who will fully understand what we’re saying and how we arrived at our conclusions we will be revealing ourselves to another in a relatively unfiltered and pure form. If they share or at least understand these ‘core’ attitudes to life and reveal to us this understanding by replying with complementary anecdotes about their own situations, experiences and views we will inevitably feel acknowledged and understood – loved. Of course, such conversations are not easy to spark, especially with strangers but even with friends and family. The often unspoken contract of a romantic relationship is that we will be honest with each other about how we feel and what we think about ourselves, each other and the world. This kind of relationship (where sharing 'core' attitudes is implicit) is highly conducive to more intimate conversations that are closer to a pure sharing of self, which is why romantic partnership is the deepest form of love – more real moments of love occur more often. In our day-to-day lives and in most of our encounters though, we don’t just talk about our values, or ourselves we talk about something: hobbies, a game, a film, music what we have been doing. This is no less important – things we like or know define us too.

Some hobbies and pastimes make us feel unique; others make us feel part of a group. Either way, when we take part in such activities we configure our minds to work within the bounds of the activity. When playing a game of football, all the players minds are attending to the game – the very fact they are playing the game sets their minds working in a way that thinks about things like ‘where is the ball?’ ‘What is the position of relevant players on the pitch?’ ‘Which player should I be marking?’ etc. They are less likely to be thinking about the election or the movie they saw on Friday night. The fact that their minds are in ‘football mode’ allows them to work as a team with the faith that their teammates are thinking in a similar way – a team sport is all about synchronicity of body and mind. When there is effective team play there is a feeling of exhilaration and ecstasy, there is also a strong sense of camaraderie among teammates; this is because they will feel a moment of love when they play well together.

To varying degrees any hobby or act of recreation, be it active or passive, involves setting up your mind in a certain way. The more you immerse yourself in a given activity the easier it is to configure your mind to that task. Some elements of these configurations transfer into your general thinking: this is why many think team based sports build characters, but similarly a movie buff may be more prone to think of their lives like a movie narrative, or at least find themselves making analogies based on influential movies.

When we talk about an interest with someone who shares it we can talk more comfortably because we know that we are talking the same language, because when we engage in the conversation both our minds will think about that song, that film, that match in the way that our time spent on that particular interest has trained us to think. The fact that we are talking about something external from us allows for an easy slip into synchronicity of consciousness in a way that there is simply no guarantee of when talking about values or feelings. Most friendships are built around moments of love occurring through shared activities or talking about shared interests because these things facilitate clear communication without confusion. I have a lot of affection for people that I can talk with on fairly niche subjects at length.

Communication through or about a medium that we are knowledgeable about is a safe act of revealing oneself and learning more about another. It is even relatively easy to talk about hobbies that other people don’t share because we are animated confident, passionate when talking about a thing that we have spent a lot of time thinking about. But we feel particularly excited when we discover that an acquaintance likes something we like, like a band, that we didn’t think they might have done – it gives you something to talk about but more importantly it brings you closer to understanding that acquaintances conscious process’. If both Joe and I like Metallica then I have an avenue of understanding him that was unavailable to me before – I can ask him what he likes about Metallica, listen to Metallica and make a start on figuring out if his consciousness works similarly to mine when he listens to them. In doing so I can tangentally learn more about the core 'him' and become aware of a synchronicity of consciousness that I was not aware of before. I can in some way get to know him by our common experience and talking about that common experience without having to ask probing questions of him. A shared interest does not guarantee a moment of love - It may be that Joe likes Metallica for reasons that I can not understand, and that what he sees in them adds nothing to my own experience of the band. In such an instance there was an opportunity for a moment of love but none was forthcoming. That we failed to connect is of no concern; we were only discussing Metallica and there was no conspicuous or even conscious decision by either of us to use the common ground to try to ‘connect’ so we don’t feel like anything was lost. Of course, the fact that we failed to connect even over common ground may play a part in me not going out of my way to speak to Joe any more.

It is a truism that women say that a ‘good sense of humour’ is the most important quality in a prospective partner. What do they mean by ‘good sense of humour’? In this case, I think a ‘good sense of humour’ means ‘he will know what makes me laugh and laugh at my jokes’. Humour and laughter are in themselves almost as mysterious as love and there are a multitude of different tastes. Women are not saying they want to date comedians who will tell them jokes; we are not talking about gags and puns but belly laughs that catch you unawares. To make someone laugh on a personal level both teller and listener need to be, to some extent ‘on the same page’. When two people share a joke, particularly a private one, there is a connection of consciousness’ – the laughter is an expression of the moment of love. When someone laughs at my jokes loudly and sincerely I feel loved and I feel equally loved when someone makes a joke that makes me laugh in the same way. Because good, personal, humour cuts straight into the way you think and requires conscious or unconscious understanding of your mind. To make someone laugh requires an expectation of what they will find funny, and equally the act of laughing says, “I get it”. Genuine laughter says more than “I get it” though, it also says “I get you”. When a woman say she wants a partner with a ‘good sense of humour’ she really isn’t just trying to make the funny, fat, balding guy feel better – she’s trying to say ‘I want a partner with whom I can share moments of connection with. A partner who I ‘get’ and who ‘gets’ me.’ We tend to befriend people that we find funny for the same reason – sincere laughter is a moment of love.

So far I have mostly talked about moments of love that affirm our selves and subtly reinforce the common ground between us and so aid two consciousness’ communication and understanding of each other. Such moments are the meat of friendships, but in different combinations and under different circumstances they are the stuff of great romances as well. What becomes of moments of love is down to how we react to them. Quite sensibly we do not usually think anything of the moment but in some way log away all such experiences for reference later when we are prompted to make a judgement about the person in question’s ‘character’ or our relationship to them. Such prompts to attend to our experiences can come from without or within but are almost always some time after the moment(s) of love. However, some moments can be so powerful, can resonate so strongly with us that the moment of love can also be a moment of realisation of love. Rather, we should say, a moment of definition of love. Such moments of realisation or definition tend to be so powerful that they command our assent – at that moment we know we love the person truly and passionately and have an overwhelming urge to convey such feelings immediately – to do less would be to conceal a part of ourselves, end the moment of understanding and cut short the moment of love.

One such experience is a sensation I have felt often. When we get to know a person well their behaviour becomes familiar and we can start to predict how they might react to certain things happening. Just to clarify here; this kind of understanding is not necessarily evidence of love; we all know people who’s behaviour seems so transparent, so obvious and mechanical that at times it seems as though they are reading from a script. These are not people I love; these are people that bore me. I feel that understand them, yes, but only because their minds seem to me to be so simple and so straightforward that I can not understand how they might have ended up so uninteresting - and don’t care to find out. I treat such people as human consciousness’ out of social convention but in my mind I do not often recognise them as conscious aproper - not like myself, my friends and my family.

When we reach a stage of understanding with someone that also does provide interest, stimulation and affirmation that person does not become a bore. We have inklings of how these people ‘work’ but that only spurs us on to know them better. In our encounters with these people we can get so caught up in the particulars of life and in the learning of the new that sometimes a familiar gesture, phrase or reaction can cause a sudden and shocking reminder of how well we understand each other already. Such moments of re-recognition can sometimes trigger us to think, “ahh, that is so you” and as an afterthought “And that’s part of why I love you”. These are the moments when your girlfriend is being so herself that you just have to lean over and kiss her. This act is a moment of love – she has revealed herself to you and you recognise the revelation as being a true revelation of her. The fact that you recognise her reaffirms the closeness between you and the act of kissing her, out of the blue from her perspective, affirms her in-herself – it reinforces for her that she can receive affection simply for being herself. Unlike the other moments of love above, this one involves a sharp realisation/definition of what the sensation actually means in terms of the relationship between the two of you. Such moments can occur between friends and do not always result in a kiss, although a kiss can occur and can equally force a redefinition in the relationship (but that is another topic).

Here is another example of a moment of love that triggered a realisation of love. This example relates to family love, specifically the love between a mother and child. A mother behaves in a certain way to her child because of love, but also out of social obligation, a sense of duty and a biological urge. That biological urge and social responsibility could probably be enough to maintain parental bonds without the feeling of love actually being there. Of course, all three feed into each other in the long run. I would describe the source of the strength of a mothers love as stemming from the fact that she has a privileged perspective on her child’s consciousness growing and developing – throughout most of childhood the mother understands her child’s consciousness better than the child itself does. The reciprocation at this stage comes from the fact that the parents are the first consciousness’ that a child has a chance to encounter so for a long time the child understands it’s parents better than any other people in the world. The child is at a disadvantage due to lack of experience, but this is probably why in many cases parents display more love to a child than they initially get repaid in return!

Kirsty O’Connor has an interesting blog entry about how the first time she felt in love with her daughter was not the first time she held her but the first time she got a glimpse of her individual character at dinnertime – the first peeks into the workings of her daughters newly developing individual consciousness.

“I also realised, looking back that it was at this time that I felt an overwhelming sense of falling in love.... with Carmel. I’ve never in my life experienced love at first sight but, like I’m sure many mums do, I expected to feel the all-consuming, overwhelming love I’d heard so much about, the minute she was born. I didn’t. Perhaps when I first put her on my breast, or at least by the time we took her home from the hospital. I didn’t feel it. I felt nervous and exhausted and very protective over my tiny baby, but not love. I didn’t know her yet…

…I love dinner time, it’s intimate and gives our baby a chance to assert her independence, allowing us a great opportunity for getting to know the real Carmel.”

– Kirsty O’Connor, courtesy of askamum.

These, then are ‘moments of love’ – times where we feel two consciousness’ meeting, times where we feel we are closer to another and so closer to ourselves. They increase the affection we feel for another and they can make us realize how important our connections to these specific others are to our self-esteem and happiness. It is important to distinguish moments of love from love as a continuum or a narrative with a beginning, middle and an end as such conceptions do not match up with our experience of our feelings. We do use these moments of emotion to help define and pin down relationships or give turn them into a story of distinct phases. Of course, the act of defining certainly does have a further effect on the way we feel. For now though, we have concentrated on the basic moments from which we build a picture of others, ourselves and how we feel. We have not yet explored how these moments of love add up to defining one person as a lover and another as a friend and what else may affect these decisions. Nor have we begun to touch on the most famous ‘moment of love’ – sex.

Please don't let me be misunderstood...

The first obvious question to ask is: What kind of love are we talking about? And it is a good one; we use the word ‘love’ in such a plethora of different situations that it sometimes seems like we are deliberately trying to entangle ourselves in confusing and often contradictory meanings. The mind instantly jumps to ‘Romantic’ or ‘Erotic’ love, but we also talk of loving one’s friends, distinguished still from familial love. These three are the most clear-cut distinctions (no one would suggest the feeling of love I have for my brother is, or ever has been, at all similar to the one I have for my first girlfriend) but there are various other forms as well, such as unrequited love, ‘true’ love, the love of things or the love of self. All have quite differing practical meanings: they feel very different, they typically last different lengths of time and our behaviour in relation to those feelings bears little or no resemblance to another. So why do we use the same word? Well, of course it could just be a quirk of language – suggesting that our language has not had enough time or inclination to develop distinct words for these distinct phenomena. Far more likely, though, is that these different meanings have arisen out of a common ground; that most or all of the feelings that we call ‘love’ are caused by or feed into the same psychological drives. These different types of love may even in some way each represent a different facet of a whole or ‘true’ love.

So, for the moment I would like to talk about all the experiences that we group together as love because I think an exploration of what all of these experiences have in common would be a sound starting point. I expect that we will find that most of the practical differences between different forms of love are in fact simply different ways of expressing the psychological drives that they all share. Just as the way I behave when I’m in ‘romantic’ love can be very different to the way you behave when you’re in ‘romantic’ love – we might concede that we’re both feeling the same feeling, or at least the same type of love but due to our individual differences in consciousness and experience we are both expressing that love in a slightly different way – just not so different as for the behaviour to be unrecognisable.

So for now at least, when we ask ‘what is love?’ what we mean to ask is ‘what is it that all of the feelings we call love have in common? Is there something about consciousness that could be the cause for these feelings?’ By asking this question instead, which is at once more general and more directed question, we can stop ourselves falling into common traps such as overplaying the twin follies of biological imperatives (which make a bit of a mockery of free will, not to mention insult a number of disabled people and asexuals) and soul-mates (an idea which ends good relationships, depresses the lonely and also challenges free will and the ever-changing nature of consciousness).

My answer to the question ‘What is love?’ is deceptively simple. Please have the patience to read through my initial attempt at an explanation and I think that you will probably agree that it succeeds in some way covering all our different types of love.

Love is understanding – understanding another consciousness and having your consciousness understood by another.

‘But Edd,’ you may object, ‘on the contrary! Mystery is the basis for love; once understanding is achieved, love is gone’. This is a good point and we will return to it later in more detail, as it will open some doors for us when thinking about the breakdown of love. For now I will say this; mystery is little more than the feeling you get when you desire more understanding of a thing. In that way mystery is the motivation for understanding. Perhaps why mysterious people are often the sexiest but not always the best people to be in a relationship with as they are hard to 'get to know'? The other thing I will say to this objection is that you are thinking only of ‘erotic’ love in this instance. Does a son stop loving his mother once he understands what she wants of him and of her own life, once he grows up and she reveals herself to him as being a human being, once her parental mystery has gone? Not at all, if anything the love is enhanced. Do I stop enjoying my friends’ company when we reach a stage where I understand them well enough to predict what we will do together of a Saturday? No, I find that unspoken closeness comforting. Mystery then, may yet play a part in our understanding of love but it is too type-specific to be of any use yet. It is also so intimately linked to understanding that I don’t think it stands as an objection to the general proposition that ‘Love is understanding’.

Let’s go into a little more detail about understanding. Specifically, understanding another consciousness. Think of a consciousness in the world, maybe yours, but for now better to think of any old consciousness. As it encounters objects, things, phenomena, it gathers more data about those objects through the only means a consciousness can obtain such data, that is to say through it’s senses. After enough encounters with an object the consciousness may even understand most or even all there is to understand about that object. Objects in the world have an essentially finite number of discrete facts that we can know about them, at least for a functional understanding – our understanding of them is pretty much static – yes, the object itself may change but experience will eventually teach us that objects change only through the exertion of external forces. This consciousness, that is going around, understanding objects around it, may at some point come to realise that it itself is different from all the tables and chairs that it’s starting to understand – it (or you) can change itself and things around it, seemingly from no external forces – you can move by yourself. Once a consciousness becomes self aware - aware of this distinction between itself and the knowable world it is understandable that the consciousness would assume that these unintentional (inanimate) objects are there for-it (i.e. that it is better than the world because of consciousness’ privileged relation to the world).

The encounter with another consciousness complicates things. Hegel discusses this meeting and recognition of another consciousness in his discussion of the master/slave relationship. I will not go into too much detail over what Hegel discussed here but it is important because the meeting of two consciousness’ as opposed to the meeting of a consciousness with an object and the life affirmation that comes as a result of recognising a consciousness and being recognised as a consciousness is the basic drive of love. Love really being a deeper exploration of that recognition.

When I encounter a consciousness and see that it is such, all I can really know and understand about it is that it is an other; another thing that can act in a way that no amount of observation and experience can help me to fully predict. This other consciousness then, can not be viewed as being for-me. It is for-itself. When that other consciousness interacts with me in a way that respects that I am for-myself and I reciprocate that respect, we are both affirmed as consciousnesses. If we start communicating we can learn more about our own consciousness than we could ever have learned by introspection alone – just as I can learn a lot more about physical objects if I am able to play with many different objects instead of just one. The learning is at most half of the feeling though. We spend most of our time with our own conscious minds and we’re naturally quite pleased with how much they can do but we must also be aware that we must not seem as complex as we know we are – this is why we tend to relish the opportunity to reveal ourselves to other consciousness’ – this may be through a number of mediums conversation, play, talent or job performance, etc. The joy of discovering another consciousness at it’s best is reciprocal respect and learning – the more we learn about the other the more we are able to reflect on ourselves and the more we are able to reveal ourselves to the other. The recognition is intricately related to self-consciousness and therefore the feeling of affirmation is intricately linked to self-worth.

This process of learning about another consciousness, while being learned about is what I believe love primarily consists of. Remember though, because consciousness is constantly growing and changing as it learns and because it is learning all the time it would require two consciousness to be learning from one another every minute of all their lives to come close to ‘understanding’ each other in the same way that I can spend a day studying a table and by the end, pretty much understand all I would ever need to know about it’s construction, history, materials and how it will react to many different objects. Understanding of a consciousness is a constant endeavour in the way that understanding of a thing simply is not.

The reciprocal intimacy between two consciousness’ can create to a good understanding of the conscious processes of the other (i.e. understanding of how they think), leading to a sense of ‘oneness’ that is a crucial part of the experience to all three of our main types of love.

‘I know you so well that I know what will cheer you up in this circumstance’

‘Our thought processes are so synchronous that what makes you unhappy also makes me unhappy’

‘I put my child’s/friends’/lover’s wellbeing above my own’

OK, so that’s a start. Love as understanding of a consciousness and being understood as a consciousness leading to life-affirmation for both parties and a sense of separate consciousnesses moving closer to some shared thoughts seems like a good start. It seems like an explanation that covers Friendship, romance and family to different degrees. Of course, we have only just scratched the surface – we have not yet thought about what makes two (or more) people want to increase their mutual understandings over any other people. We haven’t begun to think about what why people stop making an effort to understand and share themselves. We haven’t really touched on what role sex plays. What becomes of ‘true love’ under this definition? Of course, we can not always be talking about what features do all types of love share and never outline their differences but I have gone on for quite long enough for now. We will move onto such topics in the coming weeks.

Mandatory Preamble

Much is written in art and philosophy about love and much is talked about it in our day-to-day lives. I have always been interested in the subject a little beyond the question 'Where is the...?' but have always felt that most attempts to make sense of this complex emotion/state of being/mode of behaviour tend to confuse the issue more than is necessary.

Some people even seem offended at the presumption to reduce or explain this most profound and sacred mystery of the human condition, as if greater understanding would cheapen our relationships and cheapen us. Perhaps it would, but only if you think so little of the complexities and nuance of consciousness as to think that a better understanding of the subject would yield no further questions. A more practical justification for the presumption to understand is that I believe a confusion over what we want, or expect, from love is one of the root causes of some of the meanest and most hurtful acts that we commit in our lifetimes. Clearer thinking on matters of the heart may help to, if not prevent, then at least mitigate some of the hurts that we feel and cause.

'The Logic of Love' is a misleading title - No, I do not think love or any emotion, for that matter, is 'logical' in a strictly rational, Vulcan sense but nor is it sufficient to write it off as mysterious and therefore unfathomable. Love follows it's own logic. Our task is not to impose logic upon it but to probe the thoughts, feelings and experiences that we have had to try to uncover how we got there, where it might lead us and perhaps uncover some base responses that we all share despite our drastically differing beliefs and behaviours.

My approach then, will be a phenomenological inquiry into consciousness, with consciousness as it's higher aim. At times it may appear reductive but it is not intended to be so - we must never lose sight of the glorious complexity of our ever-changing consciousness holistically affected by every millisecond of experience of the world and self. Affection affects us and our object of affection - and this is precisely why love is so fascinating - it is the single most consciousness-forming aspect of our lives.

Students of philosophy will notice some Kantian, Hegelian and perhaps some Satrean ideas in the blog - this you may enjoy or find infuriating. If you are not familiar with these thinkers then this blog is for you especially: partly because I will try to write in a way that requires no prior knowledge, partly because being unfamiliar with my source material will make me seem much smarter but primarily because my readings of these guys will be loose and, more than likely, inaccurate. Most of my ideas come from lived experience and impassioned debate with friends, foes and loved ones.

The structure of the blog will be as follows; I will try to outline some of my thinking on the subject thus far. Once you and I are satisfied that I've covered some basic premises I will jump into topics of interest, in no particular order, based on what takes my fancy or on any questions or challenges. The blog format is ideal for the solidification of half-baked ideas as it allows for a dialogue, albeit a dialogue that I can keep control over for the purpose of focus and clarity.

I will try, but not promise, to post regularly and respond to comments by incorporating them and testing my own thoughts against them. Please do contribute through the replies, email or in person.