Love: It Aint Magic

Have you noticed how mystical our culture’s talk of love is today? Whether it’s the girl whimsically longing to “find true love” (as if it is some magical creature evading her grasp), the boy in reluctant surprise who admits that he “might be in love” (as if it were a disease which has crept up on him), or the couple which speaks of “falling in love” (as if it were a pit into which both stumbled during a blind, dumb stupor), there appears to be very little conscious understanding of what love actually is among most people.

Is vs. Does

Of course there are many who would claim to speak of what love is (typically the adult speaking to the adolescent, who “doesn’t know what love is yet” — as though love were some mystical knowledge imparted to you at a certain age). But these don’t speak about what love is so much as they speak about what love does.

“Love waits”, “Love puts the other person first”, “Love makes you do crazy things”, “Love doesn’t give up”. These are all great and true (in particular respects) descriptions of what love does, but they do very little to explain what love is. If you want proof, simply consider that one could do all of the things listed above (and all the things which could be listed about what love does), and still not have love (see 1 Cor. 13:3). If it is possible to fake love by performing supposedly ‘loving’ actions (and it is), then the actions, themselves, cannot be love.

Love is Value

If love is not actions, but the fuel for ‘loving’ actions, then love must be that which fuels action: value. Value is the invisible reality in the soul made visible through the actions of the body. Actions flow from values. Love, therefore, is the invisible reality in the soul (value) made visible through the loving actions of the body. To love someone is to value them. To value someone is to consider them of value to oneself. The greater the value, the greater the love.

True and False Love

Why then, do we speak of “true love” as though there is some sort of false love, if love is value? Either you value someone or you don’t. Either you love someone or you don’t. Is there true and false value? In a manner of speaking, yes. To be more clear, there is rational and irrational value. It is possible to have irrational values, like valuing video-games over productive work. Likewise, it is possible to have irrational love, like ‘loving’ someone who is truly destructive to you and your life. Both are instances of mistaken value; instances of mistakenly believing that something or someone is of value to you when, in reality, both are ultimately destructive to you and to your life.

How does one avoid such errors? The solution is the same in both cases: one must properly discover and identify that which is objectively valuable to one’s self and one’s life. The solution to valuing video-games more than productive work is to discover and genuinely be convinced of the superior value in productive work; to see the glory of real life achievements as superior to the childsplay of conquering make-believe foes; to feel the triumph of a success wrought by maximizing and exhausting the creative capacities of one’s entire being (mind, soul, and body) in the physical world. The only effective weapon against irrational value is the discovery and embrace of rational values.

Likewise with love. Rational (i.e. “True”) love is the recognition of rational values in the person and character of another. The greater those values, the greater the love. Irrational (i.e. “False” or “Tainted”) love is either not truly love at all, or love which primarily values the irrational in another person.

Tainted Love

There are two variants of irrational or ‘tainted’ love — and these two impostors of true love are the reason for much disillusionment about love in our culture today. The first is not really love at all, but the pretense at love; the illusion of it. In this false love, it is not truly the other person who one values, but the false sense of security and value which one gets from “being in a relationship” with that person. A schoolgirl may claim to be in love with the most popular boy in school, when in reality what she truly loves is the illusion of how valuable she would seem to be if she really were in love with (and loved by) him in the true sense. She desires the effect (feeling valuable) without the cause (having worthy values which would make her relationally valuable). The root of this false love is often insecurity about oneself, manifested in a desperation which attempts to overcompensate for the feeling of a lack of personal value. It is not so much that this person values irrationally, but that he (or she) has not discovered how to hold deep, personal values at all; he mistakenly thinks that he will gain value by being appraised as valuable by someone else, rather than realizing that the appraisal of others is only as valuable as its accuracy in that which it is appraising: one’s own personal values.

The other type of ‘tainted’, or false, love is that kind which primarily values the irrational in another person. This can more appropriately be called “love” (more-so than the previous type of tainted love), in that it truly is a valuing of the other person because of what one sees as valuable in them, but it is a twisted sort of love because it will only result in the ruin of both the lover and the beloved. To value the irrational in another person is to ultimately value the destruction of that person — whether one consciously intends it or not. True love values that which is most objectively valuable in the other person.

How To Love

“To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I'”. -Ayn Rand

If true love is valuing that which is most objectively valuable in another person, than there seems to be some preliminary requirements for one to experience true love: the ability to value, and the ability to identify and value that which is objectively valuable.

“The ability to value? Doesn’t everyone have that?” In the most surface-level sense, yes. However, what is meant here is the ability to hold deep and unchanging values, by oneself. One of the problems in our culture today is that many people are incapable of any sort of value which is not transient and fickle, or which is not simply a ‘following of the herd’. Apart from holding firm and resolute values in one’s own soul (regardless of what others may think), it is impossible to value anything of significance in another person — and it is impossible for any other person to value anything of significance in you! So, in order to rediscover love, we must rediscover the weight and glory of deep, lasting, personal values (i.e. rational egoism)

The next step is the ability to identify and value that which is most objectively valuable. This means discerning (appraising) the objective value of everything in life. If you are not able to figure out that which is most objectively valuable (and why), then you will not be able to identify the objectively valuable in another; and if you attempt to love another person apart from identifying and valuing that which is most valuable in them, then you will likely wind up valuing (and thereby encouraging) that which is less valuable in them — leading to their destruction. Therefore, to truly love another person, you must learn to identify that which is truly lovely in them; which means you must learn to identify that which is truly lovely (i.e. valuable), in general; which means you must discover an objective standard and hierarchy of value (i.e. you must think philosophically about value).

So, how to love? You (your self — your ego) must value (for yourself; find valuable to you) that which is objectively valuable in another person. In other words, to love, you must be a rational egoist.

Selfish Love: With C.S. Lewis and Ayn Rand

Virtue: Unselfishness vs Love

“If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive… The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love… [to be continued below]”  -C.S Lewis

What is the Christian virtue of Love? What is Love? To love is to value. When you say that you love someone, you mean that you value that person; that he or she is of value to you. “Wait” you cry, “that sounds so selfish! What about self-less love?”

“Self-less” Love?

There can be no such thing as “self-less” love because there is no such thing as a self-less value. The attempt to concoct “self-less” love would be hideous, as described in the following quote by Ayn Rand:

Selfless love would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person’s need of you. I don’t have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind.

-Ayn Rand

“Self-less love” would say, in essence, “I haven’t the slightest care in the world for you, or for your well-being. I am simply doing this because you need me, and it is my duty to fill that need.” This is because to “have a care” is to value. To care for a person is to value that person — and to value that person is to say that he or she is of value to you; to your self. The alternative is to look down your nose at others, as though they are helpless creatures in need of your service, corrupting the nature of love by turning it from a delight into a duty.

Seeking Value for Your Self

Therefore, not only do Christians need to replace Unselfishness with Love as the primary virtue, but they also need to discard from their heads (and their hearts) the idea of an ultimately “self-less” love. But in order to do that, Christians must first overcome their fear of desiring anything of value to themselves at all. The rest of the Lewis quote (continuing from the one above) will help to point in that direction:

“The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern Christians the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

-C.S. Lewis

Lewis seems to think (and I agree) that this whole obsession with self-denial, Unselfishness, and “Self-less” love which runs rampant in modern Christianity is actually no part of “the Christian faith”, but rather, that it has crept in from “Kant and the Stoics”. In other words, vain and insidious philosophical assumptions have crept into the modern Church (which ironically and foolishly thinks itself to be free from all philosophical assumptions!) and poisoned Christian morality, flipping it on its head.

The modern Christian decries strong desires, but Lewis argues that our desires are actually too weak. Our problem is not that we value too many things, but rather that we don’t value those things that are most valuable; that we don’t have strong enough values. If we valued as we ought to value; if we valued most those things that were most valuable, we would find that our actions almost automatically matched the virtuous actions outlined in New Testament teaching.

Love Thy Neighbor

“Love your neighbor” means value your neighbor. You don’t value someone by superficially forcing yourself to go through the motions of what it might look like if you did value that person. You value someone by seeing (in your mind and in your heart) those things that are actually valuable about him — and you can only do that if you value those things; if those things are valuable to you. 

If you can’t see anything valuable about an immortal being, created in the image of God, designed to rule and have dominion over the universe, endowed with a mind capable of transforming history with the spark of genius (when used appropriately), fashioned to be the crown jewel of God’s creation, then you’ve got a problem with your value system: you do not have strong enough values – likely because your values are consumed with the moral equivalent of mud-pies.

Have you ever asked yourself why modern Christians have turned the virtue of love into the very dry and unloving superficial duty to perform certain actions? This is why. They are incapable of actual love for other people because they are incapable of actually valuing that which is valuable in other people. They can’t value what they can’t see; and they can’t see, because their actual values (not the ones they claim to hold, but the ones that actually move them) are a junk-heap of trite and banal contradictions. And why is that? Because they are completely unconscious about their actual values. You cannot oversee, evaluate, correct and direct your values if you are not conscious of what you value. And you cannot be conscious of that about which you refuse to think. And you will not consciously think about your values if you count your values to be worthless – or evil. You will not rightly order your values if you do not value your own values.

Love Thy Self

To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love—because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.

-Ayn Rand

If you do not value your own life, you will not care about its trajectory or its achievements (to care is to value). Likewise, if you do not value your values, you will not take any care regarding your values, and therefore your values will never be strong, deep, and consistent; you will never be capable of valuing that which is most valuable — whether in other people, or – more importantly – in God. Yes, you must love other people – and you absolutely must love God, but it must be love; it must be value. You must value. And you will never be capable of it until you value that thing in you which values; until you value your self.