Is unconditional love a myth?

@Razzleg,

..or alternatively...

Quote:

For Wittgenstein By Joseph Duemer

Days are like grass the wind moves over:
first the wind & then the silence-
what cannot be said we must pass over
in silence, or play some music over
in our heads. Silently, a wind goes over
(we know from the motion of the grass).
Days are like grass; the wind goes over:
first the wind & then the silence.

You ask where "I" is.
The "I" is the wind, the grass and the days.
Silence is the absence of "I".

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@fresco,

Forgive my paraphrase, but that sensitve "extension" of a silence between sounds reflects the joy of a sublime musicianship.

By the way, it seems that "unconditional love" is a synonym for "disinterested love."

BTW Razzleg, isn't "full-blown" the best when possible?

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@JLNobody,

Yes..that silence within the rubato seems symbolic of the essence of the "fluidity" of where one ends and another begins, (Taoist resolution ?) hence its association with "unconditional love".

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@JLNobody,

..."Taoist complementarity" is better I think.

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@fresco,

I'm not sure I understand your use of "complementarity"**, except for the fact that in rubato* the hestitation's tension and its resolution (i.e., the phrase must remain on the beat) are both essential, as a unit.

*my old brain couldn't think of that term yesterday.
**Oh! yin and yang--sorry.

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@JLNobody,

I think I am being a little overambitious using the term rubato. I am trying to capture the essence of both participating in the complementarity and also transcending it.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

BTW Razzleg, isn't "full-blown" the best when possible?

i'm not sure...to me, "full-blown (whatever)" is the cognate of fanaticism.

In the foregoing conversation, it's not that i misunderstood fresco's use of "ineffable", but it seemed to me that he was using the term "ineffable" to avoid discussing the matter at hand. Silence, as a didactic response to the unasked question, is all well and good; but answering the question as it has been asked with silence (or a psuedo-koan) seems counterproductive. (In other words, answering the naive question with a wack of the stick not only seems barbaric these days [given the historical climate,] it is barbaric, since it answers genuine questions with precisely the non-answers the naive speaker expects from the philosophical community.)

i'm not sure what has happened in fresco's personal life since the last time i took part in this forum, but at one time he was able to communicate between paradigms. It seems that at this point, he has so attached himself to one perspective that he finds it rhetorically unadvantageous to sympathize with others.

BTW: it was precisely my contention that fresco's definition of "unconditional love" was a synonym for "disinterested love", which seems to me to be contradiction. Perhaps it is just the sort of contradiction that proves to be profitable to fresco's brand of mysticism, but on my simple ontic level, love is incapable being disinterested. "Love" implies a type of interested action. If every type of behavior is disqualified from expressing (or manifesting) the psuedo-Platonic idea of of love currently held by fresco, then to what degree am i expected to regard it as real? If love does not permeate the lower levels of existence then its value is nil; if it does, then its nature is restricted by natural conditions.

i know that i am providing an excessive answer to your brief reference to me in your post. i apologize, but subjecting myself to fresco's gnomic replies was not appealing. Feel free to ignore my post, but i beg you not to reply with a response that Chuang Tzu would have cringed at.

1 Reply

@Razzleg,

Quote:

i'm not sure what has happened in fresco's personal life since the last time i took part in this forum, but at one time he was able to communicate between paradigms. It seems that at this point, he has so attached himself to one perspective that he finds it rhetorically unadvantageous to sympathize with others.

I can assure you nothing significant appears to have happened.
I recognise an esoteric aspect of this thread which theists might call "an epiphany", but which meditators might associate with "transcendence of self".
Only those who have experienced such a state will agree/commune with the OP thesis of "unconditionality". The so called "rational" argument could indeed deconstruct that thesis. This is not to say I or anybody else will function on a daily basis according to the thesis but "functionality" is not what the thesis implies.

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@fresco,

I think of romantic love--which is what I assume Razzleg is referring to--as profoundly conditional and interested; the disinterested love to which I refer is in some ways similar to Kant's attitude toward aesthetic appreciation. Such a love is a non-utilitarian appreciation rather than a desire to appropriate and control. This is not totally unlike the Buddhist notion of compassion. Nietzsche suspected compassion to be essentially ego-centered: we love others, according to him, for the way they make us feel. This is one of the rare places I disagree with Nietzsche. I am more inclined to love someone for the way I make them feel. Or more accurately for the way they are. This also applies to my very life, to the appreciation of my moving and changing existence. And THAT is ineffable; I can neither describe nor justify it.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I can assure you nothing significant appears to have happened.
I recognise an esoteric aspect of this thread which theists might call "an epiphany", but which meditators might associate with "transcendence of self".
Only those who have experienced such a state will agree/commune with the OP thesis of "unconditionality". The so called "rational" argument could indeed deconstruct that thesis. This is not to say I or anybody else will function on a daily basis according to the thesis but "functionality" is not what the thesis implies.

i'm not sure that i entirely believe you, for what is significant when surrounded by "silence"?

You regularly cite the experience of meditators, but the "transcendence of self", which you seem to identify as a similar experience with "epiphany", is a temporary state, attainable only by self-training. Doesn't that imply that one's access to "unconditional love" is conditional? Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" landed one on the same, or at least an indistinguishable, level of earth, thus the absurdity of the human condition.

i know that i am being more than a little bratty in contesting your definition of unconditional love, because i recognize the ineffable kernel in every experience. But i cannot help thinking that transcendence is a poorer attitude for love to hold. Abstract love has no value, nor does it have the ability to evaluate. Love is one of the roots of any valuation; for all of its allure, it has no role in rising above the ontic level. However, love is precisely one of those behavior modes accessible to our physical selves that allows us to transcend...to downplay that capacity (that is, to pretend that it only exists on a higher level) is to (ironically) to demean it. To love another, without failing to take note of the differences between our different selves, is a condition of transcendence...

i'm not sure that makes sense at all, but i remain sure of this: love is a fragile thing -- it is a form of caring that requires self-conscious care. Self-consciousness is thus one of the conditions of "loving". And just so, self-consciousness is one of the conditions that must be overcome to achieve transcendence.

Just for the record, i have practiced meditation in the past, for several years. Perhaps it was a personal failure, just the sort of thing that meditation is meant to resolve, but i never received much satisfaction from it. The denial that meditation requires never drew me above my personal problems, it merely prevented me from reaching the means to dealing with them. Although i've yet to conquer the problems that beset my person, as is to be expected, i achieve much greater satisfaction dealing with them in person than I ever did impersonally. Perhaps transcending complementarity is my personal antithesis to achieving balance...untangle that knot if "you" will. Balance is only possible in a state in which complementarity exists, and love may be one version of that balance.

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

I think of romantic love--which is what I assume Razzleg is referring to--as profoundly conditional and interested; the disinterested love to which I refer is in some ways similar to Kant's attitude toward aesthetic appreciation. Such a love is a non-utilitarian appreciation rather than a desire to appropriate and control. This is not totally unlike the Buddhist notion of compassion. Nietzsche suspected compassion to be essentially ego-centered: we love others, according to him, for the way they make us feel. This is one of the rare places I disagree with Nietzsche. I am more inclined to love someone for the way I make them feel. Or more accurately for the way they are. This also applies to my very life, to the appreciation of my moving and changing existence. And THAT is ineffable; I can neither describe nor justify it.

Most of my posts have been referencing romantic love, but i think they also apply to most other types of love, as well: parental, amicable, neighborly, (perhaps even patriotic,) etc. Aside from qualifying my own responses, however, i fully endorse your post; i think similarly.

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@Razzleg,

Quote:

Perhaps it was a personal failure, just the sort of thing that meditation is meant to resolve, but i never received much satisfaction from it.

That "I" will never get it !

That transcendent state is as far from personal "success", "failure" or "benefit" as a nation's gold reserves are from the ten dollar note you use to go shopping.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Quote:
Perhaps it was a personal failure, just the sort of thing that meditation is meant to resolve, but i never received much satisfaction from it.

That "I" will never get it !

That is such a cute contradiction: if there is no "I" then there is nothing "to be grasped."

fresco wrote:

That transcendent state is as far from personal "success", "failure" or "benefit" as a nation's gold reserves are from the ten dollar note you use to go shopping.

In an Ouroborus-like configuration, "that transcendent state", is both the furthest and the closest to the sense of individuated self. Chuang Tzŭ did not stop using the term "I" in order to make some sort of exaggerated point regarding transcendence. Your pretense that meditation has no use only undermines the practice of it. Taking advantage of an old Wittgensteinian trope, perhaps you've reached a level at which you can toss the ladder away, but to pretend that the ladder never existed, or that you had no purpose in climbing it, is either a case of intellectual dishonesty or ignorance. (Schopenhauer is laughing while spinning in his grave.) Which is it, in this case, "I" that might or might not "argue the point" --ignorance or dishonesty? Or is that difference also reconciled in transcendence?

Further, regarding ineffable love...what distinguishes it from indifference, to the uninitiated? For the initiate, how is love reconciled with indifference? Is ontological agape distinguishable from ontic eros in any way other than in the cancellation (neutralization) of the latter's effects? Does love have any meaning other than in its effects? If "transcendent (unconditional) love" is identical to "universal love", then how does it reconcile itself to conflicts between the beloved? And if it does so only by persuading the beloved(s) to transcend, then how does it do so without manifesting itself as an interested third party?

fresco wrote:

the ten dollar note you use to go shopping.

What do you use to go shopping?

1 Reply

@Razzleg,

No contradictions.
Transcendence of self implies an ascent through"levels of consciousness".
The "I" at level 1 is as a child to the "I" of higher levels. The normal state of all of us is indeed the lowest level. But those who have been there have the occasional ability to take stock of that lower level self from a loftier vantage point. In terms of "love", the higher I grasps that the lower I is involved in a transaction even when that involves ignoring "faults in the other".

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no its not

unconditional love is about accepting living and the experiences of your partner

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Is unconditional love a myth?

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