What is Love?

Douglas Rushkoff in Survival of the Richest (medium.com) writes "the trans humanist vision too easily reduces all of reality to data ... concluding that “humans are nothing but information-processing objects.”

This was the insight he discovered at a conference for rich men who wanted to know about future technology. But what he discovered was that they wanted to transcend humanity, to leave us all behind.

It brings me back to my own epiphany that in most important decisions, I must choose love or power.

It seems simplistic but I kept running into dark corners whenever I tried using power to survive. Often told that the real world is about being tough, holding your ground, being smart and winning - I had hoped I would learn how to survive here.

To cut a long story short I discovered that love made me feel weak and weepy, and power made me feel dirty. There was all kinds of social conditioning that went into this, but in the end I realized that winning the zero sum game harmed me more than anyone else - even those who loved me.

It's not that power is incapable of being a force for good in society, it was just that so much of my focus took me away from caring, protecting and supporting.

I have read many feminist opinions that point out how women are raised to be loving and kind at the cost of their own interests, and I don't support the idea that we must be martyrs. In the end though I do think and feel that life dwells in sacrifice.

Those who love life will risk their own to save the coast and all its wildlife from oil spills, whereas those who love power (money) are willing to sacrifice all life for their own power. We have plenty of people and corporations who prove this - I don't need to name them.

Explaining what love is usually produces arguments without a conclusion that satisfies everyone and the subject of love is fraught with the lack of scientific evidence. But for myself I seek to inquire by examples of what it is not.

Love is not justice or wealth or political science or medicine, but could initiate our explorations into these fields. It's not fame, celebrity, diamonds or gold or fashion, cosmetics, cars, roads or the economy, but could be the drive for these things.

Love for others somehow gave me  a balance, a home, respect for life itself. Love gave me my feedback loop and the ground of all being. A place where I return to at night.

Yes love certainly reminds me of how fragile I am and how tender I should be to others. Whatever has hurt me has taught me how not to choose pride over the well being of others. I have a sense of how to hold the moment with responsibility and care so that I don't hurt anyone. It is with this insight I see love as something that brings me into the meaning of my life by being aware of the value of all life.

Love has taught me to listen to others because life is where I came from. There is life which I feel, endure and share, whereas ideology is an instruction.

Revenge is a chain reaction to being hurt which brings more hurt. Competition is alienating if it is the base for all my other relationships.

There are many who are alienated from the comfort and security of family. Most of what is written about in social media, community and governance comes from a mind within a body that has been loved. But when the emphasis is on getting to the top, winning, buying and selling, the "home" of our values is crushed by greed.

Currently our society, environment and species is at risk from absolute dissociation from what sustains life as alpha egos seek to win at any cost. Why? Because the institutions of power have dismissed love for more power and are too fixated on the scores to feel or see what is at risk.

We might call this madness, governance by sociopathic minds, and hollow egos, disconnected to their own humanity; where power is chosen over life.

Isolated egos need the love of their neighbours, friends and families to bring them back into the fold of humanity before loneliness makes them so afraid they choose guns as the final solution.