LOVE
For the past two years, I have spent an large amount of time watching Chinese dramas that are usually heavily romance themed. I've never been particularly interested in the romance genre, but it was a good way for me to practice my Chinese listening skills. My mother began to really appreciate the exotic nature of Chinese dramas set in a heavenly setting because they mix in religious themes. It became a hobby of ours to watch these dramas together.
I quickly found romance to be an interesting genre because it is obsessed with an exploration of the concept of "love". In thinking about the hierarchy of values, "love" always seemed to rank pretty high in importance. In the Bible, Jesus proclaimed that the number one commandment was to love God and the number two commandment was to love mankind.
Jesus, as the hypothetical embodiment of the highest intensity of love, manifested his love not only by his willingness to sacrifice his life for all mankind, but also to suffer at maximal intensity along the way.
The idea of love intensity juxtaposed against voluntary suffering intensity seemed key. It was almost like the amount of suffering one is willing to voluntarily endure could be a measure for the intensity of the love.
Naturalistically, love seemed like a bonding emotion that orients humans towards cooperation, mutual assistance, and sacrifice for each other. The more intensely a mother loves her infant, the more she will be willing to endure for the infant, even if that means going into harms way. The flip-side of this oxytocin induced love is the violent hatred that the mother bear will express towards anything that dares threaten her cubs.
SCOPE OF LOVE
For humans, it seems like this oxytocin induced love can expand outwards into many layers of application. That which is within the scope is the object of love, that which is outside the scope might be a threat to that scope, and therefore induce hatred. And therefore, an analysis of hatred can reveal that which is loved.
A formula for the relationship between love and hate could be expressed as:
X quantity of love for Y = X quantity of hatred for that which threatens Y
where X represents the intensity of the emotion, and Y represents the object for which the love is applied.
The hierarchy of scopes of love/hate might be listed as follows:
self
infant
lover
family
tribe
race
culture
nation
religion
ideology
VALUE CONFLICTS
In romance dramas, the emotion of love and hate is constantly being explored. Different scopes of love and hate are frequently pitted against each other. Which is more important, romantic love, or love for the nation? Which is more important, brotherly love or love for the rules of the state?
One way to measure what people value more is what they choose. Each value conflict is an expression of a different type of philosophic trolley problem. When faced which a decision between two conflicting good things, the path chosen is necessarily higher in the hierarchy of values within the agent's psychology.
Often, a pattern emerges where the hero is the one who selflessly sacrifices themselves for the greater good, while the villain sacrifices the greater good for selfish benefit. But often these stories try to make situations more complex for the characters. Its easy for the hero to decide to sacrifice themselves. But what will the hero do when sacrificing themselves isn't an option? What if the hero is forced to choose between sacrificing a loved one and sacrificing a greater quantity of strangers? Forcing the hero to face the trolley problem tests their commitment to the greater good against their selfish desires to preserve their loved ones. Yet for the villain, this type of trolley problem isn't difficult as they can easily justify selfishly choosing to preserve their loved ones, since selfishness is their ethos.
An element of this philosophy has been expressed in the following quote:
"A hero would sacrifice you to save the world. A villain would sacrifice the world to save you."
Often in the romance dramas, a hero will be juxtaposed against a villain by virtue of the fact that the villain is willing to do more atrocious things on behalf of the love interest, and the hero appears somewhat impotent by comparison.
In the world of values, right and wrong are complex calculations. Our moral intuitions seem attuned to evolutionary benefit. Sometimes the evolutionary benefit is maximized by focusing on a narrow scope of love and ignoring the greater scope. There is evolutionary logic to intense family bonds, so if evolution can be the judge of morality, often the "villain" angle on the trolley problem could be considered "good".
But as with any trolley problem, the variables can be altered to push the situation into greater extremes. Perhaps it is "good" to save an infant while ignoring 5 kids that are also in danger. But what happens when focusing on your infant causes a nuclear bomb to destroy millions?
Examples like this show that morality is often grey - it isn't always clear which path is right or wrong. This should help us think in a more nuanced way about both heroes and villains. Heroes aren't always right, and villains aren't always wrong.
SUFFERING
Other types of dilemmas focus more on internal factors than external factors. Instead of an external trolley problem of what to externally sacrifice, they move the trolley problem inward towards the hero. Often the hero is willing to die for the object of their love, so that is often a no brainer. But there are some things worse than death. Pain can often be scaled up to levels of torture that approach infinity. While death might be worse that 1 minute of torture, perhaps most people would prefer death to a year of torture. When the intensity of torture is scaled up, this creates an internal trolley problem for the hero. How much are they willing to internally suffer on behalf of their love? Should they choose to endure the suffering, or give up on the object of their love?
As humanity progresses in technology and wealth, quality of life seems to be going up. Yet there simultaneously seems to be a rise in suicidality. I am no expert in this topic, but it seems like there is an element of vulnerability to suffering involved. Perhaps as quality of life goes up, our ability to endure suffering goes down. So, when bad luck strikes, we are less prepared to manage it. This weakening of the soul combined with the meaning crisis seem like huge contributing factors to suicidality. Furthermore, modern philosophy seems to be evolving towards an ethos of "anti-suffering". I believe the "anti-suffering" ethos taken to its extreme becomes the ideology of antinatalism - the idea that it would be better for life to have never been born - because then it would never have to experience suffering.
BEAUTY
I believe that the problem with these philosophies is that they don't adequately factor in the beauty of life. They don't factor in the pleasure they get from the objects of their love. Or perhaps their suffering is so great, they don't have enough psychic energy to remember what they love.
In the romance genre, the beauty of life is on frequent display. Characters love their lives and they love their partner. Because of all that metaphysical beauty on display, it makes the stakes higher for when that which is beautiful is lost. What are these characters willing to do in order to maintain that beauty in their lives? Often they are willing to face dangers, death, and even torture - all for preserving that which is beautiful. There is no such thing as anti-natalism in the romance genre. Every life is so precious, beautiful, and valuable, that all the suffering in the world can't compare. In the romantic ideology, it is always better to have been born - because then you at least had a chance to experience the beauty of life, because axiomatically, the beauty of life is more valuable than the avoidance of suffering.
CONTRADICTION
Lets say that someone experiences chronic pain. Their life is basically destroyed by disability. They are depressed and alone. Perhaps they are flirting with the idea of suicide. What can a person like this learn from the romance genre?
In the romance genre, the object of love is usually their lover. But philosophically, this variable is open to having a variety of objects swapped in. For those who suffer, perhaps they can try to look at themselves as the object of their love. Yes, their life is suffering. But despite that suffering, they represent a beautiful part of the structure of reality. To commit suicide would be saying to oneself, "Yes, I love you, but I don't love you enough to suffer on your behalf in order to save you and preserve your existence."
The path of the heroic lover is to say "yes!" to suffering when it is to preserve the object of your love. How can one be willing to suffer to preserve the existence of a lover but not be willing to suffer to preserve the existence of oneself? This exposes a contradiction.
If you love yourself, you should be able to develop that pseudo-romantic relationship with oneself and say to oneself, "I love you. I am willing to endure this suffering, because you are metaphysically beautiful and you are worth it."
It takes courage. It takes strength. It takes love. But perhaps it makes your story even more beautiful in the end.
