The Awesome Power of Love

Ok, I had to do it. I had to have one really good post advocating the awesome power of love, because although I find myself agreeing with everything Hobbes says, I still believe in the supremacy of love, because I have been utterly devastated by it and it has shaped my life and who I am to this day.

If we analyze the world around us logically, break it down like Hobbes does, then there's no denying the model which Hobbes presents. At a fundamental level we all are driven by self-preservation, the need to survive. Everything else just follows so naturally and logically; there's no arguing with Hobbes' premises or conclusions. Logically, Hobbes is absolutely correct.

But you know what, we don't always follow logic and reason. Whoever said "man is a rational being" was WRONG. Man is utterly enslaved by his emotions; it's only his ability of rational thought that prevents complete insanity and chaos. Of course it's not enough to say that we are often driven by our emotions, because Hobbes acknowledges this. He is fully aware that different people have different appetites and aversions which guide their behaviour. What is so essential, which Hobbes misses, is the fact that time and time again people are willing to give up their very lives in sacrifice for love, for others. To sacrifice one's own life for another entails a purely selfless act. Any other act of love shown to another can be reduced to a selfish act, for the mere pleasure or "good feeling" one obtains deep down inside. But to give up one's own life willingly in sacrifice for another cannot in any way be for oneself, because one won't exist thereafter. Hobbes argues that we all share a common desire: the desire for self preservation. However, in sacrificing your own existence for another, you are subverting the desire for self preservation to an even more important desire: the desire for the other's preservation and/or happiness. Sorry Hobbes, guess you didn't think about that one.

There is a power embodied within sacrifice, the only purely selfless act, which has been captured by Milton in Paradise Lost (and Christianity as a religion for that matter). In his justification of God's ways to mankind, Milton lays down a set of events in which evil (Satan) is only able to persist and corrupt man so that God can show love to mankind. Since God is omniscient, He knew Satan would rebell and eventually corrupt mankind. He could have prevented this without violating the freedom of choice He had given to Satan by simply not allowing Satan to leave Hell (cuz Satan had already made his decision at that point). But God allows Satan to corrupt man so that God the Son can save mankind by offering himself as a sacrifice: a purely selfless act. It is through sacrifice that love is revealed to mankind, and it is through sacrifice that love remains the fundamental desire embedded within all of us--not simply (and frigidly) the desire for self preservation as Hobbes would have us believe.

So although I've criticized "the awesome power of love" in the past, and although when we analyze the world using logic and reason there doesn't seem to be a place for love, there's no denying the proof of past sacrifices. The problem here is that logic and emotion have an uneasy balance in the world. If we attempt to limit ourselves to logic then love becomes neglected, and if we focus solely on love then the importance of power dissolves altogether. Look at some of the quotes from the previous post. "There isn't any formula or method" to love (Aldous Huxley). "Love knows no reason..."--I'm sure we've all heard that one before. "Love needs no logic for its mission" (Charles Lindbergh). Quite simply, love and reason don't mix. And yet they coexist within each of us--how wonderful is that.

how many times do I have to tell you it's all about power?

I am very sorry to have missed out on the hip-hop blogging, which appears to be resolved now. Good points on both sides, guys. Danny, I feel like we've finally tapped into your passion and the blog is almost over. That's a shame, but thanks for bringing it up- I just learned a lot about hip-hop I didn't know!
Since nobody has responded to Iain yet, I feel I should. But I also feel we've reached an impasse. What more can I say but Milton is wrong? Love is not the natural state- life is but a motion of limbs, and but the pursuit of power over other men. This is not love, for love is selfless. There is no way to reconcile the drive for power as a love for power, because (as I said in my presentation--was anyone listening?) pursuit of power over another requires selfishness, while love requires selflessness. Power means putting yourself first over others. We do not get what we "deserve," unless deserving is construed as ability to take. Because that's how society becomes ordered: through the power of each man to claw his way above the others. The man most capable of taking power, weilding it, and retaining it, is the most worthy of having it. Worth is not proven by Christian altruism, but by might. Men are created equal, with equal capacities to rise over other men. Natural hierarchy is bunk; if there is a natural hierarchy and all things respect their places in this hierarchy, men would never war with one another. Yet they do so conistently. The flaw in Milton's logic is clear when we look at the world in which we live and the world from which we have come.

V For Vendetta

Ok, first and foremost: wow. I loved the movie, simply loved it. I had a tremendously favourable appetite towards it. As I watched it earlier tonight (by the way, where was everyone huh? I got there about 7:05, watched the movie alone, and didn't even find anyone from class afterwards!) I couldn't help but appreciate how nearly every single line had Hobbesean undertones. Unfortunately I cannot remember a lot of them right now, so I'll have to stick to the ideas rather than catchy one-liners. Of course "People should not be afraid of their governments; Goverments should be afraid of their people" and "strength in unity" really made impressions, but there was so much good stuff when 'V' or Chancellor Sutler made speeches, it blew my mind.

Imagine a society in which everyone has given up their basic freedoms out of fear of terrorism, disease, invasion, etc. It's frightening just how easy this is to imagine. An unknowingly staged incident such as a virus outbreak by the government and people are more than willing to hand over their personal freedom for "protection" provided by the governemnt. I couldn't help but think about all the controversy surrounding 911 and the claims that it was entirely staged by the Bush administration. It's the constant "threat" of terrorism that keeps Bush in power, that ensured a re-election that never should have happened. Hobbes was so right: the Leviathan uses fear to control the people. In "V for Vendetta" when Sutler is going to make a public announcement he says something to the effect that the people need to be reminded to be afraid.

On a side-note, it was interesting when Chief Inspector Finch went through a possible chain of events in which someone makes a mistake (policeman shoots a little girl) and 'the shit hits the fan'. He was worried that V's plan wouldn't work out very pretty in the end. All it would have taken was for one single military officer to fire his gun during the final scene of the movie, and civil war would have broken out. This easily could have happened since there was a mass of thousands of people marching towards them presumably in an attempt to overthrow the government; not everyone would wait for that order to shoot. But anyway, it's a movie, so it didn't end in a blood-bath, killing thousands of unarmed civilians. And that would have been tragic, since once the Leviathan figure, Sutler, was killed the revolution was basically over. Just a side-note.

Anyway, there's so much more to be said about the ideas engaged with in this movie, but I'll leave it at that for now. Oh and there's a lot on the official site about who Guy Fawkes really was and his attempt to overthrow James I in 1604. However, I'm not sure how relevant the history is because he appears to have been more religiously motivated, rather than for freedom from oppression.

Power: the ultimate truth

Sinne and Love are not the universal truths. Iain wrote:

"Thus if something or someone is not full of love or based in love then they are Sin. As we all already know this means that power is a sin. The urge to control others, to hold power over them is sinful. Hobbes has been proved wrong. "

Not even close. Hobbes doesn't recognize "sin." If you want to label his Man as sinful, go ahead. Such labels mean nothing to Hobbes. In fact, he already thinks man is depraved, nasty and greedy. What have you proven by saying that someone not motivated by love is motivated by sin? If you identify want of power as sinful, you are only proving that men, by nature flawed, ARE motivated for power and sin rather than love. Herbert said that Love and Sinne exist. He was wrong about love, as it is merely a construct for simpering idiots. He mislabeled power as sinne. there is no love, there is no sinne. Both can be reduced to two sides of the appropriate 17th century way of looking at things through religion. Love is the accepted form of desire, or appetite. Sinne is the unacceptable form of appetite: that which society deemed inappropriate. there you have it--sin is a social construct. Social constructs, by the way, are a form of exerting power over others. By controlling what people do, they are rendered less powerful and less likely to exert their power over those who wish to keep holding power. What better way for the church to protect its power than to institute a cultural reform whereby every man and woman censures him or her self? Policing is not even necessary when people are preventing themselves from acting on their natural impulses to enjoy life and take what they can. Sneaky, sneaky church.

The only thing Iain proved was that the church has too much power if natural appetites are condemned as sins. This is not proof that Love and Sin are the universal truths. It is also not proof that Hobbes is wrong about Man's motivation for power.

Love does NOT make the world go 'round

Love: we all fall victim to it at one point or another in our lives, in varying forms and degrees. It is tremedously tempting to view love as this wonderful thing that makes the world go 'round, the driving force behind our dreams and aspirations. While we all explicitly seek love, not all of us seek power (or do we?--I'll get to this). As Iain eloquently put it (while horribly misspelling 'eloquently'--sorry Iain, I had to say something), "[Love] is both our best and favorite drink and we all cannot get enough". Hobbes reduces love and hate to mere appetites, inclinations we have towards and away from things (6.3-4). He too recognizes that while we may each desire different things, we all desire (11.1); ie: we all "love" (and hate). However, Hobbes argues that we all have "a perpetual and restless desire of power after power" (11.2), not "love after love" as Iain (and Cher) would say. Hobbes argues that our pursuit of power is "not always ... for a more intensive delight", but simply because we always require "power and means to live well" (11.2).

Nicely put, Hobbes, but I can't help but ponder if one can reach a state of living in which one does not require more power to live well? There is always pressure from others, competition, which forces one to constantly compete in order to maintain a means to live well. This is true in any society, whether there is a Leviathan figure or not, due to the very nature of work, labour, money exchange, etc. One way to avoid this competition would be if there was a purely utopian communist state, in which everything is shared equally among everyone, and then one wouldn't have to work harder than his fellow man in order to ensure a means to live well (then we could ask what's the motivation for anyone to work, other than the continuing everything runs smooth, in which case would technology ever progress? Mind you, that's a whole other debate). The only other way to avoid this competition and thus our relentless pursuit of power, is if one chooses to live in solitude, isolated from society. If a person is completely self-sustaining, then one does not require to pursue any more power than is necessary to provide food, water, and shelter for oneself. This would be a constant amount of power yeilded over nature, not any fellow man. This is fine and dandy, however, I do not believe Hobbes would find this very relevant, because human beings are social animals and this is an extreme case. So as I see it, in any democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy, we are required to constantly seek power in order to ensure a means to live well.

I wanted to touch on something that came up in seminar on Monday. Someone argued that without love we would not aspire and dream, and thus we wouldn't have wonderful inventions like airplanes and the like. Hobbes argues that imagination is nothing more than decayed sense; we experience the world through our senses, and then recall this experience later when we imagine something. He also points out that it is impossible to imagine something that we have never experienced. We can combine previous experiences in order to form what he calls "compound imaginations" such as unicorns or centaurs, but we can never imagine something that cannot be broken down into constituent parts--by definition that thing would be inconceivable. So then our dreams can be nothing more than the remenants of our senses. A motivating dream, or aspiration, is then merely a decayed sense that we have a favourable appetite towards. We can call this favourable appetite "love", but that's just a name really. More importantly, love is certainly not always the motivational factor in our aspirations. Take the airplane, for example. The Wright Brothers were able to piece together an imagination which consisted of a flying contraption later called the airplane. And yes, they were motivated by their favourable appetite towards being able to fly. However, it wasn't until WWI that the airplane was heavily developed--for the use of war (power by acquisition). If it wasn't for that motivational factor, we wouldn't have the technology we have today. In fact, looking back on history, war was the motivational factor more frequently than "love" or should I say "favourable appetites" (of course this is something that is very hard to prove, as it would require a vast multitude of examples, but just think about it for yourself... the space race, airplanes, explosives, nuclear engergy--these are just recent ones!).

Wow it's late... I think I've set a new record even for myself, having school in a few hours that is. The point is, love does not make the world go 'round. Although we all love, or should I say we all have favourable appetites and inclinations, this is not the motivational factor behind most of our actions.

Musing on the previous posts

I guess I didn't mention that I was thinking about harming oneself in my last blog. Thanks, Sean, for straightening me out. I don't know how I got the "self" into my brain. Harming others is definitely NOT against the nature of Hobbes' man, nor is it insane. It is often necessary and perfectly natural.

And I agree that Hitler and Stalin were fully aware of their actions. I suppose Milton would argue that they were not worthy of rule and had to be taken out, as did Charles I. But Milton is a dough-head and doesn't understand that the ability to get power justifies anyone's having power. In wondering what Hobbes would say of our scary subjects....well, I can only agree that he would think their actions were their perogatives. If assertion of power means annihilation of enemies, then they were within their bounds as Leviathans.

However, Leviathans act on behalf of their people for the good of their people. These two acted for themselves more than for the good of the people.... Still, we cannot take this tempting reason to condemn them, for if Hobbes didn't turn on Charles I despite his incompetence and blunders, it is unlikely he would turn against Hitler and Stalin for their sickening directives. One does not turn against the Leviathan. Ever. Whew, it's a harsh point of view we Hobbesians share.

As for your question, Sean, I think you're going down the path of Iain and Dr. Ogden's earlier dialogue. Wasn't that the whole "does the orange t-shirt exist if I don't know it exists before I choose between the white one and the black one?" thing? And I don't know. Does a tree make a sound if it falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear? Is that a question we can ever answer satisfactorily?

But I'll take a shot at it...If good and evil are man-made, then no, they don't exist without knowledge of them. They are abstract ideas to which we have given labels- not absolute fact. They only exist because our world dictates that they must, so that we may discuss things such as this. If good and evil did not exist without our prior knowledge--prior meaning before we choose-- then there is only what IS. It is a neutrality with inarticulate dimensions, and we can neither discuss it nor choose between things, as without labels there is no meaning. Without labels, we would all be Helen Keller before she understood sign language. We have to label something in order to communicate in the first place. Even Hobbes accepted some labels, if he reduced away most of them. Could he talk about desires without acknowledging aversion and appetite? No. I think I might be the only person who gets this (I'm not saying it very well), so feel free to ignore it. I am, however, trying to say that there is no choice without knowledge.

Good stuff...

Our inability to describe hot and cold, light and dark, good and evil in terms other than in polar opposites to one another, may be merely a limitation of our language. We simply have no other way of describing darkness than the absence of light. We have an idea in our minds of what darkness is, but we cannot communicate that concept without making reference to light. This expands on Will’s argument that good and evil are nothing more than human constructs. He argued that in the natural state of things no actions made by animals are good or evil. The tiger is certainly not “evil” for killing the gazelle; it is merely doing what it naturally does to survive. Good and evil are then just labels that we humans have placed on actions that are socially acceptable and unacceptable. This was basically Danny’s argument. Since they are invented labels, this means we have chosen to define the concepts of good and evil as polar opposites to one another. Thus, by very definition the two concepts cannot be defined independently of one another. I like that.

Now... let’s not go as far as to say that people who disobey the socially accepted good are “insane” (as that would imply a complete lack of reason on their parts). However, people like Hitler and Stalin, who we label as “evil”, were clearly not motivated by the socially acceptable norms that govern the majority of us. Rather, they were acting in very selfish ways, attempting to gain power for themselves, no matter what the cost. Danny argued their behaviour was simply “not natural”. But according to Hobbes, their behaviour was entirely natural (recall his natural state of things in which everyone seeks power individually). Mel argued that “it is against the nature of man to do himself harm, or choose to do anything against his best interest”, and therefore “a man who would choose against his appetites (evil) is not acting in a sane capacity and his actions are void of meaning.” But actions that we label as “evil” are not necessarily harmful to the person performing them, or against his best interests. Rather, evil deeds are usually harmful to other people.

Ok, now before I finish this wonderful post in which I do nothing more than expand on or counter previous posts made by others (aren’t I clever, posting a question and then waiting for you all to respond so I can leech off of you all, muwahahaha), I’d like to address the second part of my question, which I feel didn’t receive nearly enough attention: Is it necessary for us to have the possibility, the presence of evil before us, in order for us to choose the path to goodness? Or in other words, does choice exist between good and evil without the presence of the two prior to the decision-making process? What’s choice without knowledge of the consequences of that choice? Ack! I can’t even fathom answering that now; I just finished writing a paper for another course. I’ll leave that to another day... or to other "groupies".

religious imposition explains it all

To respond to Iain's post on the common obsession of love, I argue that love is not the common obsession. People can be reduced not to having desire for love in common, but in having desire. We are all attracted, motivated, and driven to attain certain things. The label "love" is only a convention of society that makes desires appropriate. For some reason (religion), the nature of man has been deemed corrupt, and natural desires have also been labeled impure. Expression of appetites, in time, has forcibly become an appeal to false ideals. Instead of speaking plainly, society requires that appetites be couched in false terms of love, romance and happines. Suckling's poem is about the desire to satisfy his natural appetites; any wistful, or flowery diction is just the poet buying into socially-imposed conventions (these, naturally, have evolved from man's greatest and most flawed invention: religion).

Thanks, Sean, for posting my interesting sentence about the virtue in choosing good. May I point out that in class, I was arguing on behalf of Milton's God, while on the blog I am for Milton's Satan and Hobbes.

Hobbes would say that there is no virtue in choosing good, as anything good boils down to an appetite. Evil, similarly, is paralleled with aversion. It is not virtuous to choose good- merely natural. It is against the nature of man to do himself harm, or choose to do anything against his best interest. Therefore, a man who would choose against his appetites (evil) is not acting in a sane capacity and his actions are void of meaning. For Hobbes, the choice is plain, and virtue is beside the point.

I do, however, agree with Will that appetite and aversion, or good and evil, are dependent upon one another to establish meaning. The polar opposites of good and evil, as man-made concepts, rely on one another to exist. What is hot, without the comparison of cold?

Choice: Good or Evil

Ok, let's get some discussion happening here folks. Yeah, that's right, I noticed no one has made a post in over a week. I'm just gonna throw something out there. Something radical (perhaps). Something totally crazy (maybe). Allow me to blow your minds:

"The virtue of choosing good is contingent upon temptation and rejection of
evil."

Crazy... or is it? This is what Mel came up with in tutorial on Monday. I don't have much to say at the moment; my mind isn't in academic mode. But I will ask the following. Can the concept of good be defined in terms strictly independent from any notion of bad/evil (and vice-versa)? ie: Are the concepts of good and evil defined solely by each being the other's polar opposite? Is it necessary for us to have the possibility, the presence of evil before us, in order for us to choose the path to goodness?