Suppose for a moment that, as a thinker, a wanna-be academic, and somewhat of a social isolate, I am out of touch. With what exactly? I suppose the normal answer is “reality”. What is this reality? What is this existence that, for some reason, I do not comprehend?

We toss this phrase around as if there is some reality that is separate from our own creation of it. Obama is out of touch with “real Americans”. How dare those Harvard educated bureaucrats make some decisions about our lives. There is this implicit objection somewhere within our cultural mentality that there is a “reality” that we face every day and that people with intellect just “don’t get it.”

Get what? Starvation, suffering, struggle? Do you, little American, really suffer that like the children of Zimbabwe? Yet you frown at efforts to help the world in favor of your own petty problems. But what am I saying, I live comfortably. I must be out of touch.

Get what? Everyday, down-to-earth motivations and desires?  I am an ideologue, a thinker. Damn the thinker, for he has already thought a hundred times about the purpose of your alarm clock before you’ve hit it in the morning. Damn me for taking apart everything in my life and piecing it back in the order I like because I am incomprehensible to you.  Have pleasure, you can laugh on the inside because it makes me forever lonely.

Get what? The day to day routine of a life that is dull and seemingly inconsequential?  Inconsequential is a word that we created alongside consequential. I cannot comprehend your insistence on a spirit of nothingness in the everyday.  You live with your eyes closed and your ears covered so that your day to day must be routine, learned slowly, and never altered.

Get what? The confusion and listlessness of a life that is incomprehensible? Where is our reality, dear techmen?  Look at where you live and see a world that we, collectively, have created.  We are animals in our own constructed habitats, confused by the brilliance of our own success.

You call me out of touch, the ideologue, the thinker, the critic? Am I some guy in an armchair by the fireplace with no comprehension of the everyday? I drive in cars just like you. I sit in office chairs just like you. I have a computer, as do you. I am in debt, as are you.  I shop in malls just like you.  What is the reality that my head has not comprehended?

Out of touch? You, humans who walk upright and keep nodding to the music, are out of touch. Do you see the world in front of you? Can you move much further past the headlines? Can you question yourself from the toothbrush to the shopping cart?    To truly touch this world you would have to turn off the television for a moment and look at that empty box and realize, in reality, what it is you were just gazing into.

We all struggle with this, even I–especially I, the thinker. What is this reality, this world, that we walk upon? What is this surface that we touch? I touch it, just like you. But do you comprehend the sensation?

I’ve been reading through Thus Spake Zarathustra again and something has been bothering me. Why is it that some smart, independently-minded people aren’t struck by his conception of the metamorphosis quite like I am? Why do some people who are generally critical, intelligent, and…unaccepting people (you know, the sort who don’t just accept everything society hands them, including social norms of expectation and life) never really truly become creators?

Why do they find it so unoffensive to live by the typical social structure? But see thats the thing: they don’t exactly. These sort of people, which I think are most people but especially intelligent ones, do not burden themselves with the norms of society. Rather they pick and choose what to take seriously. Any imperative, any virtue, that is a burden they simply ignore.

I do not mean this as an insult. But these people are lazy camels. In Nietzsche’s metamorphosis the camel is the person who shoulders the virtues of society like a burden. He is the person who takes it on himself to go against his own wishes for the sake of what he is told is good.  It is this burden that gives birth to the lion. But we do not burden ourselves. We are passive. We say “its ok, accept or not whatever you will” and so we remain as camels, adopting as a whole the conceptions handed to us, only leaving off the parts that challenge us. I think that this is what Nietzsche may have meant by the “last man” but I think it is also more than that. Because these people can be genuinely good people, smart people, not even lazy people–they are just lazy camels. In their intelligence they shrug off those parts of social virtues that don’t fit them but on a whole they keep the conceptions and the frames bestowed by their language. They never really become lions or creators, just intelligent camels who realize that one does not need to burden oneself with the arbitrary virtues of society.

To become a creator one must become a lion and then a child. This is why so many smart critical people never seem to break away from the virtues instilled upon them.

It has come together and I understand it. I like this. This is mine. To use Nietzsche’s terms, I have torn down the virtues handed to me and created my own. This has been in process for nearly three years now. This is a culminating moment.

The other night I wrote the first of these thoughts on love in which I identified the three motivations whereby people love. From these tonight in conversation I was forced to see the implications for these motivations on a conception of relationships.

First off. I can’t stand the current conception of relationships. You know what I mean. Its every love story we read, see, and hear. Its boyfriends and girlfriends, engagements, marriage. Its a conception of love that is vague and nonsensical, that chews us up and spits us out as something different. Either that or its just sex, attraction, infidelity. These are the black and whites in a world defined by a sense of relationships that I have come to loath. It entails an incredible power over another being, to suggest that one ought to have ultimate loyalty, complete fidelity, unyielding security in devotion.

The labels themselves are a security. We know what to expect of a girlfriend, a fiance, a wife. Even if the conception changes, the conception still is defined for us. That is why we highlight these defining moments, the ones where he “asks you out” or you kiss and you become boyfriend/girlfriend. Then the engagement. Then marriage. Its convenient. The rules are laid out. The expectations are clear.

Nonetheless, each of these labels are completely arbitrary. They speak nothing about the depth of one’s relationship. I am serious about this. When you look at them they are nothing more than socially defined points in an absurd relationship timeline. More distressing is the roles that they entail, the whole set of actions bestowed upon you by the title of “boyfriend”, “fiance”, “husband.” These expectations, this role, becomes a part of you as soon as the label is instilled. Even though you may create your own idea of these concepts, they still exist within a mental, linguistic, and social framework that cannot be avoided. The subtleties and intricacies of its effect is enormous and too much to discuss here.

But consider perhaps the worst two conclusions based on the current two conceptions that these ideas exist within. To do this we need to remember the three motivations for relationships–the first is the connection with another existence, the acknowledgement of their being, and a care for it. The second is the desire to be intertwined with that other existence, to be a part of their experience and to experience part of theirs. The third is the physical, which ranges from a simple handshake (as a physical acknowledgement of their physical reality) to sex.

Now, according to what is the more traditional and conservative view of relationships, friends can share the first two things but it precludes the third. That is, as friends you can recognize and care about another’s existence and you can become intertwined in their experience. You can do this on a shallow level or an extreme level and still remain friends. What makes you more than friends then? Sex. Its all about the level of physical intimacy. Sure there is an element of the second one that is inaccessible–your financial matters are difficult to intertwine without marriage…but it can be done and still be within the realm of decency according to these values (like when two guys go into business together). What makes a friendship more than friendship is the level of physical intimacy.  You don’t kiss friends. You don’t have sex with friends (at least according to this conception). Do you see what this does? It is an attempt to honor sex and make it sacred but instead it just singles it out, making it something scandalous and forbidden while also being the main mover of relationships. Essentially, the truly “deepest” of relationships are all about sex. Why get married? To have sex. Then you’re getting married just to have sex. How odd is that!  And if its not marriage, then its the fact that you are adopting whatever role you call it (girlfriend to wife) for sex. To put it badly, we are all whores bought with the price of adopting a social label.

Now take the opposite conception, the more liberal view that sex is more open. In the same framework it fails once again.  It honors the physical intimacy without the essential prerequisite, which is the first motivation–recognizing the other person as a person and not as a mere object of pleasure. By its own terms it fails to even create friendship–unless it is developed after the fact in a different sort of way–the sort of way that leads to something either like the more traditional view or is something new, but not just about open sex.

On the other hand, we have my conception.  I will keep only two terms for this conception, love and friendship, both of which I will redefine. Then I will add a third: allies, or accomplices if you would prefer that. Here’s how it goes:

Given the need to alleviate our loneliness in this existence as well as the essentially inescapably social nature of our existence we establish relationships with others.  There is a fundamental perquisite to a relationship and that lies in motivation number one:

• To begin a friendship we acknowledge the existence of another person. Normally we do this by exchanging names, a handshake or other physical gesture, and by getting to know each other

This is where it begins. On its shallowest level we call these people acquaintances. From here on out there are no rules. Every friendship is different, taking on a different character. There is nothing really beyond friends except allies, which is just what I call the strongest form of friends.  Instead, we all just have different levels of the three motivations working themselves out in different ways and varying strengths, creating the dynamics of closeness and understanding between us.

To clarify, I will venture to make a metaphor. The three motivations are like the three elementary colors. Every relationship is constantly changing colors depending on the strength and depth that their three desires are working themselves out in the relationship. As such, relationships are ever changing and every relationship is different.

Consider this a little more concretely. You are introduced to someone by a friend. In that first moment you lay the grounds for #1, the care for that person starting with simply acknowledging them. At the same moment you might find them incredibly fun and spent the rest of the night with them, thereby temporarily entangling your experiences. But you might not be attracted to them. Over the course of a few years you may develop a very close friendship in terms of the first two but maybe not in terms of the three. Or perhaps you care deeply for them and are attracted to them but do not feel your lives can be fully entangled. So your friendship might include sex but have no element of commitment.

There is nothing better or worse about each of these forms of friendships, they are simple different. The only bad scenario really comes when you have sex without the acknowledgment, which I wouldn’t call love at all.

To be clear, lets lay out the shallowest and most extreme forms (that I can think of ) of each motivation

1. Existence—–Shallow: Acknowledgement—Deep: Strong, unshakable value in that other person’s existence as a being
2. Experience—Shallow: Doing things together, having fun—Deep: Sharing most of one’s experience, intertwining plans and life goals
3. Physical——-Shallow: A touch or general attraction—Deep: Sex.

Now, what happens when one reaches the deeper forms of friendship in all three? Well then one can form a deep and residing friendship which I call “Allies in existence.” It is my concept that is most akin to marriage, but I don’t like the comparison and instead choose a diplomatic metaphor. It is someone you adore, who you share your experience with, who you intertwine your existence with. This is the only form of commitment in this formulation. And allies may be for life if they are good enough, or for as long as the alliance should last. Note that this alliance comes most strongly from #2, your experiences becoming intertwined. As such I guess it can function without the strongest form of physical closeness but I think that in its strongest form it should include all three.

The most important point here is that its all the same. There is no transition, only a matter of depth and form. There is no magic point where you become anything except at the point where you intertwine your existences so closely that you become allies. Even then you are still friends. Just really close friends. And no its not “just friends.” I’m just saying that its the same substance. Its still the same three motivations and means at work.  No magical change point. You’re just closer.

I really love this. I know its entirely mine. It entails an enormously different conception of relationships from what most people have. It will probably make it really difficult for me to sustain good relationships with the opposite sex, and this does make me a little sad. But I know it resonates from my deepest values, values which I have created after tearing down the conceptions of love and relationships handed down to me. Yes, I speak in Nietzschean terms because they are appropriate. I am incredibly satisfied and happy with these conclusions.  So it goes.

When I was a child I had a vague notion of history. I remember trying to comprehend it.  History looked like an expanse of stained and yellowing paper with a dark timeline running through the middle of it. Cars were invented sometime in the past…sometime after knights fought for kings but probably before the TV was invented. The Revolutionary War was just before the Civil War because thats how we learned it in school–not much happened between so the times became condensed in my mind. And surely it was a long long time ago that people didn’t have light bulbs, air conditioning, toilets (seriously, how did people live without toilets!), and cars. I mean, at least they had trains for a long time before cars. And telephones too.  All of this was in some grand past long dead and incomprehensible. Just a timeline.

Some quick facts. It is 2010. The personal computer did not exist thirty years ago. Schools were still segregated 50 years ago. World War 2 was some 70 years ago. The great depression was some 80 years ago, and World War 1 was about 90 years ago. Slavery existed 150 years ago.

The lightbulb was invented in 1880. Before that everyone used candles and after that it took many many years for lights to become widespread.  That was130 years ago.  Think about that for a moment. The lightbulb changed the character of our existence forever. We could go to sleep any time. We could work at night, live at night. Before, darkness was impenetrable except for our feeble attempts with fire and our prayers to the stars and moon that they would shine brighter and light our way. Now we live by the lights we have artificially created.

Right around the same time, 1885, the first widely recognized internal combustion engine was built. Again, only 125 years ago. Before that you hardly could leave you town. When you did you had to travel long distances slowly or expensively. You had to get on a horse or ride in a carriage or walk. Your neighbors were the people you knew because you couldn’t know anyone else. Think of how much time we spend in cars. Think of the places we go, with such speed and consistency. Take all that away. Only a 125 years ago. Two average lifespans. And of course automobiles weren’t even common until after Ford, in the 1900s, and didn’t become a real part of every day life until even later. Yes, we had trains before but they were still quite different. And this is saying nothing of airplanes, which allow us to travel across the world in hours instead of months or even years.

Should I speak also of telephones and the fact that before we could only talk to people whom we had traveled long distances (quite slowly) to see or had carefully written to? I won’t even mention computers. Or the thousands of other integral technologies in our lives that we don’t really notice but which readily shape our lives. Polyester. Plastic. Air conditioning. And so on.

The industrial revolution occurred around the late 1700s, with the invention of the cotton gin, steam engine, and the use of iron. It really picked up steam (no pun intended) around the 1850s. 160 years ago. How long is that for a world to completely change character? In such a sense as it has…such an extreme sense. Its incomprehensible. Life as those people knew it is gone, perhaps forever. We either find ourselves entirely unable to comprehend such an existence or completely aghast at the thought of it.

Such a short time and such change. The whole nature of our experience stands altered by what we have created.

This is, again, the sort of thing I seek to study in my life–the way that the life we have created for ourselves frames and shapes the nature of our existence. Trying to comprehend the existence of pre-1850s in nearly impossible. I was fascinated tonight by Pride and Prejudice for that reason alone, nevermind the fact that its a Jane Austen romance. The world of then is not the world of now and a mere 150 years (200 in the case of Austen) separates us from that existence. How things have changed. How all of life has changed! What is this existence that we are living now!? How absurd and how fascinating!

I’ve thought about questions like this for a long time. I spent a long time on “What is happiness?” This question is almost as complicated and interesting as that one.

I speak passively, even coldly, but this is obviously something thats been bothering me for a long time, something which I feel very passionate about. The question was there through my whole relationship with Kayley and has weighed heavily on my mind since it ended.

My first thought is to wonder whether the concept has any meaning at all.  But of course it does. We use it all too often. We mean something by it. The word “love” puts a name on a desire, just like the word “happiness.”  Happiness entails the desire for purpose and for a positive (subjectively so) experience in our existence (this was my conclusion before). What desire is love? Why do we seek it so diligently and so desperately?

Love, of course, is a social desire. As I am coming to understand it, love is born out of the intense loneliness of our existence. Our experience entails that we can only know ourselves, and even that somewhat hazily (as we constantly recreate and redefine ourselves in our every day lives). We cannot be someone else, i.e. we cannot experience their experience, seeing the world as they do, with their set of knowledge and memories, with their train of thought, with their bodily experience, and their social situation. So we can never fully comprehend another being. All we can do to connect, to comprehend another being, is to use our limited and woefully insufficient tools–words, physical contact, imagination, art. Thus loneliness is born, an intense feeling of disconnect. These people around us appear like objects, unknowns, unable to be comprehended.  Likewise we see others and know that we are not comprehended but are constantly misunderstood and mis-characterized. We desire to be comprehended and we desire to comprehend.

While our mediums of communication are, in the end, ineffective at completely knowing another person they are enough to give us a sense of another’s existence, a hope for the intertwining of two existences, for the beginnings of a mutual comprehension of another’s experience.

Nature has built for us a physical counterpart for this philosophical desire. We call its sex.  But in a broader sense it is the whole sense of attraction that we feel for family–for children, for lovers, for parents–all of which are either a part of us or which we exchange physical intimacy with in–all of which is physical

So as far as I can see there are three reasons we love, which essentially makes up the three elements of love.

1. The desire to comprehend another’s existence, and to be comprehended
2. The overcoming of loneliness, to share one’s experience
3. Sexual and physical desire

These are the reasons we seek relationships. Elements of these three are what form love. The second involves the sort of thing we have when we say that someone is “really fun to be around.”  The first is more implicit, involving knowing the other person–on a simple level their likes and dislikes, on a more complex one, their deeper desires, feelings, and preferences. Both one and two involve the sort of thing we share when we help each other out and listen to another’s thoughts, concerns and feelings.

Thats my basic conclusion. I have some more questions about the role of sex in relation to the first two but that is an issue for another moment. Specifically, I wonder about the classifications we use in “friend”, “lover”, “boyfriend/girlfriend”, “fiancee”, “husband/wife.” What do all these labels mean given the three reasons that people love? How does relationships change between each? What use do these labels have for us? I have some thoughts on it but I’ll wait for another post.