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.

This is just a partial list of some academic projects that I’ve had in mind and may or may not pursue.

• An exploration of the socio-cultural changes that occurred around 1990s, specifically the way that the world prior to 1990 is incomprehensible to those who live now, especially ppl my age (historical cliff, historical apathy)
• The rhetoric of the past, future, and alternate realities–living in fictions. ie, Reverse-historical Narratives, the recording of the past, appeal of alternate realities
• A historical study on the “futurism” that has existed at various points in time, with a focus on the rhetoric of the future
• A study of the rhetoric of emerging technologies today
• The difference between reception and philosophies of emerging technologies between the west and Japan.
• The role of metaphors, narratives, and framing in emerging technology discourse (the one I put in my personal statements for grad school)
• An ethnographic study of the way that advance technologies are incorporated into developing countries in new and interesting ways, including how they are viewed. (Of course this might not be within my level of expertise and ability.)
• I’d like to work with some psychologists studying the way that children are socialized into technology, especially the kind of kids that are skype-ing from the time they are babies (like my nephew). Of course, this one is also out of my jurisdiction. Maybe I could just help out with it.
• A technological account of the existential dilemma (my technological existentialism)
• My account of experiential existentialism (a far off project of mine that doesn’t necessarily relate to technology specifically).

I think thats it for now. Those are huge projects in themselves. This could take my whole life.

To subsume myself in the rhetoric I am speaking about: my intellectual gears have been pumping away here at the end of the semester, this swirl of thoughts exploding and fragmenting into an array of ideas that are at once disorienting and invigorating. My classes this semester have fit together brilliantly, and here at the end they have been particularly potent. I have had several instances that have really stimulated my thoughts, most notably a series of conversations with various people, especially one I just had with Laura Walls, and the analysis of the online conversations about nanotechnology that I’m doing with Gehrke. These have made me realize that there is a significant niche for me right there in this, as Laura put it, “new genre” of literature. The analysis of this genre will not only be fruitful in understanding a new and important socio-cultural and political phenomenon but will also lead me to be able to dissect out of this some really interesting philosophical and socio-cultural commentary in the long term.

The core of this new “genre” is what I will call, for now, “reverse historical narratives/studies” The terms came to me while talking to Dr. Walls today and she really liked it and I see it as incredibly fitting. What this involves is a sense of certainty of the future; writers and speakers of this genre speak of future events using the same method as people who write historical accounts. In a sense, there is a set future and a set past and the current course is just a matter of moving between the two. This doesn’t mean that these people necessarily agree on what this futuristic outcome is but they speak as if they are sure. That is, they speak of the future like historians speak of a contestable past event, rallying the same sort of evidence and using the same sort of language. A lot of times this involves taking the past and projecting it to the future, but it is not always the case.

Caught up in this is a melding of science into a narrative form. Science and fiction, essentially, are blurred together to form an inseparable mass.  The most common mode of speech is a form of speculation, that is essentially a strong thought experiment where the implicit assumptions are not recognized. Except here the speakers don’t recognize it as a speculation but claim it as the practice of science. That is, they dress it up in scientific language, use scientific terms, construct real looking models, give their items scientific sounding names, etc.  A good example can be found here, an article by Robert Freitas. (continue reading…)

No, I am not connecting the three together, I just wanted to toss a few thoughts on here about how they connect to things I’ve been thinking about.  I already posted in much more detail about how Kierkegaard and Camus relate to my thoughts on philosophical suicide and insanity…want to make some more connections like that.

1) Nietzsche’s conception of the “Overman”

I am really a fan of this concept; I think combined with all my thoughts on technology it proves to be an incredible idea that is amazingly applicable to today.  People need to read more Nietzsche. Yes, read Thus Spake Zarathustra, it will change your life!  The concept of the Overman/Superman (depending on the translation, but Superman invokes visions of flying men in tights…) is the equivalent of what I like to call the Ascendant. The Ascendant is my (well, Curt and I’s) term and is more directly tied to technology than Nietzsche’s Overman, but they have the same end. I, in fact, plan to take a LOT from Nietzsche know when I write more about The Ascendant later on (the names are even similar, invoking the height metaphor). There are a few differences, however, one of which is particularly meaningful.  Nietzsche’s Overman is one who has overcome  both traditional forms of virtue and himself to become a creator of new values and meaning. The Overman lives a life designated by his own purpose, freed to some extent from others, and, as the individual, proceeds forward with his life through his own virtue–a virtue only applicable to him. Also, the Overnman believes strongly in the earth and in his own body (N. would say they say “Yes” to this world).  My difference, I think, is that the Ascendant concept includes the idea of the Overman, but comments further on what it means to be the Overnman. In other words, you are never quite “over” so to speak, but are always ascending.  This does not mean in a judgmental sense; it is meant in the sense that people who are Ascendant live life for the progression and exploration of experience (N. would say “creating”). Essentially, I think of the Ascendant as someone who, having attained their own virtues and meaning, now proceeds forth in that meaning to enjoy and explore the possibilities of existence.

2) Heidegger’s concept of “Idle Talk.”

I love it. I just wanted to make a note here about it because its such a good concept but I’m not likely to forget it. However, I do not feel like explaining it. Only this, that this concept of idle talk is being compounded by our technologies. If we really want to exist in a technologically advanced world we must once again remember the maxim “enhancement not replacement” and remember to use our technologies to allow us for deeper and more authentic talk. Instead, newer technologies give us the opportunity to be even more inauthentic than ever; it does not need to be so. For instance, I have Gehrke (my advisor) on Facebook and we’ve shared some substantial links and comments that led us to really good conversations later on. Same can be the case with texts, blogs, short columns, etc. Depth! We can’t lose depth!

Oh, and Heidegger now officially gives me the philosophical justification for hating small talk. Thank you Heidegger, I now forgive you for being so difficult to read. (continue reading…)