The definition prescribed by my mentor Stefan Molyneux is that love is related to virtue, and how our virtues measure up with our partner meaning they agree with your virtues. For example, not beating your children or partner, never yelling or raising your voice to another, or never calling each other names are virtues we can and should all ascribe to. Stefans definition is also related to philosophical ideas. Virtues were developed by philosophers like Aristotle and expanded upon by writers like Ayn Rand. Rands definition of virtue was focused on the vice: Altruism. She described altruism as the suffering of one to benefit the other. This is particularly intriguing for me because if you love someone out of duty or honor or subservience, it is not out of the goodness of your being. Instead its a focus on sacrificing your happiness for the happiness of others. As I described before, Universally Preferable Behavior is a concept I am sticking meticulously towards because it benefits all parties involved, not just public entities but private and familial relationships too. Family relationships and friends are vital for the trust and reliability to benefit each other.
Altruism, the opposite, or vice of Objectivism is the universally preferable behavior for all parties involved because it is deemed a win-win scenario in most cases for those involved. Some specific scenarios like, if hitler and churchill were both drowning in a lake, you would save churchill and abandon hitler because saving an evil entity for the sake of altruism is a great injustice towards humanity. In other words, performing an act of saving another life is only valid if you could not bear to live without that person. If your wife or husband was drowning and you decided it would be unbearable to live without that person, you would jump into the icy cold waters and save their life and potentially killing yourself would be a greater benefit to you and your family than if your wife or husband were left to drown. I could not bear to see myself live alone without my fiancee and therefore would have to go in and save her otherwise i would feel my life was pointless. Or maybe I couldn’t forgive myself if I froze up and let her die and thus would have serious regrets later on. Regrets are not unusual though, and people that die saying “I have no regrets” are liars and cowards because that means they don’t regret bullying or hurting another person they love in a prior situation.
I regret plenty of things in my life, I regret spending four years with my prior girlfriend before Sofie. I regret pushing her and yelling at her. I regret hurting my brother and sister in our childhood years, bullying them, antagonizing them, and patronizing them. I regret hurting my friends Kevin by telling him to lose weight, and hitting my first girlfriend and simultaneously getting into a car accident because of it. I rammed my car into the house, and it was a very scary moment for me. My rage has been my ultimate regret because it has been used unsuccessfully to make myself feel better and has poisoned my relationships in the past. Today, however, I am confronting my rage, my personal injustices and I feel great knowing I can control my anger so that it doesn’t become an uncontrollable rage. Just now I knocked over some cookies and a lotion bottle from my night stand. My immediate thought was, anger. Why am I agree at knocking something over? It happens. When Sofie knocks something over or hurts herself I don’t get mad and she has taught me to be more empathetic. Why am I not empathetic you may ask, because the reason I feel anger when knocking something over, or if I trip myself, or hit my knee on the bedside. Its because my fathers words are still inside telling me I am worthless, Im a klutz, or a bozo, or a dumb ass, or a person that shouldn’t be making mistakes. I have lived in Sweden for nearly 3 years now, and spent 9 years in the U.S. military prior to this. I have been away from home for several years, and I have discovered why I made such a good soldier…
My whole military career I was never good at much, my shining virtue or vice in the military was that I was good at taking orders. This is a dangerous aspect of altruism as I will explain. The soldiers in the second world war did not question sending jews into gas chambers and killing six million jews. Altruism is taking the ideas of a megalomaniac and letting them tell you to kill others based on a false ideology. Instead of talking things out and solving matters with discussion, they called upon soldiers to carry out the good of their country by sacrificing themselves and laying down their free will to kill in terms of an irrational cause. This is why religion and governments are so dangerous because they take things by force (taxes and wars and arresting) people who do not obey their laws. 92% of americas prisoners are non-violent offenders meaning they are the failed result of the war on drugs. Governments are only supposed to be there to keep violence off the streets, not arrest drug addicts and users. But I will save this subject for another time.
My altruism was planted in my deep childhood recesses. Starting with my circumcision, my brain told me the world did not want me, it wanted to hurt me. So I developed an insane fear of needles and my dad would yell at me whenever I knocked things over even as a baby and toddler. How does this make sense? Abuse and yelling and neglect or abandonment are all actions our parents have over us children. Defenseless children do not have a choice who their parents will be. They only have a choice to how they can channel it. Addiction comes from failed brain circuits developing and result in external medicine needed. Addiction is a disease, not a crime, and these people are willing to waste away because of it. “its not death they fear, its LIFE that they fear” because they’ve been raised in a world that tells them they are unwanted. They are not needed and as a result their brain develops misshapen. Doctors can look at PET scans and actually see the brain is damaged and does not develop absolutely necessary neural pathways needed for successful brain function.
Justin
American living in Sweden 