6/20/14
Mars Hill, Maine
In my unpublished Day -1 entry, I promised that the Day 0 entry would
contain some mind-blowing and earth-shattering philosophy. The above dateline is the perfect one for
this. Here at the base of Mars Hill just
past 2 AM where the first sunrise in the U.S. mainland will soon be occurring
on the first day of summer, I can present what my new philosophy. On Tuesday, I was asked about my
philosophy. I said that my philosophy
was one of love, and the follow up had to do with happiness. I answered that love and happiness were the
same thing, but that was an incomplete answer.
Love has a lot to do with happiness, and it can be a major Cause of
happiness, but there is more to life than that.
I like to tackle the harder philosophical questions, and I will do just
that in this entry. What is the purpose
of life? That’s an easy one. Rand would say the achievement of our
desires, but that is not a Final Cause.
Why do we want to achieve our desires?
To make us happy. Happiness is
the Final Cause of our existence.
Aristotle and the Greeks talked about happiness being some end game
state of happiness, but I reject that.
There are exactly two things that can make us happy: fulfillment and
enjoyment. When I published my first
entry, I thought it was a misfire, but it happened to contain the most
important bit of philosophy in anything I have ever written. This fulfillment/enjoyment dichotomy is the
very definition of happiness. Every
single action you take in life should be because it leads to either fulfillment
or enjoyment. Every desire you achieve
gives your either fulfillment or enjoyment.
In her arrogance, Rand misses that.
Having addressed that question, it is easy to see that love fits in very
much by providing both fulfillment and enjoyment. A philosophy that tries to explain what gives
you fulfillment and enjoyment would be as impossible as it would be
useless. Everyone has their definitions,
evaluations, and judgments of what gives them fulfillment and enjoyment.
However, a philosophy of love can be far more
practical. Love may very well be the
single greatest factor that can cause happiness. Rand says that love our response to our
highest values, nothing else, and I’m inclined to agree with her. Mutual respect and shared values. That’s what love is. And I’ll bet my reader thought it would be as
hard to define love as it would be figure out the purpose of life. Great, we have a definition of love, but, so
what? Most (?) people spend the better
part of their life in love with exactly one person, and it is, more often than
not, not the person with whom they share the most values and have the most
mutual respect. I explained that such a
system would completely eliminate sexual orientation. It was not, however, until my drive today
that I put it into words. Quite simply,
you cannot build a relationship on love.
Love alone is not enough. There
has to be something more.
A couple of
months ago, my brother and I were having rum and cigars, and we tried to come
up with a function to define sexual attraction in terms of physical and
emotional attraction. Some high school
math will follow, so I hope my reader does not get too lost. The actual question on the table was to
determine the physical and emotional ratings required of a woman to want to
engage in a one night stand. Ignoring a
scalar, the question reduces to coming with such a function, s = f(p, e), then
setting s equal to 1 and solving for p in terms of e, which becomes a bounded
curve in the first quadrant of a Cartesian plane, using the axes. Outside the curve sexual attraction is
there. Inside the curve, it’s not
there. Before my reader tells me that
not everything can be reduced to math, I respond that anyone say is lacking in
sufficient mathematical ability.
Everything reduces to math.
My
thought process was the Objectivist viewpoint, placing far higher emphasis on
emotional attraction. I argued that anyone
who places higher emphasis on physical attraction suffers from a lack of
self-esteem. However, I was really answering
the question of whether or not I would want to be in a relationship with said
woman. To me, it was one in the
same. If I wanted one, I would want the
other. However, that interpretation that
you can evaluate a potential relationship in terms of a function with 2
variables, however you decided to assign values to those two variables, led to
some contradictions, and it was not until recently that I resolved those
contradictions.
Before I explain the
contradictions, first I should give an explanation of what I mean by physical
and emotional attraction. Emotional
attraction is easy. It’s my definition
of love, the shared values and mutual respect definition, whatever you value, whatever
you respect, that’s the emotional attraction.
Other people might try to define love differently, but they are then
conflating it with lust. Love cannot
fade as long as the values and personalities that lead to the respect do not
fade. Lust can. That leaves physical attraction, which is the
aesthetical appeal, however it is defined by each individual. An interesting aspect of that that I recently
was able to finally verbalize is what I call implied emotional attraction. It is really the familiarity argument. You are attracted to someone because she
reminds you of someone whom you have found emotionally attractive. It is what it means to say that someone looks
smart. I will not delve deeper into that
aspect of physical attraction, nor will I discuss issues of facial structure
and shades of forms. I have discussed
that in previous entries as much as I can.
I will now discuss the contradictions.
The first one is that it does not make sense for sexual attraction and
romantic desire to be one and the same, no matter how much you hold to the fact
that a man of unbreached self-esteem is incapable of sexual desire divorced
from spiritual values. The second one is
that by my curve, if you are married to someone right on the curve and meet
someone that is even further from the origin, it would be only logical to cheat
on your spouse. I tried to explain that
away by saying that honor and commitment were values, but that doesn’t really
work. The last contradiction is one that
I wrote about en route to Tokyo, I believe.
It is that two people whom I truly respect have argued differently and
efficiently against it. My father keeps
talking about how well two people get along, which is just another name for
this thing called “chemistry.” Then,
Ryan has this idea about “style” playing into it. The second time he mentioned it, I knew
immediately what he meant, thinking instantly of three girls I had met to whom
I was immensely attracted based on their “style.” It’s really just what I have previously called
“mannerisms.” Thinking of those three
girls, I had responded that you cannot base a relationship on attraction, but
that is wrong. I just defined attraction
wrong. What was missing from equation
was a way to incorporate chemistry.
Surely the way two people get along has to play into romantic
desire. Why would you want to be in a
romantic relationship with someone if there is no chemistry, no matter how
pretty she is, no matter how much you love her?
Maybe it does not play into sexual desire, which answers the first
apparent contradiction, but it certainly does play into romantic desire. I will further explore chemistry in my next
entry, but, for now, I want to focus more on what I will call “The Math of
Romance.” Instead of having s = r = f(p,
e), you have s = f(p, e) and r = f(p, e, c).
That means that you instead have a surface in 3-space. Outside the surface, romantic desire. Inside, no romance. Using such a definition allows for history and
familiarity to be incorporated into chemistry.
Granted, one should try to choose for their mate someone with as high of
an r-value as possible, but it is much easier to incorporate history and
familiarity, honor and commitment into f(p, e, c) than f(p, e). That said, I want to use Ryan’s definition of
style as my basis for chemistry, but I am not sure how to yet. It’s a good thing that I still have a long
drive planned for tomorrow.
Ah, the
monster drive today. After a productive
day at work and getting my usual pre-departure Chinese, I left early to catch a
2:53 PM train, which got me to NWP around 3:30 PM. I tried and failed to sleep on the train, and
there was a delay with the customer in front of me at the car rental place, but
I had my traditional first cigar, the Davidoff Nic Toro lit up soon
enough. I hit some really had traffic,
but Zino and Avril kept me sane. My
second cigar was an LFD, and the third a Flor de Antilles. I knew that I would want to minimize my
nighttime driving, so I did not want to stop before it got dark. I realized that it would just start getting
dark as I reached the Welcome to Maine sign, and I was right. It was still light enough for a good picture,
and there was a great place to pull over.
I took my much needed first official U of the trip at that point.
Danielle had texted me while I was driving,
and the Bluetooth connection allowed the phone to read the message to me. I responded with the picture of the Maine
sign. I got back on the road and decided
I would stop after the cigar for gas, real food (other than the Quest bars I
had brought), and a nap. I got a little
lost, and the gas station was closed. I wasn’t
even able to fall asleep, but he advised me to go the 7-11 down the road, where
I got a hot dog, a diet Dew, and a coffee.
They had blueberry coffee, and I knew I had to get it. With the first sip, I remembered once again,
as I had been all trip, how much I loved Maine.
It might be my favorite place in the country outside of New York. I lit up a Rocky Patel Thunder, which smoked
too fast. The rest of the drive was
blur. All I remember was that I managed
to hit 100 during an empty stretch and that my last cigar of the drive was the
Avo, which was excellent. After getting
lost a little bit in Mars Hill, I found myself at the base of the mountain, and
I walked around a bit, but it was pitch black, other than a few lights and so
many stars. I then went back to my car
and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close, since it is getting
light out, and I need to make my way to the summit.
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