An Afterthought

When three decades ago I first considered the order of "be, do, have," it seemed to me that once we "have" something it becomes a part of our being. That was a wrong idea. It's not the "things" that become part of us, but our attitude toward them. If we regard “things” as Faust did – as a relief from certain kinds of boredom – our beingness in relation to things will have us situated as victims who are caused to be what we are by things that are not us. We will be “objects” produced by other “objects.”

Now, it's obvious that we cannot escape being surrounded by things that would – if we remained passive in our understanding of them – cause the innermost sense we have of ourselves to be determined by outside causes. But digging a bit deeper into the distinction Miss Robin made between objects with and without souls may shed some light on the difference between being an active human being and being a mere passive piece of breathing meat.

Take for instance this business we call "loving" that commands so much of the attention of women and men. In its simplest form – disregarding the fact that loving men and loving women both have souls – lovers might regard the object of their affection as just another "thing" that happened to come along in their lives just in time to relieve certain natural cravings, relief from boredom being the one less talked about. If that’s essentially the sum of the effect our beloved has on our being, then we might well admit that a soulless rubber ducky could have served us just as well.

But the man or woman who loves just happens to be an object with a soul, and even more certainly, just happens to be the object of his or her own most enduring love. We love ourselves. And, of course, we must if we are to remain concerned for our own well being.

With that fact in mind, think once again of that question and answer Karl Jaspers saw as fundamental to an understanding of Spinoza. The question: “On what do happiness and unhappiness depend?” The answer: “On the nature of the objects we love.” We are compelled by existential forces to love ourselves, but nothing in nature – the world’s or our own – compels us to value ourselves. We may in fact hate what we are while continuing to behave in the world as if nothing in it were more important than ourselves.

One possible source of self hatred lies in our relating to other people as if they were soulless objects. We are intuitively aware that all people are essentially like ourselves in the sense that we all possess souls. [This cannot be proven, and that’s precisely why that knowledge remains intuitive, i.e., not provable and not needing proof.] An ethical intuition also suggests to us – without compulsion – that it is wrong to treat other people as if they were not like us in that respect. To the extent we violate that moral imperative, we devalue ourselves, and to the extent we lack value, the love we bestow upon ourselves is directed toward an object that does not deserve to be loved. Hence, unhappiness.

The loving relationships between men and women have taken on so many different patterns it would be virtually impossible to catalog, much less analyze, them all. But there do seem to be certain general forms in those relationships that can be put into the mill of self analysis. Spinoza spoke of the desire the lover feels toward his beloved, said that the lover desires to “possess” his beloved. But he then went on to say that the desire to possess another flies in the face of the existensial fact that it is impossible actually to possess another. We may be able to possess soulless objects, because they have no desire to be not possessed. But every thing with a soul loves itself, and that self love cannot be taken away by another’s love, no matter how sincere or enduring. Lovers may make themselves “one,” but they remain two. They may give each other pleasure, but the pleasure happens in two different souls. We may wish to possess our beloved, but in order to do so we would have to make of them objects unlike ourselves. We would be compelled to deny them a soul.

But loving also has positive characteristics. We desire happiness for our beloved, and the more happiness the beloved enjoys the more joy we also experience. But this one has a cutting edge. Our beloved may find joy in someone other than ourselves. It is not altogether certain that our joy would thus increase as hers did. But if we have truly loved, and if we have transcended the traps of possessiveness, I suppose it may be possible to experience joy in our beloved's enjoyment of another's love. This may be more likely to occur in cases where a person loves from afar, or where the strictures of society prohibit the mutual sharing of joy. The lover, in those cases, may in fact take pleasure in knowing that his beloved is living a joyful life. It should not pass notice that when the lover does in fact experience that sort of joy, it is likely that he will find a value in himself that would not otherwise be there. It should, however, also be noted that society’s strictures often compel a person to endure less joy than he or she might find with another. Cases of that sort multiply sorrow, both in the soul of the lover and the beloved.

If we now analogously extend these understandings to objects other than individual lovers, if we think of families, cities, and nations – perhaps even the earth – as loving and beloved objects, we find ourselves able to make sense of much of the world’s unhappiness. Families feel compelled to love black sheep sons and daughters, cities and nations to care for their lost sheep, the world itself, if it were sentient, to mourn the losses imposed upon the unfortunate by nature’s vagaries. If we think of the so-called “consumer generation” as a lover who has centered its affection on objects of fleeting value, we may begin to understand at least one of humanity’s central afflictions: we can only truly possess things that rot and decay, and we intuitively understand that there is something wrong with us for that compulsion. The world is the object of star-crossed lovers.

Well, enough for one passing morning – which has already made its way into an afternoon. Perhaps another day will find a more joyful way to speak of the earth. We are still, when we are operating as authentic humans, a community of I’s and Thou’s. We are objects with souls, lovers and beloveds, seekers of the perfect way to love and be loved.